No, we're not pregnant, we promise. Our own inner skeptics, as well as a very few acquaintances, have asked us "why now?" when we say we're getting married. The glib answer is simple: why not? We have no doubts about each other, our love, or our relationship; no really, we have none. Sure, we worry about money, where we'll live, if we'll have kids, and who'll die first, but we figure if the sum total of our relationship concerns aren't about us, just the details, then we're probably ready to tie the knot.

The longer answer is a bit more complex, as longer answers tend to be. A few years out of college, we watched a whole spate of friends & relatives get married, and we wondered why we weren't doing the same; "we've been together longer than x & y," we'd say to each other at the weddings, but neither of us could think of a reason why we needed to be married, we'd just tear up at the ceremony, applaud wildly at the reception, and go home happy. It wasn't that we didn't trust ourselves, but that we didn't trust our futures: Ry wasn't loving his job, and wasn't sure it was what he wanted to do with his life, and Meg was about to apply to graduate school, and didn't know where she'd end up. Four years later, those friends & family members are all still happily married, some have started having kids, and we've suddenly got a sense of our futures: we can see an endless array of possibilities in front of us, and all of them have space for both of us.

One wedding ceremony we read recently says "I promise to build a future with you loving what I do know of you, and trusting that which I do not yet know," and we skipped that step. We built our future together first, and tried to find everything we didn't know about the other person before we made our promises. Call it pessimism, call it practical, call it thorough, it worked for us.