i can hear the bells, don’t you hear ‘em chime? it’s wedding time on cape hazel, as our beloved mayor walks down the aisle to say i do to his delightful new partner, tanny tevito! their whirlwind romance has been under wraps for a few weeks now, and they are ready to make their vows for forever. but...there’s just one thing. and now for a message from the mayor:
attention, cape hazeliens! i daresay you’ve learned of my wedding by now, but i need a bit of help writing the perfect wedding vows. please do submit your ideas for my vows before the wedding, and i will choose the most compelling draft to share at the wedding. thank you, and i hope you can all attend!
you heard it here first, everyone. zeff is getting married! we will have a wedding discord event, so please fill out this survey (with your REAL name or alias) for the start times you are available, and we will get back to you soon! in the meantime, you can work on some wedding vows and post them as #chtask012 to help our dear mayor out. they will be “due” the day of the discord event to have a chance at being chosen.
Solomon didn’t know shit about writing vows. Before last fall, he hadn’t even gone on a second date since high school. Then, obviously, Sawyer came into his life and left him spinning on his heels. When he first started to fall for Sawyer, he was desperate and terrified, but now Solomon felt like he’d found home. Their peaceful rhythm, like the tide to the shore, made their months of back and forth feel like a century ago. Most of the time.
Those old insecurities crept up again recently, lurking until late at night, when Solomon was alone in his bed without the affirmation of Sawyer’s heartbeat when he held him close. Through all his self-doubt and worries, though, Solomon knew, at the very least, that he loved Sawyer, and he did his best to channel it into writing his vows. Maybe they were too personal, and maybe Zeff would never have any use for them, but they came from his heart, and he felt a strange sense of calm knowing that.
***
I never understood the phrase better half. I used to think I didn’t need anyone to complete me. Now, in the words of One Direction, I would be half a heart without you. So, for the rest of our time, I vow to do my best to be the man you deserve.
I vow to always make you drive, so you never have to grip the door handle out of pure terror of my driving skills ever again.
I vow to always dress our dogs in the ugliest costumes I can find because that’s just what we do.
I vow to be your biggest fan, from concerts to the classroom.
I vow to listen. To hear when you’re upset and think about your feelings instead of getting caught in my own.
I vow to make hold your hand when you’re scared. When I’m scared. When we’re both scared.
I vow to love you, on the days when everything feels wrong and on the days when everything feels right. No matter what happens, I promise my heart will always be yours.
And I vow to make you laugh. Every day. Every moment I can.
this one, harley writes on the roof of his mother’s house, on the little ledge outside of his childhood bedroom. it takes hours to get started, but in the end, it isn’t hard nor as complicated as he expected it to be. if these are going to stay anonymous, it should be okay, right?
TO WHOEVER YOU ARE,
i don’t think i believe in ‘til death do us part. sorry, i really wanted to start that off more romantically, but i promise there are redeeming points. the thing is, i don’t belong to you, and you don’t belong to me, and i’ve seen love that goes to shit, love where people start to hate each other for all the things they used to say they love. there’s a baseline for loving someone, yeah, but i think love’s elastic, like a really good pair of jeans that clings and stretches with whatever your body decides to do for the day, and i don’t want to promise anything i don’t know i can keep, so here’s what i can:
i promise to love you like the best damn pair of jeans you’ve ever had. i promise to love you louder on days you need it to hear it most, and i promise to love you harder on the days you’re the hardest to love. (i promise to love you quieter if you decide pda’s not your thing.) i promise to love you, whatever shape that takes. if you just need a friend, i’ll be yours; if you need to flush the world out of your head, we can sit in the dark however long you need; if you need something to lean against, i’ve been told i’m a good pillow. if you just need someone to be there, i’ll be there. i can’t promise a fancy house with a picket fence, but i swear you’ll always have someplace to come home to with me.
i promise to stay through the good, the bad, the shitty, and the shittiest. i promise to be patient, and, god, if we’re getting married then you probably know how fucking stubborn i can be, but around you i promise to always compromise. i promise i’ll be your loudest supporter in everything you do or want to do, even especially if you don’t think you're any good at it. if you’re a dog person, i’ll invest in more lint rollers; if you’re a cat person, i’ll double up on antihistamines. if you’re a turtle person, fantastic! don’t change. (if you’re a spider person, honestly, i have no idea how i ended up with you, but you know what? i’ll grit my teeth and get through that exposure therapy.) i'll always laugh at your bad jokes, and most importantly, i will let you into the bed with me even when your feet are fucking freezing.
second only to that, i guess, is that i promise to stay. i promise, promise, promise i’ll stay. tradition says for the rest of our lives, ideally, but i feel like that’s a lot of pressure and, again, i can’t control whatever the hell’s going to happen five years, months, or days from now, so instead, here: i promise i’ll stay for however long you’ll want me, and i promise you’ll have me for however long you want me.
the last thing eddy ever expected to have to do twice in his life was write vows. he’d done it once before and it had ended in tragedy before he could even make good on all of the promises he’d intended to keep, and this time, he was doing it for someone else. he’d so far gone along with everything zeff had wanted the town to do, rationalising that it was all for a laugh, but this time around everything felt much heavier. it sat on his chest until he couldn’t breathe. downing half a bottle of whiskey and setting himself up in the living room as sofia slept soundly in the next room, eddy spent hours tearing out page after page of the only notebook he owned, nothing but heartache coming to him easily.
hello, lovely members! based on the poll results, the zeff wedding discord event will be friday, august 23 at 7 p.m. hope you can all make it! our twelfth task, writing vows for zeff’s wedding, will be “due” that day as well, so submit your responses to help our beloved mayor out! let us know if you have questions!
indy had no experience whatsoever with love. she wasn’t sure she’d ever been in love, at least not with anything other than the feeling she got when she put her paintbrush to a canvas, but she was sure she’d come close. she’d loved cara — maybe not in the way she wished she could have, but there was something. some sort of spark of something. she loved her friends, too, but it wasn’t like she was gearing up to marry any of them, either. she truly had no idea what to do as far as zeff’s vows were concerned, but wanting to at least give it a go in the name of the concept of love, she took pen to paper, spilling her thoughts onto the page in what she hoped were coherent sentences.
dear love,
the world is not perfect, and neither am i. love is messy and complicated and oftentimes ends in heartbreak, but with you, all of the hurt is worth it. everything that has harmed me in my life means nothing when i wake up next to you in the morning, when i’m able to pull you in close and kiss you until my lips ache and my chest feels like it’s about the burst open. you’ve made me a better person, even if somedays i do not feel like i’m worth your time.
i promise to make the world easier for you. for us. i promise to be the best person i can be at all times, to be perfect for you even if i’m not even close to perfection in the eyes of anyone else. i promise listen to you always, to be the person you can turn to in your times of need. i will be a shoulder to cry on. i will be here for all the bad times, but i’ll be here for the good, too. i’ll be here to celebrate your achievements and kiss you in all the places we find ourselves in.
i love you, and i can’t believe my luck. i can’t believe i get to spend the rest of my life with you, to live out my days in your arms and your warmth. sometimes i think that i’m bound to wake up from all of this all alone, but if this is a dream, i will make every second of it count. making you as happy as i can in the precious moments of this short life we have together and to grow and heal alongside you will forever be my biggest project, my greatest accomplishment, and for you, i will be forever thankful.
