Well, something happened this weekend…

When I heard that Neal was getting married in September, I knew that I had to act quickly. I immediately booked a trip to South Dakota, found the prettiest mountain I could locate, and asked the most nerveracking question I’ve ever uttered. Mikaela, against better judgement, I’d say, responded yes, and after a bit of an adventure back down said prettiest mountain (no, we weren’t lost...that much), I sprinted back to Wisconsin as quickly as possible to send out wedding invitations. No way was Neal beating me to the punch on this one.

Well, okay, that’s not exactly how everything happened. In fact, I’m sure Mikaela would say that I took too long to decide when we wanted to get married (she thought February 22nd, 2022 would be cool, I thought it would just be cold). All that being said, I do find it a bit funny that the two dates ended up being so close together. And, on the plus side, it was nice being able to talk to him about the various things that come up while trying to plan for a wedding.

All that planning finally came to fruition last Friday and honestly I don’t know if we could have asked for a better day. The weather was beautiful, the company enjoyable, and I didn’t even screw up my vows too badly. It was somehow a blur and vividly memorable at the same time, and I don’t think any further words from me could really accurately describe my experience.

Honestly though, I feel like it hasn’t quite sunk in yet. Maybe because it’s been pretty busy with high school fall sports starting up or because the days following the wedding were so rainy that we couldn’t really do any of the other outdoor activities we had planned for the weekend, but it still seems a bit surreal.

That being said, I feel like that is kind of how I’ve felt after many big events in my life. Our engagement or my university or high school graduations; in the moment they are happening, they feel so monumental and life-changing. And they were, certainly. But in the days that follow, when I head back to the status quo of my normal day to day, I’m left with the strange feeling of...well, I’m not really sure what.

There’s certainly a disconnect between the enormity of the moment I’ve just experienced and heading back to the office on Monday. I think that, because it’s quite easy to get sucked into the flow of things, when you finally have something happen that takes you out of it, it feels weird how easily you can be brought back in. It certainly makes me notice how much of a routine I can fall into.

But maybe that’s just me. Usually, I find writing as a good way to more accurately express my thoughts on a subject. It’s much easier for me to plan out and edit something like this than to try to put words together during a real time conversation and hope that it comes out as something intelligible. With this though, I don’t know if even these words can do justice to what I’m trying to say. Just reading back through this, I can’t help but think that they fall short. But it’s close enough, I suppose. Hopefully writing columns is more akin to tossing horseshoes than it is to shooting basketballs, where being close enough is good enough.

At any rate, I truly appreciate everyone who helped make our day as special as it was; I cannot thank everyone enough.

Also, look forward to a later issue for post-wedding column part two (now you have to do it Neal. You’re welcome)!

A C ERTAIN POINT OF V IEW

NATHANIEL U NDERWOOD R EPORTER