And when people ask about our wedding, I still usually tell them about the cake, the weather, Dana crying before the ceremony even started, and Paul almost forgetting our rings.
But if they’re close friends, I tell them about the strangers in the back row.
Because when I walked toward Reed that afternoon, I thought marriage meant knowing someone completely.
Now I think that’s probably impossible.
People come to us carrying entire versions of themselves we never saw—the scared version, the broke version, the lonely version, the version sleeping somewhere they hoped nobody would find them.
What matters is whether, when those hidden parts finally come into the room, we make space for the truth.
I wish Reed had told me years earlier.
He wishes that too.
But those ten people were no longer strangers by the time our wedding ended.
They were sitting at our tables.
