“I remember as a little girl I was obsessed with movies like Thumbelina, the Swan Princess, and Aladdin (just to name a few).

"So I think it’s safe to say that after many hours memorizing every line and singing every song, and let’s be real I still do, that there was no doubt I would be a romantic. And so, I anxiously awaited the day when “The One”, be it a prince or a simple street rat, would find me and we would live happily ever after.” These were the beginning lines to my wedding vows. I had known for a long time that I wanted our vows to be self-written and not ones that we just repeated back to our officiate. I spent many hours carefully crafting each line, trying to put my heart and soul into these vows. Because I will only be doing this once, I told myself. Marco and I had been married at a civil ceremony in April 2016. It was small, intimate, and hastily thrown-together, since we needed to get his green card process underway. We would do a larger, more traditional ceremony when we had saved enough money. That was what we had agreed on. However, that wasn’t good enough for my mom — not for her one and only daughter anyway. She insisted that she had plenty of money saved and she would be more than happy to throw us the wedding of our dreams (or her dreams rather).So here I was, one year later, writing these vows for my second wedding to the same man — a man I thought I loved, who I thought loved me in return. But as I put these words to paper, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. Something just didn’t feel right. Like these words were somehow... hollow. Disingenuous. I buried that feeling, trying my best to shake it off and focus at the task at hand.Nevertheless, it was the same feeling that nagged at me when we compiled our guest list.Taste-tested the food for the reception.When I tried on my wedding dress for the final fitting.I realize now that feeling, that something was missing, was really very simple. My heart just wasn’t in it. Not really. I was faking it. All of it. I had created an elaborate fantasy of love and happiness that I just really didn’t feel. I had lied not only to everyone around me, but most importantly to myself.If I told myself that I was happy often enough, that I truly loved Marco, then surely it would come true…right?   “And so before our friends and family, Marco, I promise to be by your side through thick and thin, through good times and bad, to only make you the best food, to remember to be not quite so serious all the time, to laugh freely and often, and most importantly to love you until my very last breath.”In the matter of two months, all those vows would be broken. But only after he broke all of his vows first.-Khaleesi