You can tell a lot about a person by how they eat their artichoke. Take this plate for example.
One side is painstakingly piled with discarded artichoke leaves, neatly scraped clean and stacked in a very organized manner. The other side looks like a tornado hit it, with leaves all over the place, some ripped in half by impatient teeth desperate to get its bounty, others missing random pieces from being ripped too hard off the choke, with bits of melted butter and salt flung everywhere. If you look beyond the two different eating styles, you can clearly see a great communal love of the first artichoke of the season, a passion that displays itself in two distinct and yet complimentary ways. And this plate of discarded artichoke, my fine food loving friends, is the perfect representation of my marriage to the greatest man in the world, which took place exactly one year ago today, October 6th. I?m the terribly messy one, the passionate one who can barely contain herself when something as delicious as the first artichoke of the season (or the first strawberry, cucumber or Flavor-Ice for that matter) sits in front of her. I cry when the movie theater is out of cheese popcorn, I pull a u-turn in the middle of a busy intersection when I see an elotes vendor on the side of the road, and when that damn Australian commercial that is set up to look like a movie about two people falling in love over lamb but is really just an advertisement for the Australian Lamb Industry comes on, I fall for it every time. He is the rational, logical, calming force that helps balance me out, laughs when the stupid commercial pulls in me for the fifteenth time and cleans up after the tornado that is me has struck. How two people with essentially different styles of living life could come together and form one kick ass marriage is beyond me, but I wouldn?t trade it for all the Nueske?s applewood smoked bacon in the world. So here?s to my man and my marriage, which is so totally perfect in all its dysfunctional ways. He proposed to me with a ten course meal at Tru in Chicago.
And we ended it with the coolest wedding this side of the equator, overlooking our favorite city and surrounded by the best family and friends anyone could ask for.
People always say your wedding is the best day of your life, and I always thought those people just didn?t have an interesting life. But in my case, it was totally true. From the Kanye West song playing in our processional to the killer Southport Grocery and Caf? vanilla cupcakes with our Smurf wedding topper, from the traditional Hindu fire walk to the inspirational reading from the Bible, from the view of Lake Michigan and downtown Chicago that surrounded us to the ice cold Woodchuck the best man thrust into my hands the second I walked back down the aisle as a married woman, and yes, even to the sandwich my man ran and bought me the night before our wedding when my own chunkiness kept me up way later than I should have been, I think it is safe to say our wedding was overflowing with awesomeness and just a touch of kick ass. I love you, sweetie. Thanks for everything. ~LTG
