One Small Thing by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

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One of the first and only decisions Michael and I have made about our wedding is that we want to have it here, at our house.  We spent most of 2009 either looking for it, buying it, and remodeling it--and it seems ridiculous to have the ceremony anywhere else.  It's what we've done together, and it's ours (and the bank's, but we aren't inviting them).

But in order to get married in our house, we need to bust open the front decking, building a set of stairs down the side of the house to the backyard, install a walkway, patio, walkway, build a deck, and another patio space.

Who knew?

This week, we've been entertaining contractors, who have stood in the pouring rain contemplating the universe of work to do.  They look at us both, thrilled.

Meanwhile, no hall rents for the amount of money that all this will entail, so we have some serious cogitating to do.  I was thinking we could use up all the available house space.  So what that Grandma is sitting on the upstairs toilet for a chair as we say our nuptial vows?  The kids can sit on the kitchen counters, amongst the catering clutter.  We can hand swings from the overhang, and stand on boxes while we get hitched.  It all makes sense to me, and it's a lot cheaper than the backyard renovation.

The good news about the building plans is that they will last longer than the wedding.  After Grandma has been lifted off the toilet, we will have a stairway to the back of the house.  As it is now, when I do yard work, toting the garbage can full of leaves up the hill, I wend up a vague dirt path, crawl around the cypress tree, my lungs heaving.  This is all well and good now, but give me a few years and it won't be.  I'll be Grandma on the toilet.

It will last.  Weddings go by, and that's why we pay photographers to capture the moment.  But the house will still be here, and it's a great thing to put money into the house, a place where we will live as married, a place that's ours.  A place with many many trees and a ton of leaves.  I can take the garbage can full up the stairs, one, two, bypass the cypress tree, and not feel that I'm getting older by the minute.