The Wedding Dress • Part Three

• Introduction •

I found the perfect dress.

Inexpensive. Beautiful. Lace. Long enough to cover my toes. Off white color. Mid-sleeves. Classy and simple.

I sat at my parent’s kitchen table with my laptop. My search was ongoing and lasted a few days. I looked at a variety of websites, but eventually found myself on Etsy.com

I sifted through the reviews, viewing the pictures other brides had left. I didn’t have to really sit there and think about it. By the second review, I was digging through my Mom’s kitchen junk drawer trying to find her measuring tape.

I spent about ten minutes attempting to measure my own bust and arm length. Luckily, my mom was there and assisted me. I snapped a quick picture of it and sent it to Chase. I didn’t buy into the traditional groom-isn’t-suppose-to-see-the-dress crap. I was too excited to hide it from him. Chase instantly replied: It’s so you. I love it. Order it now!!

The perfect dress–the final wedding dress that I’d ever wear–was only $200. It was hand-stitched by a woman in India, and shipped to me within two weeks.

Throughout our elopement, the bottom of my dress drug at my feet, collecting twigs and leaves. During our ice-cream shoot, minutes after we got married, chocolate ice cream spilled down the front and stained it. Chase and I laughed as I asked Mom if she could edit the stain out. The dress was simply a vessel this time. Nothing more. Just merely for pictures; proof that the best day of my life existed.

• Part One •

The Beginning of It All 

It was our first date. He picked me up at 7PM. I got inside his car, and he greeted me with my favorite album on vinyl: Angus & Julia Stone’s Snow album. It took me about ten seconds to gather myself and say thank you. Not because I hadn’t ever received a gift before, but because sometime between all of our lengthy conversations we had the previous week, he actually listened and remembered that I said I loved this album.

Our date was nothing fancy. He asked me what I wanted to do, and of course I said McDonald’s. While I snacked on my fries, Chase drove us around the city. We listened to music in between conversations. I discovered he despised Florida Georgia Line, so I continuously chose to play their songs just to see the cute face he made when he heard them—nose scrunched up, shaking his head, his brown eyes narrowing at me.

“I’m gonna drop your ass off at Village Inn,” he finally said as I laughed.

There was one moment though, after all of the laughing subsided, where the car became quiet. It wasn’t uncomfortable. Just still. “Livewire” by Oh Wonder was playing at a low volume. The blue light from the radio casted a faint glow on his face, highlighting his features. We were exchanging stories—his past relationship and my past relationship. This was usually a turn for the worst; where I scared them off. I was married at eighteen and then got a divorce. Yup, twenty-two years old and a divorcee. AKA, lots of baggage.

I was expecting his reaction to be awkward silence or a timid expression, maybe suggesting taking me home right away, and then never hearing from him again. But Chase didn’t miss a beat.

He looked over at me and shrugged, “I will show you what it’s supposed to be like.”

I sat there in shock, running over his words to figure out how they made me feel. I tried so desperately to chalk them up as him being a little cocky, but I couldn’t because he didn’t strike me as arrogant. He was just so sure that I actually believed him.

I adverted my gaze back on to the road straight ahead. As you can imagine, when my mind managed to pull itself together, there was lots of chaos and noise, and a very big well crap. Because I knew. This was the guy.

He was it and life as I knew it had changed.

Before Chase, I was strong. Determined to survive what life had dealt me at the time. In my Randi World, needing someone meant obtaining a weakness. I was so focused on being whole and not needing anyone, in the end hoping it would result to allowing myself to trust again. But what I discovered in meeting Chase was that needing someone took far more strength than protecting myself.

The night Chase told me he loved me, I panicked. I kept asking him if he was sure, shaking my head in disbelief, convinced he was just way in over his head. I didn’t say it back either. He wasn’t upset or weird about it. Honestly, he didn’t even expect me to. That was the most beautiful thing about him–he came into the relationship with zero expectations.

I knew before I left, during the moment he said it to me first, that I loved him. I was just scared to admit it to myself, because that meant I would be in the position to open myself up to him. As much as I fought against it, I couldn’t help but think of the last words he said to me right after saying I love you.

“I’m telling you this, because if I got in a car crash on the way home tonight, or something bad happened to me and I didn’t tell you right now, I’d regret it.”

“Aren’t you scared of getting hurt?” I asked.

“No, because I’m all in with you. I would rather take a chance and get my heart broken by you in the end, rather than not have been able to share a single moment with you.”

Chase taught me something in that moment, and I didn’t really grasp what it was until I was nine-hundred miles away from him, missing him so much. His words had stuck with me. I didn’t want to regret anything either. I wanted to be vulnerable with him; take a chance even if it meant getting hurt in the end. He was completely worth it.

