An Ending, A Beginning

I got married last weekend, and it was everything a wedding is expected to be. Full of joy and love, a little chaos, and an endless stream of coordination and communication.

I had a blast. And I am exhausted.

I've taken some time this week to reflect on the wedding and process the whole ordeal. The planning and the participating, the circumstance and significance of it. The strange feeling of stepping back into "regular life" as if nothing and everything have changed.

Easing into post-wedding life truly does feel like crossing a threshold. Yes, into our house as a married couple. But also into a vast and empty space of newly found time.

You see, wedding planning is intense. While I was able to maintain my routine and even add things to my plate (I enrolled in a 100 hour Yoga Teacher Training that ended just two weeks before my wedding), I absolutely felt swept up by the whirlwind of wedding planning.

At any moment over the past 6-8 months, some portion of my brain space was occupied with wedding things.

If I had 30 minutes to spare, I'd fine-tune the seating arrangement. Instead of taking a nap, I'd grab an extra cup of coffee and email vendors. I worked hard on our wedding, and I'm proud of what my husband (!) and I accomplished. Still, the final month or two of planning was like a caffeine-driven marathon of task management.

So now that the wedding is over, I feel a tangible sense of spaciousness. Where before I would fill every extra moment with wedding planning, those extra moments are now...well, empty. The time is free for me to use however I please.

Which begs the question: what happens next?

The sense of space is especially potent because it comes on the cusp of fall. I've always felt that autumn is a time of endings and beginnings. The leaves fall, plants get harvested, the temperature shifts, and things die.

It seems like such a natural time to pause, reflect, and process.

What do we carry forward from summer?

What can we leave behind?

What can be added and explored in the fall season?

For me, the answers to those questions are so far undefined. But I do know what I don't want to carry forward: the feeling of stress, chaos, and scarcity of time that – despite my best efforts – seeped into my life through wedding planning.

While I have loads of exciting ideas for what I want to explore, I think that if I dive into too many of those right away, I'll end up in that same place of feeling frazzled and busy, juggling lots of things and unable to pause.

So for me, I hope to spend this September filling my newly found space with more space. I hope to explore activities that restore and recharge me, to maintain connections that light me up, and to pursue opportunities that excite, but don't consume me.

And most of all, I hope to rest. I hope you get time to rest, too.