For months I had imagined that day as the beginning of a new chapter — the first page of a marriage, the start of the life I had been so carefully, so hopefully building.

And in a way, it was the beginning of a new chapter, just not the one anyone in that room had come to witness.

It was the day I ended a lie two days before it could become legally binding.

It was the day I found out, with maybe the last margin of time in which finding out could still save me, just what I was about to sign my name to.

I thought I had been walking into my wedding.