It's never seemed that surreal, actually. When we first gave notice I was hit with a jolt of 'there's a lot to do & not a lot of time' (& that was before I was ill on bedrest for days!), but, perhaps strangely, it never seemed like anything other than a perfectly natural thing to do.
I'm nervous about the ceremony itself - tripping up on the way in, or saying the words wrong, or putting the ring on the wrong finger, that sort of thing. I'm pretty convinced that I'm going to do something hugely embarrassing & everyone will see & laugh & I'll never live it down. That makes me nervous, especially as it's likely given my track record of being ridiculous.
I'm not nervous in the slightest of being married. It feels like the natural state for us to be in - it feels stranger not being married than the idea of being married does. Obviously I know that things will sometimes be really difficult (& they already have been!), but that's the case regardless of your choice in husband - a lifelong commitment to somebody is always going to have its challenges. There's nobody in the world that I'd rather be with when I have to face them, & I really do know that we'll be happy overall, with our future big family around us. I feel completely safe in the knowledge that we love each other an obscene amount & were very good friends before anything else happened. No matter what, even if the (very good) sex does get old & boring along with us () our relationship is built on an extremely strong foundation of loyal friendship & a lot of laughter, patience & understanding.
He drives me absolutely batty sometimes & we've both done things to hurt each other in various ways over the last year, as you all know. But the thing that would've surprised me in the middle of those things is knowing that we've come through it & although there's still a way to go with a few things, those things definitely can be overcome. & now we're not in such a rocky place in terms of adjusting to living with each other / getting used to the idea of having a baby together & having to make it work that I really am entirely confident in the marriage I'm about to enter into.
I know, more certainly than I know anything in the world, that he is going to be a fantastic father. There is nobody who could fill me with any more confidence in their abilities than he does, & that is the most important thing to me. I suppose it can be easy to be blinded by someone's capacity as a friend or lover, as those things relate directly to oneself & it isn't difficult to get selfish about those things. Yet entirely objectively I can see that he is already an amazing father to our unborn child & will continue to be exactly that to however many more children we end up having together. With that in mind, there is nothing in the world that could make me nervous about marrying this man - & even if I do fall flat on my face the moment I try to get into the room to marry him, it won't really matter in the grand scale of things to come. (Still, I'd feel a lot more comfortable if I could see my own feet )
In terms of the day itself, I'm looking forward to swishing around in a pretty dress & hopefully looking half decent for the first time in months, eating nice food, staying in a nice hotel & generally having a good few days playing at being carefree. Just in time to start panicking about baby things again