Here Comes The...

Yikes! I think I'm slowly being bitten by the marriage bug. (Aaron is going to freak when he reads this.)

For some reason I've been reading articles on the marriage topic for the past few months. Today I read an article on MSN about a women who married her husband when they were 24 years old. This well-written article made me think about the possibility of marriage in the near future. I've been thinking about the style of my wedding dress, the taste of the cake, the location of the ceremony (NO BEACH-FRONT HOTEL LOCATIONS), the music to play with the wedding slideshow, and the people I'm going to invite.

Am I even engaged? NO!

Getting married was always a given for me. Growing up, I was never one of those girls who hated the idea of marriage. In fact, when I was sixteen, I decided that I would be married by the time I was twenty-four--which now is roughly six months away for me. I'm quite positive that I'm not going to be married by then, but to think that I'm near my "goal" age makes my stomach quiver.

A few years ago, when I turned twenty-one and was inebriated for most the year, the last thing on my mind was marriage. I thought that I would probably not meet Mr. "Right" until I was at least in my late twenties. A string of fizzled flings led me to believe that my Ideal Mate did not exist. Serious relationship? Marriage? Ha! All the guys I was meeting were already married to Heineken.

Then I start to pay more attention to this guy who works in the office upstairs from me. I noticed his brown square-frame glasses and his cute boyish smile. He liked that I wore my beat up Chuck Taylor shoes with mini skirts. After almost two years of dating Aaron, I have to say that I can't imagine being with anyone else.

Anyway, I know that we're pretty young (he just turned twenty-four a few months ago) but I think that I'm ready to start planning for that big step. Of course I wouldn't want to get married tomorrow; maybe another year or two of girlfriend/boyfriend-ness would be nice. My friends think I'm crazy to be seriously thinking about the M-word. I just don't want to be on the "it's better late than never" plan.

I think I hear wedding bells in the distance...about a hundred miles away.