"Post-proposal and pre-marriage was a very queer, awkward, bizarre stretch of time, too; in between all the wedding decisions (music, flowers, food), there were, of course, all the goodbyes. Goodbye to smoking cigarettes in bed and the golden days of sleeping til noon, goodbye-middle-of-the-night-google-sessions-devoted-entirely-to-all-the-boys-I’d-made-out-with, goodbye to my one-bedroom apartment and favorite ex-boyfriend sweatshirt, goodbye to that lost blue-eyed beauty in L.A. I always thought would one day run back. And then the hellos: hello talking about my feelings and wearing seatbelts and sunscreen and eating dinner with the TV turned off and putting away piles of underwear and always accounting for my whereabouts and Saturday nights spent on the couch reading in front of the fire. Not to mention hello safety, security, and my One True Love — the thing that makes it all worthwhile. Call it the end of an era, but to tell you the truth—as I walked down the aisle toward the men who asked me to marry him—it didn’t feel like I was walking toward the end of something, not at all. It felt like a beginning."