I wrote I love you in the sand and took a polaroid of it. I would give it to him when the time was right.

When I made it home from Florida that week, Chase had already left for Wisconsin. He was going to see one of his favorite bands with his best friend. Two days later, he drove straight from Wisconsin to me. He told me at the beginning of his trip that he was going to drive to me when he came home, but I didn’t believe he’d have the willpower to drive sixteen hours home and then the extra hour to me.

He showed up at my front door at two in the morning.

I gave him the polaroid the next day.

• Part Two •

Let’s Get Married

         It was our second date when Chase shared with me his opinion on marriage.

“Marriage just isn’t for me,” he said. I respected that and told him, in all honesty, that I didn’t know if I’d ever get married again either. I mean, I had a pretty bad experience the first go around. It left a bad taste in my mouth.

         We’d been together for three months when Chase said he wanted to marry me. I shook my head, a little panicked again.

“You don’t mean that,” I said.

“Yeah I do.”

 If I’m being honest, the majority of our relationship was (still is) Chase saying things to me, like I love you or I want to marry you, and me having to fight back the urge to vomit. Chase knew it took me a while to adjust after taking emotional leaps. I needed a processing period and then I was fine. I did things in my own time. Luckily, he was (still is) patient and understanding.

He’d just laugh each time and take ahold of my hand.

“It’s okay,” he’d whisper.

I believed him, and that made all of the difference for me.

This specific conversation reoccured many times. I’d always ask why or what changed his mind about marriage.

“It’s not scary with you,” he said, as if I asked him what color the sky was. Just blue.

“So you want to be a husband?” I challenged him.

“Your husband,” he specified.

He told me from the start that he was going to show me what it was supposed to be like. Through time I found that Chase actually lived by that phrase.

Everything he does in our relationship is to show me what it’s supposed to be like. To be loved, appreciated, adored, respected. He became my best friend; my life-surviving partner; soul mate; teammate. He showed me how consistency tied into trust.

So when he told me that he wanted to marry me, I knew without a doubt that I wanted the same thing.

With him.

 • Part Three •

My Greatest Adventure

July 2017, I went on a family vacation a day after my divorce was finalized. We spent one week crammed in a beach condo together and it was exactly what I needed. I spent the mornings walking the beach with my sister. I spent the evening laying out under the sun, talking to Mom and Sis, reading my books.

During this trip, I fell in love with ocean. It was this monstrous body of water that looked as if it wrapped around the world, fading in the distance below the horizon. It was the moment I comprehended that life and time was bigger than I could ever be. I couldn’t control the outcome of my life, but I could control who I was. That was a big step for me.

I came home and hit the ground running. I didn’t glance in my rearview mirror. I didn’t think too long or hard about anything. I focused on one day at a time.

Gulf Shores, AL carved a special place in my heart. It represented healing and laughter and stillness. It immediately became another home.

When Chase told me he wanted to marry me, I knew exactly where I wanted to do it. We didn’t really care about having a huge wedding or making it something fancy. That just wasn’t us. And we were so eager to be married that we just decided on eloping.

Three years ago, I couldn’t ever imagine being so in love and happy. I chose to believe with all of my heart that one day I’d get to live this dream. Sometimes, it was the thing I chose to hang on to–although, I might not have known it at the time.

I remember the first time I ever saw him. He was stocking shelves at Sodies. It was packed and I was lost in the maze of aisles. I spun around and there he was. He rose to his feet from the bottom shelf with an empty box in his arms. He was tall and manly. (Literally my first two thoughts I ever had about him. We laugh about it all of the time.) He breezed right past me, and I was a little dazed by his presence.

And that was it. He disappeared around the corner. I continued to desperately search for whatever I had gone in there for.

I didn’t see him again until the first day of our college class.

It’s a memory I think about often. We were both living our own lives, doing our own thing, and when the time was right, life decided to bring us together.

The journey wasn’t easy. It took much of trials and errors, but eventually I settled into the comfort of him. Someone else waking me up when my alarms failed to do so; someone else making my coffee; making sure I ate breakfast.

In that, I learned that vulnerability between two whole people was the most beautiful strength there was.

Now here we are. Goodbyes don’t exist. We hate leaving each other. We constantly miss each other, despite our only time apart being work–which feels like forever. I always jokingly tell him that I can never get enough of him, and, strangely, I celebrate that. We’ve come a long, long way.

Christian Chase Garner, you are my best, greatest adventure.

Forever.

I am yours.