I am addicted to wedding announcements. This probably doesn’t come as a surprise, given my feverish obsession with all things WEDDING. But even as a kid, I would flip to the back of my mom’s Town & Country magazines to pore over the beautiful pictures of society ladies’ weddings, and steal The New York Times my dad would bring home on weekends to read the wedding announcements. So, it was a very exciting moment for me yesterday when my hometown newspaper, The Davis Enterprise, featured Tony and my wedding announcement yesterday!

Of all things wedding-related, I know the announcements aren’t the most glamorous thing for a kid to daydream about… With wedding photos, there’s the white dress, the flowers, the Prince Charming fantasy of the groom, the candid moments of love and elation to get lost in. But what I loved about the announcements was a different sort of daydream, imagining these two complete strangers and the steps they took in their lives to eventually cross paths. I liked to see where they both went to college, where their parents were from, hear how they met. How something mundane and average like trying a new coffee shop or joining a dodgeball league could bring the magic of meeting someone you want to share your life with. This glimpse into the everyday-ness of it seemed almost more intimate than studying pictures of the wedding day itself.

Today, I’m especially excited about the tradition of the wedding announcement. The internet has made the necessity of a formal announcement obsolete. I’ve been announcing our impending marriage to the world from the rooftops of this blog since we got engaged. Social media made it clear we were married; I shared an Instagram from the wedding itself! But the tradition, the formality of a printed announcement is what makes it so special. It’s easy to change your status on Facebook, but something in print is forever. A copy of The Davis Enterprise from August 30, 2015 will always say that we are married. I can’t wait to hold the newspaper when I get home, let the ink stain my fingers and smell the paper and know that one day, I’ll be able to show the old, yellowed copy to my grandkids when they’re not busy teleporting themselves or whatever it is iPhones will be able to do by then. There’s a reason people still buy newspapers, even when they can go online and find whatever news they need there. There’s a real, tangible feeling of holding the paper in your hands. So I love that we captured the real, tangible forever-ness of our marriage in print. (And, if we’re being completely honest, I love any and every excuse to talk about our wedding some more.)