Wedding Envy & Kemi Gets Her Groove Back!

I couldn't decide between the two titles so I've just included both in. They are kind of related. This post will probably be a little disjointed.

Happy June Month! June is a great month, not only because it's the middle of the year, it's the real beginning of summer, or that i have many loved ones with birthdays in June, but the most important reason of all: I got engaged June 20, 2009! It's almost been a year since the whirlwind of my life started. I still tell Bo that that day was the best day of my life. Everything about it was beautiful. I loved the wedding day and my traditional day but nothing beats the romance and happiness of the day you get engaged. Actually in order of happiness? I would say Engagement Day, Traditional Wedding, then White Wedding. It seems weird to me because that's not what I would have expected but that's the order. I remember worrying myself silly as to whether Bolaji was going to buy me a ring, then funny enough being caught completely unawares when it actually happened. I remember like yesterday he telling me he wanted to share his life journey with me and then getting down on one knee. The feeling if I could describe it is being swept off my feet. I was so happy. The whole entire day I was lightheaded and dizzy and quite frankly could not believe it was happening to me. Absolutely happiest day of my life. My trad was quite simply magical and I will forever cherish it. Like seriously, m-a-g-i-c-a-l. My white wedding, I stressed about so many things and there were so many aspects of it that honestly, I could only enjoy it through the pictures after the event. Not necessarily stressed in a bad way but I tend to go into project management mode, so I essentially project managed my wedding and didn't really experience it and appreciate it until even now. So in short (HA!) here's to June 20, 2009 - what a difference a 24-hour day could make!

Now unto wedding envy, if any of my ladies here have been married and experienced wedding envy please do share your story. I'm learning a lesson about weddings that I would like to share. Essentially, it's that you will never have everything you wanted at your wedding, never. Some things will be off, some things will go wrong, (as I've talked about many times) some friends and family will disappoint, and you just might forget to decorate your cake table (lol), or your groom may be 1 1/2 hours late and therefore you loose your light for pictures (only brides truly understand the gravity of this lol). It is important to cleanse these things out of your soul (yes soul, it goes that deep) and let it go. The first wedding I went to after we got back from our mini-honeymoon, I was a wreck. Bolaji even had to almost shake me, like, Kemi, trust me, our wedding was FABULOUS. I was busy comparing everything I saw to what happened at mine and I got really sad and down. It was so bad, I became withdrawn and wanted to leave soon after we got there. And then I started comparing every wedding dress I saw to my own. It was just madness. Bolaji had to have a talk with me. He basically told me I was being ungrateful because I prayed so hard for my wedding and all the preparations around it and it went beautifully, the pictures are gorgeous, and it was intimate and purposeful like we had wanted and prayed for. Most of all, it was over! Lol. It might not have been your average perfect wedding, but no wedding ever is, it was YOUR wedding and love it dammit! Those were kind of his words but paraphrased. :-) I listened to him. As time goes by and things return to normal, I'm getting my objectivity and perspective back and truly all I can be is thankful. I'm happy and at peace with the way everything went. Now when I see or go to a wedding I just say another prayer, "thank God i'm a wedding graduate!"

Speaking of things returning to normal, boy I cannot say enough how happy I am that my world is returning back to normal post wedding planning. Truth be told I hated planning my wedding. Almost every aspect of it (except visiting my florist at her shop at the apex of a mountain surrounded by vineyards, oh and menu tasting with my sis-in-law). Your world gets subsumed into this planning machine and before you know it you don't even have time (or money quite frankly) to do the things you did before. Bolaji and I are pretty artsy folks, so we went to a lot of events in the Lagos indie art scene, there is one i assure you. But that's what we did, ate out at lovely restaurants, partied with friends at different night spots, and hang out with our expat friends. During planning though, we almost did none of these. We didn't have time, any down time you just wanted to sleep and not think. I'm very glad to say that we are slowly getting back into the groove of things. We are slowly getting back to the stage where the fact that we were getting married or are married is no longer the most interesting thing about us. It's lovely! This is spilling into all aspects of our lives. I have a confession. I mentioned that we didn't consummate our marriage on our wedding night. This is true. But we didn't consummate our marriage till about 3 days in. The only thing I can attribute this to is that we were just used to not having sex it wasn't that big of a deal and all of our guests were still around and we were still very busy. On the honeymoon, not much of action was going on there either, quite frankly I was busy being scared for my life (you try experiencing a hurricane while you're in a glass house in the middle of the ocean!). Interestingly though, is that what I've realized is that the more I unwound myself from wedding stress, the better our sex life has gotten. I'm being honest here. The first few weeks weren't like jumping off the chandeliers. But now....lol. I'll keep that to myself. :-) On a serious note though I wanted to mention that specifically because I have a sneaky feeling this is a lot more normal than one would think. I think it takes a while for you to unwind and de-stress yourself so if anyone out there experienced what I experienced, don't beat yourself up about it, sometime it happens like that.

Anyway so here we are, the year in review from June 20, 2009 to June 4, 2010. So much growth, so much learning, so much...experience. I'm in a good place, I'm getting back to the old me, and I'm glad!