The Wedding of Jordan Emery and Jesse Jacobsen

November 7th, 2017

It was still dark outside when my alarm went off, waking me up.

I'd been in such a deep sleep that when I opened my eyes, I panicked for half a second because I couldn't remember where I was. I let out a short sigh of relief when I remembered that I was at my parents' house, in my room.

I looked over at the clock on the bedside table to see that it was five o'clock in the morning. I was still not a morning person, and normally waking up at this time of day was torture to me. But today was different. I smiled at the time, hugging one of my pillows to my stomach.

"Good morning," a new voice sung as my bedroom door opened, revealing my mother behind it. "You're awake, aren't you, Jordan?"

Of course I was, but that question was understandable, considering how cranky I usually was when I had to get up early in the morning. But when my mother saw that I was in fact awake and sitting up in bed, she turned on my light and made her way into my room.

"Lexi's going to be here any minute," she informed me, sitting down at the foot of my bed. She reached over and began to soothe my hair. "Are you ready?"

I laughed, rubbing at my eye. "I think the whole point of Lexi coming over is to get me ready, Mom."

My mother smiled sweetly at me. "You know what I mean."

"You mean if I'm ready to get married?" I questioned, and I couldn't help but smile at the word. Married. I was getting married. "I've never been more ready for anything in my entire life."

My mother looked so happy, and that just made me feel even more excited than I already was. After years of waiting, it was finally my wedding day.

I'd slept over at my parents' house because, even though it was a superstition, Jesse couldn't see me before the wedding. Normally, I wouldn't believe in something like that, but after everything we'd been through in our lives, I tried to stay away from anything that could give us bad luck.

Though Jesse had proposed at the time I'd told him I was pregnant, we decided it would be best to wait to have a wedding until we'd graduated, and then until after the baby was born. We both wanted the day to be perfect, and we were willing to wait as long as we had to if it meant having a wedding we'd never forget.

After our son was born, it took months to finally start discussing potential wedding dates again. It was already late 2016 when we realized we hadn't even gotten married yet. It already felt like we were married so much that in our sleep-deprived state, we'd forgotten to even have a ceremony.

That was when we decided that we needed to wait until our son was a little older, because at that point neither of us were in good enough shape to plan a wedding. There were rarely nights where we slept all the way through, and we could only imagine how hectic our lives would be if we added a wedding to our already busy schedule.

There was always the options of eloping or just going to a court house, but that wasn't what I wanted, and Jesse didn't either. We wanted a big ceremony, surrounded by all of our family and friends. Having a quick shotgun wedding was out of the question.

In January of 2016, with our son nearly a year old, we finally took the time and discussed it. During that conversation, we were able to decide on date. At that point we wanted to wait until I graduated from law school, which would be in the upcoming June. It was then when we realized what the perfect date would be.

November 7th, 2017 would be the day we'd get married, exactly ten years to the day of when we'd first met. It was the perfect date during the perfect time, and I couldn't believe we hadn't realized it sooner.