At some point, the fear of making a mistake, of succumbing to doubts, of failure has left me behind. It took some time for that fear to pass through me, but once it did, I swiftly found myself with a very clear set of instructions about what to do next. It was literary a step-by-step guide which I entitled “Steps to get married”. Somehow this is a pretty accurate description of how I felt at the time, of how I planned to act, of how I wanted to proceed. 

At the time of the creation of these instructions I was already living with someone who has been affectionally known in the said instructions under a codeword of “target”.  Yes, I literary called my future wife a target. In my mind, such harsh naming was due to the seriousness of the endeavor - after all, the goal was to marry the only person you love. 

I believed - as I still do - that marrying someone you truly love is the most beautiful, the most difficult, the most responsible endeavor one can partake in their lifetime. 

In my mind, it is all down to (but, of course, not limited to), the uniqueness of the endeavor itself. In life, there are many truly great, monumental achievements but very few of them are actually non-repeatable. Few truly significant life events are, indeed, unique. With age, you start to better detect such events and truly appreciate them, as I think I did.  

So, as I was about to embark on this journey, I knew it would be a unique experience. I needed an equally unique plan - a set of rules I would set myself beforehand which I believed would assist and ensure a positive outcome to this journey.

It was a hell of a ride - the rule books were rewritten, plans were thrown out - it was as mad, chaotic, and fun as life can be. 

Take the proposal procedure, for example. It seems a simple process - upon fulfillment of the initial conditions (two persons, both in love and showing interest in getting married together) ends up with one of them on its knee, presenting a circular object to be worn on a pre-designated finger upon receiving verbal confirmation in a form of a “yes” word. 

Simple enough, right? 

Well, the verbal confirmation I received was literary - “Are you shitting me?”, swiftly followed by a timely correction, that desired and dreaded uttering of the magic word “Yes”. 

Yet, in that extremely short amount of time between the first phrase and the second, my heart was either beating at its maximum or stopped beating altogether. Still, to this day, I am not sure. This was a unique moment in my life that I will never forget and I am extremely grateful for it to my wife. 

I literary felt something so new, so novel for me that I still, upon hours and hours of reflection and pondering, simply cannot describe to this day. 

I will never forget the day I took the decision, that leap of faith - on a sunny August day in Ottawa. I just dropped the engagement ring in a zip pocket of my camera bag. Along with it I dropped my fears and left them behind the doors of our Airbnb room, knowing full well that I will either come back here as an engaged man or not come back at all. After 3 months of deliberation, careful thinking, and preparations, meticulous by my standards, I have decided that some forsaken trail path by the river just behind Ottawa parliament would be the place where I would propose. 

Why? Because I was getting tired of my own plans and my own limitations these plans self-imposed on me. 

You see, I saw my path to success in this endeavor in planning, in the impeccable execution of my plans. Of course, to some extent, it was necessary. However, what I failed to realize then was that I needed to leave some element of unpredictability for me to enjoy the process. 

And boy did the world throw some unpredictability in our faces. 

In retrospect, getting engaged in August of 2019 was literary like a walk in the park, by the river trail, with a nice happy end and a great bottle of Chandon at the patio bar of Fairmont Château Laurier. 

Actually getting married in the early summer of 2020 was ... well, impossible, really. 

As the inevitable realization of a necessary postponement of our plans loomed ever closer, I realized that my master plan - that set of instructions I set out for myself at least 6 months ago - no longer existed. It was gone and needed to be replaced. Engaged we were but, as we learned the hard way, relationships must have room to grow, to naturally progress in their paths, as shaped by their partakers, towards some natural progression. 

How do you establish certain plans regarding your most important and unique life events at times where stone-set engagements are canceled or postponed overnight?

My answer to it was this. You don’t. 

Lack of a master plan didn’t bring back the fear of failure. Instead, once we just stopped fixating on ticking all the necessary boxes and instead of switching on ticking only those that were crucial to us things flowed faster. We booked our arrangements incredibly quickly and, although some stones were hit on the road there, we officially got married exactly in the way we always wanted. Yes, we didn’t have a big party (yet) but we got everything and so much more. 

Let me tell you what I got out of it - since that is the only thing I can speak of with confidence. 

First of all - yes, I was nervous. Naturally! To me, it was the indicator that what was about to happen truly mattered to me, that I deeply cared, especially after all the setbacks and postponements. Gosh, I finally was about to get married to the only person I truly love - and somehow, once I arrived at that point, this gigantic thought so completely overwhelmed me that I was simply incapable of thinking about anything else. It feels like you have those giant letters in your head which spell “Levko, you are getting married! You are getting married, enjoy it!”. You read them and you hear your voice read them to yourself and you just break down and cry by the side of the road in your car, on your way to pick up your wife from the hairstylist because you can’t help it. There are no plans anymore then. There are no golden standards, there are no visions of how you want your marriage ceremony to be. It is going to be just the way it is going to be and you are powerless even to think about it because just the reality of what is in fact happening is so huge, so enormous that you are just incapacitated to do anything else. 

I could barely maintain control over my own tears. It was not just me, either - damn, even my dad was crying when he was shaking my hand just after the ceremony. 

At that point I thought - you know what ... with all the limitations and adjustments we had to make to fit our marriage into this brave new world ... if this life event, with all its emotions and uniqueness, if that is what it takes to see my dad get emotional - well, then, perhaps, having it now with all those changes wasn’t so wrong after all. Indeed, marrying someone you love is the most beautiful feat one can partake in their life. Take my father’s tears as a confirmation, they are rarer than, I don’t know, a total solar eclipse or something. 

Also, I really got that feeling that we have created a family. I felt it before but this time, subconsciously, I just got that final note of confirmation that now we are being treated fully as an independent unit of society, almost as an independent legal entity, which is capable of taking its own decisions and acting alone and its best interests, even if it goes against those closest to us (within reason, of course). We were sitting at the same table with another couple, roughly the same age as us. They are family to Anya, got married some years ago and we were at their wedding together. Somehow, I always treated them with the respect that I felt Anya and myself didn’t deserve - after all, they were married and we weren’t. Yet, now that we have matched them, I somehow understood them better - maybe not globally but at least I understood what they went through during their wedding day. That gave me so much more respect for them, such a deeper appreciation to them both as a unit, not as single individuals. They are remarkable people individually, but I now understood that being together as a family makes them infinitely better. 

I have had a longing to write something and make it public for a while. Like I used to do it in the past - I would write some thoughts down and, without bothering myself much with checks, edits, or the actual content I would upload that text on social media for every interested friend of mine to read.