• Aprill Brandon •
• Originally published March 9, 2010 at 3:27 p.m., updated March 9, 2010 at 9:55 p.m.

It began just like any other day.

The alarm went off.

I hit the snooze button.

It went off again.

I hit the snooze again.

With a shameless disregard for my beauty sleep, it went off yet again.

I smashed it violently against the wall and rolled over back to sleep.

Thirty minutes later, I finally lumbered out of bed, knocking my dog to the floor with a yip-filled thud. I zombie-walked to the bathroom and turned on my shower with the broken knobs via my brilliant handyman solution of pliers. Halfway through, I ran out of hot water, leading to a hibbity-jibbity dance as I tried to rinse the remaining shampoo out of my hair.

I managed to mumble "Coffee. Big." to the barista at Starbucks and drive to work without hitting a single pedestrian (a personal best).

Yes, it began just like any other day. That is, except for one tiny, miniscule difference.

I was married.

Thus began my Monday, my first day in the real world as a wife.

Wow.

Wife.

It just looks weird, doesn't it? Of all the words I never thought I'd see next to my name, "wife" is right up there with "Orlando Bloom's girlfriend" and "upstanding citizen."

But although it's taking some adjustment to see myself as a Mrs., it's definitely official now. Forget the religious ceremony we went through last week or the marriage certificate that was just mailed back to us. We took it to the ultimate level and both just changed our Facebook relationship status to "Married." That's just how serious we are about this whole matrimony thing.

And so, being married now, naturally this Monday was ... well, it was exactly the same as any other Monday. As I quickly discovered, being married does not mean deadlines no longer apply to you or that your editors will finally accept your story idea pitch about the need to cover spring break in Cancun from a first person perspective.

(Me: "But keg stands and half-nekkid coeds are extremely newsworthy!"

Editor: "Go away.")

When you get married, there are only two things you can count on that will definitely happen. One is that at the wedding, every time you turn around, someone is handing you a glass of champagne. Two, every other time you turn around, someone else is taking that glass of champagne from you so you can pose for yet another photo.

But other than that, once you get married, the rest is just a crapshoot. In my case, after a gorgeous wedding and a whirlwind honeymoon in New Orleans (which, by the way, those hurricane drinks should be illegal), we came home and the floor still needed vacuuming. Bills still needed to be paid. Recorded episodes of "Gossip Girl" still had to be watched. And our neurotic dog is still in desperate need of therapy.

I'm not quite sure what I expected to happen after we were married. But something, you know? Like maybe the next morning I'd wake up suddenly with a bob haircut and an overwhelming desire to go shopping at William Sonoma.

But it didn't. For better or for worse, we are both still the same people we were before (only now people with five different sets of butter dishes, one of which is in the shape of a duck).

And that's just fine by me. I never really liked William Sonoma any way.

Aprill Brandon is a reporter for the Advocate. In non-marriage related news, she will be selling various shaped butter dishes (one of which is shaped like a duck) on Ebay, so keep a look out.

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