I get married in 3 days. This morning I woke up and scrubbed all the baseboard of our apartment. Then I went and taught. I am freaking out about changing my name. I like Nicole Montes and don't really know who Nicole Buckley even is. I hope she's a better person that I am now. Biggest nerves - that I won't look good enough on my wedding day. That my face will break out over night or I'll gain 5 pounds at the rehearsal dinner. If someone shows up in jeans or if anyone gives offensive speeches I will cut them, with my vintage personalized dessert fork from Etsy. I'm a bride on the edge. The closer we get the less I want to eat. Which will make the In and Out double double I eat on my wedding night all the more satisfying. I haven't had a burger in two months. I'm going through withdrawls.
-Thoughts from a Bride.
By the way, I'm really owning that title. Bride. How many times in your life do you have that kind of power? I mean really?
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Monday, October 8, 2012
Home
April 2008. I had just gotten back from spending the day in chinatown with my friend David. I was a freshman in college, an acting major, living in New York City out to experience every bit that life had to offer. In the past few months I'd made a solid group of friends, I'd learned how to live on my own in the greatest city in the world, and my mind had been opened up like nothing I'd ever experienced by my acting classes. I was ready to live my life fully, and didn't give a damn about what other people thought or if boys liked me.
That night I wore a red tube top with a chocolate brown vest with jeans and heels. I blow-dried my hair and put on lipstick and headed downstairs from the 6th floor of Hayden dorm on Washington Square West in New York City. Little did I know then, that that night would change my life forever.
I met Nate Buckley, my best friend Megan's cousin, along with his friend Peter Mueller. We chatted it up in a group as we walked to a jazz club in Greenwich Village. And I didn't think much of anything until the next weekend when the shy, military boy, with a bit of dorkiness showed up to meet Megan and I for breakfast Saturday morning. Apparently he had forgotten his camera from the weekend before and came to retrieve it. We continued to chat over breakfast, and announced plans for the day. I had a paper for one of my art classes that required me to go to The Whitney museum, Megan had other plans, and Nate, well didn't have any plans. Being the awkwardly bold person that she was, Megan suggested Nate, an almost perfect stranger tag along with me for the day. So we did. We rode the subway, talked about school, our families back home, the huge contrast that was our schools - NYU and the Merchant Marine Academy. We spent the day talking about art and taking pictures. The day turned into night and somehow we ended up spending the whole evening together, going from friend's party, to Asian food with another group of friends, and lastly back to the jazz club. With each hour we spent together, I became more and more smitten with this incredibly charming, incredibly innocent, and incredibly dorky engineering major who went to school in Long Island.
This night turned into other nights and weekend after weekend, which probably only totaled up to about 3 whirlwind weekends until I left for summer and headed back to California and Nate left for sea year- an entire 4 months traveling around the world with almost zero communication to the outside world. Not the best foundation to start a relationship, we knew. But despite the craziness, and almost irresponsibility of it all, we made the decision to enter into this relationship we just couldn't seem to pass up and see what happened.
So I left for California. Nate ended up flying to California 3 weeks later for a final weekend before he left for sea. When I dropped him off at the airport, we had been together only a few weeks but I sat in the car sobbing. Jason Mraz came on the radio with the song A Beautiful Mess and I remember thinking what we had was just that - a beautiful mess. I had met a more than perfect person partnered with a mess of a situation.
I don't think either of us could have anticipated what the next four months would bring. Each day was filled with letters, and when possible, each night was filled with 3am phone calls in New York from a 14 time zones away. We became closer that I ever thought possible from the other side of the world. And ended up writing over 120 pages of typed emails back and fourth during those four months. I spent 3 weeks in Europe with my family, Nate was away. I got hired for summer jobs, worked them, and quit and returned to school all while Nate was away. I moved back to New York, started school, got a new job, spent two months into my sophomore year, all while Nate was away. It got to the point where we couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be together again, we'd been apart so long. And the time that we were together were just in the first few weeks of knowing each other. We had no status quo. But the time came, as it always does, and Nate's sea year ended. The endless count down came to a close. The person I'd waited for, fell in love with through millions of emails and payphone calls from the other side of the world was coming back to me. Holy hell. How exciting.
The other day I found my old journal that I wrote in the morning Nate came home from sea. I sat in Washington Square Park waiting to leave for the airport to pick him up and wrote:
"One hour and forty five minutes until I'm with the person I've been waiting four and a half months for. I'm feeling every emotion it is possible to feel and I feel so full just one tip of the glass and I will over-flow. This is intense. I am terrified out of my mind. Life is so incredible."
I wrote that 4 years ago today, October 7th, 2008. Four years ago today the man who will be my husband in just 12 days came home for the first of many times.
