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Last night I had my first wedding disaster nightmare.

It began, as so many nightmares do, with someone shaking me awake. "Come on, come on, you're going to be late." Opening my eyes, I looked at the clock in panic and saw that it was very late... (I can't remember what time it actually was, but I only had an hour to get ready and be someplace.)

I jumped out of bed and tossed on my wedding dress, which was awful and disturbing-looking, nothing like what I've been picturing in my head. It was lacy (scratchy) and fitted (tight) and I looked like a discarded handkerchief. But I had nothing else to wear.

While I was getting dressed, the Big Boss from work called me and asked me where my wedding was. (I'm not planning on inviting him, by the way.) I told him my parents' address. As soon as he hung up, I realized that I'd told him the wrong place! It wasn't at my parents' house - the wedding was supposed to be at my church!

But by then my mother had arrived at my apartment. She was dressed in a bridesmaid outfit, which was all white and was much more stylish than my own dress. "Let's go!" she said, and hauled me off by my arm. We walked (!) to my parents' house.

During the walk, it occurred to me that the wedding was not for almost a year. "How come you changed the date without telling me?" I asked my mother.

"It was a surprise. I know how much you like surprises."

Heh. I grilled her further about the reception site, the flowers... And since the decision to change the date had been made so suddenly, none of these vendors had been notified. No reception, no flowers... Oh well.

At my parents' house, chaos reigned. There were a million people in the kitchen, including the Operations Manager. "I'm going to play my saxophone in your ceremony!" she said, holding up the instrument. I moaned and ran into the dining room. Someone had ripped up the carpet, and many of the MRDD passengers from work were in there. They were waxing the floor to a smooth polish.

Oh yeah, I thought. We're having the wedding in here.

Suddenly I was struck with a horrible thought. I rushed back into the kitchen. "I forgot to tell Dave that we changed the wedding date!" I bawled into a dishcloth. "He's going to miss the wedding!"

"Oh well," said my sister. "We'll just have to start without him."

Making the brave decision to march on despite the setbacks, I prepared myself to walk down the aisle and get married to an absentee man. As people started to filter into the dining room, I realized that we didn't have enough chairs for everyone to sit in.

I woke up with a start, trying to think of where I could procure some office chairs on such sort notice.

I lay there for a few minutes, re-orienting myself. The wedding isn't today. The wedding isn't today. I don't think it was a planning-stress related dream. I think it was an actual "I'm getting married" stress related dream.

You see, it's finally starting to sink in.

I've known intellectually that I'm getting married. But it's taken me a while to process that in a way that my subconscious could understand. I don't see Dave every day. I talk to him, but that's not the same at all.

To a small part of my subconscious, Dave isn't real. Someplace in my mind, he's this mythical creature that comes into my life every few months. He'll stay for a few fairy-tale days, allowing me just enough time to wrap myself up in his essence, to addict myself to his presence... And then he'll fly away, promising to return again soon - and I return to my dull, mundane life. A few months later the cycle repeats.

Every once in a while I force myself out of that mindset to see if I actually love the man, the real man, and not just the company. I force myself to see him as a real person, someone with his own hopes and fears and habits apart from my own. I look at him as a person with good qualities and bad. I weigh it all and see him as a whole, and I know that my love for him is as real as he is.

One notion that I have to get out of my mind was implanted there by society. A wedding just isn't a one day event. It's an entire lifestyle change. Beyond the dresses and cakes and flowers and tuxedos, beyond the rite and ritual, a wedding is just a promise. An important promise, to be sure, which is why it's been laden with pomp and ceremony... But it's just a promise.

Years and years from now, we might be able to look back at our wedding day as a fun time, a chance to get our entire families together to celebrate something that Dave and I hold dear: our love. But the actual meaning of the day won't be what my dress looked like or how many tiers the cake had or what flowers I had in my bouquet. The meaning of the day can be summed up in two words.

I do.