"It's YOUR day."

Adam proposed at the keyhole of Devil's Backbone in Loveland and this was not perfect. It was 97 degrees without shade and I had a hangover. Let me second that complaint with a certainty: I love Adam and he is the man I want to spend the rest of my life with.

Girls grow up dreaming of perfection. I think this is fairly universal in America. Many dream of a tear-jerkingly romantic proposal and stunning, huge wedding where everyone turns, stands to look at how beautiful they look. I've been raised primarily by my mom and her sister, my Aunt Kay, and I admire and love them infinitely. Their dreams are far more practical.

Try as they might to teach me, I am not a practical girl. I have intense mood swings. I rarely dress up but resent being told this means I am not someone who would wear a traditional wedding gown. "It's just not you." I regret every decision I ever make at least slightly, because I never stop thinking about other options. I'm not excited about getting married. I'm devastated like we all are. My mom is run thin. She told me yesterday Kay having ALS had dropped to number three on her stress list after the facts that I'm getting married and we don't know how to plan it and her dad is in a psychiatric ward after falling on his head.

I haven't been able to feel much of anything about being engaged. Aunt Kay will officiate. This was a no-brainer. Expediency is required. The ideas are flowing and I'm drowning in them to the point where none of them sound right because nothing is right in a world where people get ALS. Aunt Kay told my mom she would just be the fun aunt at the wedding drinking too much wine, of course she would, but she is ordained because of ALS, because of Cindy and Linda, and she is the only one Adam and I could imagine writing our ceremony. That is all so full of love, of meaning, but I. I'm sad. Adam and I will get married at a time that will just be so...real-life. There's no fantasy about it. It will be nothing any little girl has ever dreamed about for "her day." Our jobs are unstable and stagnant, in my case. My family is in the midst of our greatest struggles and sadnesses.

I have never believed in fantasy. I actually never believed I would ever meet somebody. Here is the dream, girls: a man who loves you unconditionally to spend the rest of your life with. I have that. I have Adam. Through it all he has never faltered, never stopped loving me for who I am and who I want to be. I used to think our wedding would happen at some penultimate time in our lives: great jobs, maybe a house and a dog, ready for anything. That's not going to happen. We are going to have a deeply important ceremony with a deeply important person. And we are going to stick together forever. It's NOT my day; it's the start of our lives together. It's not going to be easy.