Although it wasn't exactly planned, I think October is a really meaningful month for us. It's Fall and it's perfect. And despite all the wedding drama and planning that has consumed my life recently, it was nice to sit back and enjoy our Columbus day today, remembering that for many years in college this was the weekend that Nate happened to always come home. The theme for our wedding is Home is Wherever I'm With You. It encapsulates exactly how I feel about this man. Our relationship isn't perfect, and we aren't even close to where we want to be both individually and as a partnership, but he is my Home in every sense of the word. There's just no other way to describe it. And I can't wait to be his wife in 12 short days.
That night I wore a red tube top with a chocolate brown vest with jeans and heels. I blow-dried my hair and put on lipstick and headed downstairs from the 6th floor of Hayden dorm on Washington Square West in New York City. Little did I know then, that that night would change my life forever.
I met Nate Buckley, my best friend Megan's cousin, along with his friend Peter Mueller. We chatted it up in a group as we walked to a jazz club in Greenwich Village. And I didn't think much of anything until the next weekend when the shy, military boy, with a bit of dorkiness showed up to meet Megan and I for breakfast Saturday morning. Apparently he had forgotten his camera from the weekend before and came to retrieve it. We continued to chat over breakfast, and announced plans for the day. I had a paper for one of my art classes that required me to go to The Whitney museum, Megan had other plans, and Nate, well didn't have any plans. Being the awkwardly bold person that she was, Megan suggested Nate, an almost perfect stranger tag along with me for the day. So we did. We rode the subway, talked about school, our families back home, the huge contrast that was our schools - NYU and the Merchant Marine Academy. We spent the day talking about art and taking pictures. The day turned into night and somehow we ended up spending the whole evening together, going from friend's party, to Asian food with another group of friends, and lastly back to the jazz club. With each hour we spent together, I became more and more smitten with this incredibly charming, incredibly innocent, and incredibly dorky engineering major who went to school in Long Island.
This night turned into other nights and weekend after weekend, which probably only totaled up to about 3 whirlwind weekends until I left for summer and headed back to California and Nate left for sea year- an entire 4 months traveling around the world with almost zero communication to the outside world. Not the best foundation to start a relationship, we knew. But despite the craziness, and almost irresponsibility of it all, we made the decision to enter into this relationship we just couldn't seem to pass up and see what happened.
So I left for California. Nate ended up flying to California 3 weeks later for a final weekend before he left for sea. When I dropped him off at the airport, we had been together only a few weeks but I sat in the car sobbing. Jason Mraz came on the radio with the song A Beautiful Mess and I remember thinking what we had was just that - a beautiful mess. I had met a more than perfect person partnered with a mess of a situation.
I don't think either of us could have anticipated what the next four months would bring. Each day was filled with letters, and when possible, each night was filled with 3am phone calls in New York from a 14 time zones away. We became closer that I ever thought possible from the other side of the world. And ended up writing over 120 pages of typed emails back and fourth during those four months. I spent 3 weeks in Europe with my family, Nate was away. I got hired for summer jobs, worked them, and quit and returned to school all while Nate was away. I moved back to New York, started school, got a new job, spent two months into my sophomore year, all while Nate was away. It got to the point where we couldn't even imagine what it would be like to be together again, we'd been apart so long. And the time that we were together were just in the first few weeks of knowing each other. We had no status quo. But the time came, as it always does, and Nate's sea year ended. The endless count down came to a close. The person I'd waited for, fell in love with through millions of emails and payphone calls from the other side of the world was coming back to me. Holy hell. How exciting.
The other day I found my old journal that I wrote in the morning Nate came home from sea. I sat in Washington Square Park waiting to leave for the airport to pick him up and wrote:
"One hour and forty five minutes until I'm with the person I've been waiting four and a half months for. I'm feeling every emotion it is possible to feel and I feel so full just one tip of the glass and I will over-flow. This is intense. I am terrified out of my mind. Life is so incredible."
I wrote that 4 years ago today, October 7th, 2008. Four years ago today the man who will be my husband in just 12 days came home for the first of many times.
Although it wasn't exactly planned, I think October is a really meaningful month for us. It's Fall and it's perfect. And despite all the wedding drama and planning that has consumed my life recently, it was nice to sit back and enjoy our Columbus day today, remembering that for many years in college this was the weekend that Nate happened to always come home. The theme for our wedding is Home is Wherever I'm With You. It encapsulates exactly how I feel about this man. Our relationship isn't perfect, and we aren't even close to where we want to be both individually and as a partnership, but he is my Home in every sense of the word. There's just no other way to describe it. And I can't wait to be his wife in 12 short days.
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