I’ll make some promises in a moment, babe. But first, I think some perspective is important. We’ve been through more in the past 20 months than most people go through in 20 years. We’ve had those moments where we wanted so badly to hate each other, and in those times of darkness found that we loved each other too much to let that happen.

Some people talk about for better and for worse. They make promises that sound good in the movies, but the movies end with a smiling family and the camera fading to black, ignoring that life isn’t a series of fortuitous events. It was, in contrast, just such a series that brought us together. The universe conspired to have me meet my soulmate, with so many dominoes having to fall just so.

But those events started our life together, and all the events since, difficult as they have been, proved that we are stubborn enough – and believe enough that we are each the yang to each others’ ying – to truly become one, as we are doing today.

The vows that people recite hold little bearing on our relationship. Public proclamation of richer and poorer might sound soothing and placate the people in the audience, but it is not for them that we face each other in the here and now, and such words would ring empty.

That is not to say that what we promise each other today is of no importance. It lays the foundation of our hopes and our dreams as we raise a family and grow old together. It is not a family I sought out, nor one I ever expected to have, but it has made me feel richer and more alive than I ever thought possible in life. I love you, babe. Truly, uniquely and beyond words. And because it is beyond words, you and you alone can see in my eyes and in my nervousness, and hear in my voice, the sincerity that was always meant for you and you alone in this moment.

I will never be perfect, just as you will never be perfect – such expectations are doomed to failure. But I will spend the rest of my life trying to be perfect for you, as I know you will be for me.

I promise that I will complete your family as best I can, giving our boys the best I know how, and doing my best to learn how I can do better. I would ask no more of you.

I promise that I will be faithful to you, for no one else can or will ever make me feel more alive and at home than you. I would ask no more of you.

I promise that I will bear your thoughts in mind as much as my own, for as stubborn as we both are, your happiness feeds mine as much as mine feeds yours. I would ask no more of you.

And finally, I promise to strive to be worthy of you, a mother, a partner, a wife so far beyond what I ever could have hoped for that I wake up each day – when the alarm doesn’t wake me – astounded that you would want and agree to be mine.

Today and this moment will forever be in my memory as the day that I became truly complete. I am humbled that I can be yours.