Roots entwined: Our story illustrated
Two weeks ago I married my soul mate, and the man I am now lucky enough to call my husband, and on yesterday’s Daily Norm you were bombarded with photos of our ceremony. However, our marriage was a culmination of 6 years together, almost to the exact day of our first date in fact, on 16th June 2009, and from that moment onwards, I lived life as a man complete.
In celebration of our journey together since that first June date, I prepared for our wedding by drawing a little illustration of our adventures as a twosome. Inspired by the magical words of Louis de Bernieres in his stunning novel, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which were read at our wedding, my illustration takes the form of a complex interlocked image of our adventures, each stemming from the routes which now bind us so firmly together.
Love is a temporary madness, it erupts like volcanoes and then subsides.
And when it subsides you have to make a decision.
You have to work out whether your roots have so entwined
together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.
Because this is what love is.Love is not breathlessness, it is notexcitement,
it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion.
That is just being in love, which any fool can do.
Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away,
and this is both an artand a fortunate accident.Those that truly love have roots that grow towards each other underground,
and, when all the prettyblossoms have fallen from their branches,
they find that they are one tree and not two.
Jun 16
Contemplating our First Anniversary
It’s hard to think that a year has already past since that blissful wedding day when I married my soulmate one year ago. That small but perfectly formed little Chelsea Wedding felt so emotionally momentous that I think I have been bouncing happily in its blissful wake ever since. Yet to think that it’s been a year is rather bizarre, not least when I consider that it feels as though I was only just finishing off the last dabs of gouache on my paintings commemorating our honeymoon. How time flies. But how happily tangible are the memories still.
Our magical day
It was in the contemplation of this anniversary that Dominik and I recently headed to Deiá, easily our favourite place on the island of Mallorca, and perhaps in the whole world. We knew that there could be no better way to celebrate a first year of marriage, and 7 years of being together. While my mother’s witty gift of toilet paper (and a little something extra) reminded that this is traditionally the “paper anniversary”, for us it was bubbles and sunshine all the way as we toasted our union in the stunningly floral grounds of the Hotel Residencia over two glasses of cava – one brut, the other rosé. In a way those two glasses appeared to represent something of our relationship and the keys to its success. Two people who are characteristically, externally different, but whose integral sameness binds us so strongly together. And all this in the most exquisite surroundings of the Teix Mountains and the Mediterranean sea. Magical.
Bubbles at the Residencia and dinner at Restaurante Nama
While the 15th June marks our wedding anniversary, the 16th June is the anniversary of our first date. But there is something so much more special now in celebrating an anniversary of marriage, than that day of first discovery. Because while our daily life may not have changed all that much as a result of the certificate we signed, the comfort and security and wholesome oneness it has brought us can never been replicated outside of marriage. One more year has passed and another coat of time’s varnish adds an extra veneer of strength to our union. Here’s to that.
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