I’m sitting on the airplane (internet at 10,000 feet is still amazing to me) making my way back to California, and realizing that it’s been five days since Yay New York!, and I still haven’t managed to quite wrap my head around it. One thing for sure is that it was amazing. Another thing is that it came as close as anything work-related ever has to breaking me – I got in bed and slept for huge amounts of the two days immediately after it, having not slept much more than five hours a night for the preceding almost two months. That said, was it worth it? Unquestionably.

After catching up on sleep, getting trapped on the UWS by a non-event hurricane, and then running around town trying to see and do a long weekend’s worth of people and things in a single day, I finally woke up this morning, on my last day in Manhattan, feeling totally overwhelmed by it all. I’ve been carrying it around as a literal physical sensation all day. We were all a small part of something much bigger than ourselves.

I probably won’t share anything but photos about it on the internet after this. Because the truth is that I’m a kind of shockingly private person when it comes to my emotions (most people who know me don’t realize this because I’m someone who is unabashedly open about experiences, which is different than being open to how those experiences make one feel) but this morning I came across a passage in the book I’m reading right now that sums it up pretty well: “She wanted to cry but couldn’t. The feeling was too deep.”

So please go read the coverage over at A Practical Wedding, because Meg does an amazing job of capturing it – she’s already written about it here, here, here, and here – and has more coming later this week.

I do want to say thank you, SO MUCH, to everyone who came out, to everyone who bought tote bags, everyone who donated to our drive for Lambda, and especially to everyone who helped make it happen. The full sponsor list, with links, is over here. These are all great people. If only we were all lucky enough to work with a crew like that every day, the world would be a happier and more fun place. Please go out and hire them for your weddings.

But mainly, I want to say thank you to Meg. She took a little idea of mine and made (and made me make) it into something huge. And more importantly, she has built this amazing community that rose up and banded together around it, who not only said yes when we asked, but who said yes before we even had to ask, in many cases volunteering time & goods & services we didn’t even know we needed. It was beyond an honor to have my name at the top of the poster with hers.

Photo: the YNY! vendors toasting in between the wedding and the dance party, by Emily Takes Photos