As she expected, once Sheldon adjusted to Penny's rapid about-face, he was happy, even excited, to have her move in. He even went out and purchased a shelving unit for the bathroom in anticipation of storing her myriad toiletries. So Penny moved in with Sheldon with less drama that she would have thought possible. It was a little weird taking over Leonard's old room, but she hadn't slept over that often. By placing the bed at a different angle and decorating with her own things, the room felt like a new space.
Meanwhile, Leonard and Alex's wedding was fast approaching. Although Penny would never say so, she wondered privately how Alex would cope with having Beverly Hofstadter for a mother-in-law. That had certainly been at least a part of her reluctance to commit to Leonard. Though in retrospect, if she had really loved him, she would have just gotten married and prayed that her mother-in-law never took it into her head to relocate to the West Coast.
While neither Penny, Bernadette nor Amy were part of her wedding, Alex continued to spend girl's nights with them, and she talked incessantly about wedding details. Amy was in heaven, pouring over the wedding magazines and discussing bridesmaid's dresses and catering options with Alex ad nauseum. Penny enjoyed it to a point, but she always preferred the idea of a small wedding, just close friends and family. She imagined Sheldon would feel the same way, and grinned to herself at the thought of him negotiating with his mother, who would doubtless want to see her son married in a church by a pastor, preferably her church and her pastor. Then she sat up with a start. Had she really just been sitting there daydreaming about marrying Sheldon?
For a moment, she felt desperate for some wine. Standing quickly, she excused herself and fled to the bathroom, where she could close the door and be alone with her thoughts for a few minutes. Sheldon. Marriage. She thought about the long history she had with her quirky boyfriend, the silly fights and the way they helped each other. She remembered doing her laundry at 8:15 every Saturday night and that one wrestling match where her first instinct had been to kiss him. She thought about how his support had taken her from being halfway to an alcoholic, with a dead-end job and a destructive relationship, to a woman who was making her way in life fulfilling her dreams of acting, getting a college degree, and in a relationship where she put his needs ahead of her own. After all this, she knew that what had startled her was the absence of blind panic at the thought of getting married.
Just then, there was a knock on the door. It was Bernie. "Hey Penny, are you feeling okay? I saw you jump up and run off kind of suddenly, and now you've been in the bathroom for a while."
Penny opened the door and smiled at her friend. "I'm fine. Actually, I'm great," she said, and meant it.
Sheldon was in the wedding party as Leonard's best man. No one was very surprised when Sheldon refused to wear clothing that dozens of other people had worn before him, so he decided to purchase a tux rather than rent one. Penny thoroughly enjoyed the tux shopping, even though they all looked basically the same and Leonard had already chosen the style of the suit and accoutrements. When Sheldon emerged from the dressing room wearing his tuxedo after the alterations were finished, Penny couldn't tear her eyes away from him. She knew she was in love because suddenly to her, he looked like the handsomest man in the world.
As best man, it fell to Sheldon to throw Leonard his bachelor party. If Leonard had been nervous about that prospect, he was thrilled at the end result. It really was a masterpiece of sci-fi awesomeness. There was a room dedicated to laser tag, a Mystic Warlords of Ka'a tournament and Klingon karaoke (which really had to be seen to be believed, and fortunately, Howard had set up a video feed). Sheldon had also arranged a "celebrity" panel, which consisted of Wil Wheaton and a number of character actors who'd had minor roles on some of the boys' favorite sci-fi shows.
Things didn't go exactly as planned, of course. Raj and Howard had helped with the party, since they were Leonard's groomsmen. So they were the ones who swapped out Sheldon's jello cubes (which were supposed to resemble the food supplements from the original Star Trek) with jello shots, and of course, Howard had hired an exotic dancer. She came covered in green body paint, and Wil, with all his convention experience, said she looked really authentic as an Orion slave girl. Raj was the one who ended up with the most green paint on his clothes, not Leonard, and he cheerfully offered to pay for everyone's dry cleaning. Of course, that might have just been the jello shots talking.
Sheldon was saved from having an apoplectic fit over the exotic dancer because Howard and Raj had locked him in one of the bathrooms. Sheldon had been completely bombed after two jello cubes and had run around for an hour telling everyone he was Batman. Hilariously, he was also able to sing five Klingon karaoke songs with both perfect pitch and pronunciation and won a very nice reproduction bat'leth pin. But when he started talking about astronomy, Howard and Raj each grabbed one of his arms. They dragged him into the bathroom and barricaded the door before he could repeat his "Uranus" stunt from his Chancellor's Award speech.
Two days later at Leonard and Alex's wedding, Penny sat in the audience with Bernadette and Howard on one side and Amy and Dan on the other, watching Sheldon perform his best man duties solemnly. Something changed in Penny's heart as she saw Sheldon up front, looking so handsome and mature. She could hardly keep her attention focused on Leonard and Alex. She was imaging that it was her up there in the white dress with Sheldon by her side. As Leonard and Alex recited their vows to each other, she found there were tears running down her face. Penny knew she was not a romantic at heart. As she blotted her eyes with a tissue Bernie had hastily produced, she realized she wasn't crying because she was happy for Leonard and Alex, but because she wanted to say those words to Sheldon and hear him pledge his love to her.
Sheldon was busy after the ceremony, posing for pictures. (Penny had instructed him to think about koalas so he didn't end up with that horrible "kill Batman" grin.) She drove over to the reception hall with Bernie and Howard, and she was unusually quiet as she thought about her unexpected reaction to the wedding. For the first time in my life, I didn't sit there wondering how long the marriage would last, and the reason I didn't do that was because I was thinking of us instead of them, she thought to herself. Was she just being emotional, or was she finally ready for marriage? She smiled as she remembered the time she and Sheldon had been hanging out in her apartment and she had called them an old married couple. Now, instead of finding that idea aggravating, she found it sweet. Having tea and cookies on hand wasn't a big deal, especially when Sheldon insisted on doing the grocery shopping.