My wife did it for the gram, I did it for the GIF

How Christina and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary

Recently, a Google calendar alert reminded Christina and me about our twelfth anniversary. Just kidding. A Facebook memory was what tipped us off.

At first, I thought about writing an essay to mark the occasion. Since we’ve been married twelve years, I wanted to offer twelve lessons about marriage. Something profound, but also beautiful and soulful, but not too preachy, so maybe a little funny, but not too funny because it should also be—gulp—wise.

But when I sat down to write that essay, I kept thinking about IKEA. To me, IKEA is a good test of a relationship. If two people can survive a trip to IKEA, agree on a piece of furniture, lug it back to their home, and assemble it, without killing each other, their relationship will last at least as long as that piece of IKEA furniture.

And now you know why I’m an unlicensed marriage counselor. Again, kidding. I am a certified joker, and I wrote that IKEA bit into our wedding vows.

Which reminds me that twelve years ago, our friends and family gathered in Palm Springs, California for our wedding. One thing every married person told us at the time was that weddings are crazy, and that you really should take a beat to remember the experience. But then those same people admitted that their weddings were a blur because it’s impossible to take a beat on your wedding day, so you should hire a photographer to capture your beautiful memories while you’re busy making forgetting them.

We hired a photographer. Before the ceremony, she took this photo of us.

The idea was that Christina and I would walk off down the road of life together. Very cinematic, right?

But the part I remember is that our photographer told us to keep walking, then loop around and meet her by the hotel’s main pool for more photos. So we went for a walk, just the two of us. I don’t recall our conversation, but I remember thinking how nice it was just be together for a moment, without all the wedding hoopla. I also remember that our walk took us to the other side of the hotel property where we found a locked gate. We didn’t have our room keys on us, so we screamed for help. We shouted something along the lines of: “Help, we’re locked out of our own wedding!”

Eventually someone—I don’t remember who, but probably our photographer—found us. Good thing too because we had a wedding to attend, and Christina had grown tired of my jokes about them starting without us.

After we were married, Christina put some wedding photos, including the one of us walking off down the road of life together, on Instagram. That was 2011. Instagram had only been around for a year. In those days, people didn’t say things like “do it for the gram.” So, we probably didn’t do it for the gram. We did it for the memories, and for our wedding album because Christina really wanted a “kickass wedding album,” and let’s be honest, for an homage to the classic scene in This Is Spinal Tap, where the band gets lost backstage before their show.

Very cinematic, right?

For our twelfth anniversary, all we wanted was a fun day together. We got Dim sum for breakfast. The pork bao was on point, but we didn’t photograph our food for the gram. We were too busy eating, talking, and enjoying spending time with each other.

Dinner was the same story. We went to an Italian restaurant Downtown called Bestia. It’s the kind of place where the waiter tells you everything about your food so that when you take a picture of your plate for the gram you can dominate that foodie hashtag by writing a solid caption. But we didn’t do dinner for the gram, either.

We also went to The Last Bookstore, which is one of those places that’s purpose-built to do it for the gram. If you spend any time at all on Instagram, you’ve probably seen posts from The Last Bookstore.

lastbookstorela

A post shared by @lastbookstorela

lastbookstorela

A post shared by @lastbookstorela

_ik_wong

A post shared by @_ik_wong

We didn’t it for the gram at The Last Bookstore either. Instead, we browsed and bought some used records.

But our twelfth anniversary wasn’t gram-free. The main activity was a trip to an art installation called Bubble World, which is all about doing it for the gram.

bubbleplanetexperience

A post shared by @bubbleplanetexperience

I think we did Bubble World for the gram. Or maybe, Christina was the one who did it for the gram. She took a lot of pictures, selected the best ones, and put them into an Instagram story. She tagged me in the story, even though I deleted the Instagram app from my phone years ago, got locked out of my account somehow, and never bothered to unfuck that situation because, well, I’m more likely to document my life with words, rather than pictures.

But I do love pictures, especially GIFs.

For one thing, I find the endless loop of a GIF to be both mesmerizing and silly. Also, a GIF carries a narrative weight that’s somewhere between a static picture and a video. If a picture is worth one thousand words, then a two-hour movie, filmed at 24 frames per second, is worth 172,800 words; the humble GIF is a narrative middle ground. But the thing I really love about GIFs is that they mimic the way I experience memories—as brief vignettes my mind plays again and again on loop.

Obviously, we both wanted to remember our twelfth anniversary. We tried to make those memories the old-fashioned way, but just to be safe, Christina did it for the gram, and I did it for the GIF.

Also, if you use Substack Notes, please Restack this post🙏

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Stick around and chat

You know the drill. I’ve got questions, maybe you’ve got answers.

1. What do you think of my IKEA test for relationships? Should marriage counselors take the couples they work with to IKEA? Before you answer, remember that IKEA serves meatballs, cake, and ice cream.

2. What’s your advice for making a marriage, or relationship, or really any partnership go the distance? Pontificate!

3. Have you ever done it for the gram? Explain.

4. Let’s talk about GIFs. Do you love ‘em? Hate ‘em? Never think about ‘em? GIF this answer all you got!

Learn more about me and Christina!

I recently joined Gabe Hudson on his podcast, Kurt Vonnegut Radio. We spoke about writing Situation Normal and my comedic process, which means we covered a very human moment I had a donut shop, encounters with wild monkeys, catalytic converter thefts (Gabe has a troubling theory of the case), racist neighbors, and trolling moms—basically, my life. But the best part was that Gabe picked up on my creative partnership with Christina. I loved that!

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Bonus GIF

My friend Adam Jamal Craig made this GIF of me just before the wedding ceremony. Christina loves it because I’m a “goofball.” I love it because if you look at the margins of the GIF, you can see my mom judging my shenanigans and my dad getting a kick out them. That’s a normal situation, for me.