Today is me and Beth’s 13th wedding anniversary. To celebrate the day, Beth is insisting that I refer to her as “Bride” all day long. I’ve agreed to this as long as she calls me “Master.” So far nobody’s getting what they want.

So… How about a story from our marriage? Between us we’ve already told a few: Beth told about her “Fuck you” response to my proposal in Will You Marry Me in her old journal. I told the story of losing my wedding ring on our honeymoon in the Ringwrecked entry of my old journal. In It Seemed It Was About Time Beth talks about finally getting around to taking my name after 10 years. And Beth tells what may be the best story, of our song and the night we fell in love in Have I Told You Lately? But this time around let’s talk pictures.

Look around most couples’ houses and you’ll find at least one wedding photo somewhere. Maybe off in a corner or on a stairway wall or in the guest room, but you’ll find a picture somewhere of the bride and groom back in the days when they were 10 pounds lighter and wore lavender ruffles and had big hair and thought looking like total dorks looked totally cool. But not in our house. There is absolutely no photographic evidence that we were ever married. Oh, there are wedding pictures, they just aren’t here.

Beth’s dad sprung for a very nice, very lavish wedding for us, and everything was beautiful. He spared no expense, and he even hired a photographer and pre-paid the whole picture package. He made sure we’d have more wedding photos than we’d know what to do with, and extras to pass out to friend and family and even strangers. We had the super deluxe wedding package all wrapped up.

The photographer sent over two books of proofs after the wedding. All Beth and I had to do was go through them and pick which ones we wanted him to print. It sounds simple when you say it like that — “all we had to do was pick” — but that task had layers of complexity. Beth’s parents are divorced. Beth’s father and step-mother also divorced. My parents are divorced. There were grandparents from both sides. And we somehow got it in our heads that we needed to create a unique collections of photos for each of them. And then we decided the best way to do that was to send the proofs to each person and let them list which pictures they wanted in their own personal book, then send the proofs along to the next person for them to make their list, and so on and so on and so on.

This still hasn’t happened. After thirteen years.

Every time we drive past our photographer’s office — which is frequently, since it’s about two miles from our house — I point to it and say to Beth “Hey, let’s get our wedding pictures.” Beth laughs (or sometimes ignores me — more of the latter lately) but we don’t stop. We don’t order the pictures. We leave them hanging out there.

I think we’re afraid of them. Superstitious. We’ve been married for so long without the pictures now that we feel like getting them might jinx us — especially now, in Year 13. We’re both halfway convinced that if we actually did bite the bullet and went in and got those pictures, we’d be divorced within the year. So we have no photographic evidence of our wedding. First by laziness, now by choice.

Thirteen years together. We must be doing something right — despite all evidence to the contrary. Or lack thereof…