I just wanted a cute coloring book page for the kids at our wedding.

You know, something wholesome. Sweet. Our names in curly letters. Maybe a heart or two. A cartoon version of me and Keith, smiling, holding hands, like the sober, semi-stable couple we are now.

What I got instead?

AI-generated nightmares.

At one point, the cartoon Keith had no eyes and a face that looked like it had been put together by someone who’d only ever heard about humans through interpretive dance. And me? I either looked like a Sims character on meth or a haunted Victorian doll.

See?

Every time I said, “Make it look like us,” the robot got worse. Keith started looking like a wax figure that had been left in the sun. I looked like I was going to murder the guests and dance in their blood.

But you know what? I kept trying. Because that’s who I am now. I don’t drink. I don’t ghost. I just send feedback like, “Okay, but can we zoom out and also make the faces better?” like some sort of unhinged art director for a Crayola crime scene.

And eventually, we got it. A weird, slightly off, definitely-made-by-a-machine version of us. But it’s ours.

And honestly? That feels right. A little messy. A little weird. Very us.

So now, nestled in between tarot readings and a live watercolor artist, our wedding will feature a coloring page or two. (We’ve already talked about the 24-page wedding program—because, of course, it’s 24 pages. Read that saga here.)

Because if you’re going to invite 100 people to witness your deeply personal, highly unconventional handfasting ceremony, you might as well hand the kids some crayons and say, “Color me immortal.”

And even though my AI-generated face still looks like I’m hiding a secret (and maybe a shiv), there’s something weirdly beautiful about it.

Maybe it’s because this whole wedding is weirdly beautiful.

It’s a second-chance kind of love. A “we made it through some shit” love. A “we’ve been hospitalized and bankrupt and broken and still decided to plan a party” love.

And if a robot-drawn coloring book version of our faces is the thing that lives on in someone’s scrapbook or stuck to their fridge with a magnet from Ocean City, then that’s fantastic.

That’s exactly the kind of legacy I want.

And maybe, just maybe, someday one of those kids will look at it as an adult and think: “Those two looked weird as hell. But they sure did seem happy.”

That’s kind of the whole vibe, honestly.

Because life doesn’t always give you perfect lines to color inside. Sometimes it hands you a broken crayon and a blank page and says, “Figure it out.”

And if you’re lucky, you do.

You find someone who doesn’t mind your smudges.

You build a life that’s more you than Pinterest.

You commission a robot to draw your face and laugh when it looks like a fever dream.

So here’s to coloring outside the lines, to loving what’s crooked, and to celebrating the weird, wonderful ways we make our own kind of joy.

One cartoon disaster at a time.