Tender wedding vows for a partner at a backyard ceremony

I keep thinking about the string lights we hung ourselves, crooked in places, and how you laughed and said they were perfect anyway. That's us — a little uneven, completely perfect to me.

Remember the folding chairs we borrowed from three different neighbors, none of them matching? You said it didn't matter because everyone we loved would be sitting in them. I want to spend my life building rooms like that with you — imperfect, full, ours.

I promise to keep choosing this yard-sized world we're building together, even when it's messy, even when the grass needs cutting and the plans change at the last minute.

I promise to be the one who shows up early to set things up and stays late to clean them up with you, every single time, for the rest of our lives.

Under this same sky where we practiced our first dance barefoot in the grass, I promise you my steadiness, my softness, and my whole heart.

I keep thinking about those crooked string lights too — how you climbed the ladder twice because the first attempt wasn't 'quite right,' and how I fell in love with your care for small things that night.

Those mismatched folding chairs — I remember you apologizing for them, and I remember thinking I'd rather sit in a stranger's lawn chair next to you than anywhere else in the world. I promise to keep gathering people we love into whatever space we have.

I promise to meet your plans-that-change with patience, and your messes with grace, because I've learned the beauty is never in the tidiness — it's in the trying.

I promise to be the one who notices what needs doing before you ask, and to stand beside you in the setup and the cleanup of this whole life.

Here, in this backyard where we first danced without shoes, I promise you my calm, my laughter, and everything I am, for as long as we both shall live.