I honestly can't remember anything that happened before the wedding, so forgive me if I skip Christmas and go directly to the runaway favorite:

Getting married. People warned me that a million little things would go wrong, and a few things did. I tripped on my dress and nearly fell up the stairs while making my big entrance, and a bus wheezed loudly down the street during the ceremony, and the rings took so long to be passed around that we had to have a moment of unplanned silence, and the fourth finger on my left hand was so bloated with a month’s worth of takeout Chinese food and Baja Fresh burritos and red wine and Christmas cookies that E. couldn’t slide my ring on without a little help.

But all the important things -- honestly, just about everything -- went right. No one except my dad saw me stumble (if they did, they aren’t talking) and he had my arm, so I didn’t fall. The groom didn’t hear the bus because, I assume, he was concentrating so hard on the moment. No one minded the minutes of silence (if they did, they aren’t talking).

Wise friends, both recently married, joined me in the dressing room before the ceremony when they realized that I didn’t have attendants to distract me. They understood intuitively that I might freak out if I spent that long hour alone, and suspected, in a more practical sense, that I’d have a hard time getting into my dress and down the stairs by myself. Right on both counts.

I even like the untraditional way we spent our wedding night. (Don’t worry, it’s G-rated.) Husband hung out late at the bar with his old Peace Corps buddies. Wife savored the simple joy of not planning her wedding anymore, sprawled on the rose-petal-sprinkled hotel bed in her flannel PJs, watched cable TV, ate leftover burritos and drank champagne.

Some married people said I wouldn’t feel different at all, but I did, right away. I still do.

Some other good things:

• New York City: Spending a week in the center of the universe -- before the temperature dropped to 10 degrees Fahrenheit


• I Am My Own Wife: One-man show at the Lyceum Theater, New York, New York


• Ninety from the Nineties: Exhibit at New York Public Library
  
• New Year’s Eve in our hotel room: Four slices of Joe’s pizza, a bottle of champagne, and Times Square on the television


• Brooklyn Bridge: Walking across it on a crisp and gorgeous New Year’s Day


• Business class: Getting bumped up on our Washington-Paris flight by a nice young Algerian fellow at Dulles Airport. I don’t know how much more it costs if you pay for it, but it’s got to be worth it. Coat check, a snack before you take off, free champagne before you take off, seats that recline into a nearly horizontal position and still don’t bother the person behind you, more free champagne, hot towels, “suggestion du jour” from the “chef,” noise-canceling headphones. Even the movie (Freaky Friday) seemed funnier, but Jamie Lee Curtis might have had more to do with that than Air France.


• Home again, home again, jiggity jog: Being woken up my first morning in Bamako by the party next door. Guests dressed to the nines, drums were beaten, the griot, who I’m told was singing the wedding song of the Peul. (I discreetly recorded some of it; if I can figure out how to get it online I will share it with you.)

Update: Also: John Currin solo show at the Whitney Museum, Rosenquist retrospective (eh) at the Guggenheim Museum (cool, but in need of some TLC), the International Center of Photography, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, the Strand bookstore.

And how could I forget all the food? Six course tasting-menu and chianti at Po, morning coffee at Doma, the Peanut Butter Company, Indian food, sushi, chocolate, sushi, pizza, and more sushi.

Coolest thing: Being mistaken for a New Yorker.

And, of course, photos from the honeymoon in NYC.

Happy new year!