We kind-of-accidentally made the wedding a 5 day thing, which turns out to be a phenomenal thing. Pretty early on we made the decision to have our civil marriage not on The Day but a few days early, giving us much-needed breathing space on The Day itself. We invited only our core families and the witnesses for it. Since our municipality allows you to have your civil marriage in your own garden we took that opportunity and ran with it. So we're now officially marriaged, although we have yet to be religiously married and have saved all the extravagancies for The Day. What I did not expect was the civil marriage to already feel so much like marriage - but speaking our vows in front of the people most dear to us and them gracing us with kindness too was just remarkable. We're now in a lovely inbetween place where we can look back on a part of the marriage already wildly exceeding our expectations, look forward to The Day, and gently float on cloud nine for a few days while we sort out the final to-do's. Next Pubski I'll be in Andalusia with a ring on my hand. Prolly won't be around much for a while, as I am using the trip to detox from my phone more.