Thoughts on family and getting married...

Today, only 45 days away from our wedding, my little (okay he's 16 and has almost a foot on me in height but he will always be my "little brother") brother sent me a wedding present that he bought for us himslef. I opened the card he had picked out, and it had two penguins on the front running through water holding flippers, one wearing a veil and the other in a bow tie. Right there I smiled and started tearing up and I hadn't even opened the card yet. Inside it read "You two are so cool together! Congratulations on your wedding" and he wrote "Congrats Mr. and Mrs. "P".... and there's more but I was just so touched! I'm eight years older than my brother, and haven't lived at home for more than a few months at a time since high school. And when I was at home, I feel like our age difference kept me less involved in his life than I would have liked to have been looking back. Now that I am getting married, there is this sense of losing who you are and a little bit losing your family. You take his name, have to split time between families, etc. My fiancee is an only child; both his parents are also only children, and sadly I feel like they don't get the connection I have to my two  younger brothers (his parents encouraged him to just have his friends as groomsmen, since they were "more important to him than my brothers"). But I'm going to change that. I want Brandon to be just as much a part of my family as I will be of his - and even though I can't go back and become more involved in my little brother's life as he grew up, I can go forward and make a huge effort to be there for him now and have a lasting relationship, even with our age gap and physical distance. It's pretty obvious from his thoughtful gift that he feels the same way. : ). And my two brothers and my cousin who is like a third brother to me are all going to be ushers at our wedding, and all have a part in the ceremony/reception and will be wearing the same thing as the groomsmen. I guess in closing my point is that family nowadays doesn't seem to get as much positive attention as it should. It's all about "think about yourself, be selfish, make your friends your family" and that's okay to a point but it's nice to have that connection to siblings, parents, family that nothing else compares to.