Today is our wedding anniversary. It’s really hard to believe that we’ve been married for 19 years. It just doesn’t feel like our wedding was that far in the past.

We met in January 2006, had our first date in February, and got engaged in October. We didn’t start planning the wedding right away because I just wanted to enjoy being engaged before adding the stress of wedding plans. 

Wedding plans began in earnest in February 2007 and were really quite easy once we decided on a venue. We had a friend from Mexico who recommended Hotel Lagunita in Yelapa, Mexico as a popular place to get married. We knew that most of our friends and family would be flying to the wedding and most had already been to visit San Francisco, so we figured, as long as people have to fly, let’s all fly to Mexico! Plus, my good friend Amber had gotten married a year earlier, and I had heard all about the financial shenanigans of planning a wedding in the United States. We were able to keep our costs pretty reasonable by having our wedding in another country.

Like I mentioned, the planning was pretty easy. We had some phone calls with Lucas, the American ex-pat who owned the hotel, and the planning went like this:

“Do you want fish or chicken for the wedding dinner?”

“Can we have both?”

“Yes.”

And the dinner planning was finished.

“Do you want a wedding cake? Yes or no?”

“Yes.”

Planning complete.

I can’t remember which one of us came up with the idea of fireworks, but we asked Lucas if it was possible to have fireworks. He said, yes, he could get commercial-grade fireworks for $40 each, so we ordered 10. It was fabulous.

We did some research into the colors of Mexico and came up with grass green, saturated red and bold blue as our wedding colors. My wedding dress was red (custom-made), and Chad wore a green shirt and white pants. My grandmothers couldn’t understand a red wedding dress, but after living in the Bay Area for several years, my skin was so pale that I thought a red dress would be better than a white one, and it was stunning.

So, we started wedding plans in February, sent out save the dates in March, and got married in June, and we saved money along the way. Chad’s friend Brian is a professional photographer, so we paid for his flight and his hotel room and he gave us his photography services as our wedding gift. Chad designed the wedding invitations and got them printed through an online service. Despite the fact that my dress was custom-made, it was cheaper than a traditional wedding dress, and I got to design the exact dress that I wanted, down to the embroidered beading.

We made a CD of music as gifts for our guests, and Chad did a great job of finding dance tracks as well as songs by Mexican and Brazilian artists. It’s still my favorite “mix tape.” We also put together goodie baskets for our guests with things like flashlights, bug spray, and Immodium, you know, the things that come in handy when you’re staying at the beach in Mexico. I also made a “who’s who” of guests so people could learn more about each other. Most of our guests, including our parents, had never met.

We flew into Puerto Vallarta on Thursday and stayed in a hotel for two nights. On Friday, we met Lucas who took us to a flower shop to order the flowers for the wedding and a couple of other shops to buy things for the gift baskets. We also went to get our marriage blood tests (I don’t think we ever saw the test results) and sat through a mandatory pre-wedding about how wives are equal to husbands. It was strange to us. 

Then we went to the courthouse to register the marriage. We met with a judge who married us on the spot, something neither of us was expecting. I was wearing a cute dress, and Chad was wearing shorts and a soccer jersey and I joked to him, “That’s what you wore for our wedding?”

My BFF and my aunt and uncle arrived that afternoon and we all spent the night at the hotel. The next day, most of the rest of our guests flew in and we all boarded a boat for Yelapa. One thing I forgot to mention is that Yelapa is a tiny village on a small bay that is surrounded by mountains and jungle. There are no roads into Yelapa; instead, you have to take a boat 45 minutes down the coast from Puerto Vallarta.

So most of us arrived in Yalapa on Saturday afternoon. We got married on a Tuesday, because I wanted everyone to have a couple of days to get to know each other before the wedding so the ceremony wouldn’t be in front of an audience of strangers. Those extra couple of days were perfect for people to meet each other, and it also gave me and Chad an opportunity to relax and spend time with our guests as opposed to a frenetic American Wedding Day.

All in all, it was the best wedding I’ve ever been to. Highlights include the crabs which came out of the jungle and haunted us for the week, the pig slaughter and pig roast for the rehearsal dinner, the tres leches wedding cake, the coconut shrimp, hanging out at the pool, the blown electrical transformer which killed the power for the whole village, scorpions and fruit bats, and being able to spend several days with some of my favorite people in the whole world.

These happy memories are still vivid in my mind, and this is why I can’t believe it’s been 19 years. We’ve had a lot of adventures since then and are scheming new ones as I write this. I look forward to the next however-many years.

The 2026 World Cup starts this week with matches held across North America  from June 11 to July 19. Atlanta is hosting eight games including five group stage matches, two elimination matches, and one semi-final game. I’ve read that city officials are expecting 65,000 people per game. I’ve also read that they anticipate 300,000 visitors to the city, so I’m not sure how that reconciles with 65,000 per game. In any case, that’s a lot of people, and Atlanta has been preparing for several years.

The 2026 World Cup was awarded to the Canada – Mexico – United States bid in 2018. I first started seeing preparations in 2024 when MARTA began renovations on the central Five Points Station downtown. That’s the station that I use for my work commute, so I’ve seen the progress over the last couple of years. Quite honestly, the work doesn’t seem like a vast improvement, just some new tile and ceilings, but maybe the upgrades will be more apparent when the work is complete in 2028. In the meantime, it’s been a maze of plywood barricades for many months.

In addition to updating some of the train stations, MARTA has also installed a new payment system. You used to buy a plastic card that you would refill at machines at each station. Now there is still the option of cards, but you can also use your phone to pay directly from your bank account. I haven’t tried this because I have a monthly commuter card through my work, but Chad will get to try it when we go to a game on June 21st.

One thing I’ve only heard about recently is that MARTA is supposed to roll out a new fleet of 224 train cars. This was originally supposed to happen last year. As recently as last week, the cars still hadn’t been put into play. In fact, the required safety tests hadn’t even been performed. I’m wondering if those cars will make an appearance before the World Cup is over.

I’ve seen other work happening downtown around my office. Statues are being cleaned and fixed up. Streets are being repaved. The park across from my office has had a facelift. The pedestrian boardwalk on Broad Street is getting fixed up and/or replaced. I hear there are new street murals downtown. There’s also a new city park large enough for outdoor concerts, and it will have free screenings of soccer games during the Cup. Since I broke my arm, I haven’t been back to the office so I haven’t seen the downtown landscape lately. It will be interesting to see how things look.

Speaking of going to the office, my company announced that staff would be permitted to work from home on the days that games are held in Atlanta. My office is a few minutes’ walk from the stadium, so everyone’s expecting the downtown neighborhood to be a zoo and that it will be difficult for people to drive to the office. I’m sure plenty of co-workers are excited about the option of extra work days at home, but I immediately thought, “Are you kidding? I want to be right in the middle of things and experience all of the excitement downtown!”

Chad and I have tickets to one of the games, and we plan to go to other events and free screenings during the World Cup. Stay tuned for updates over the next few weeks!