Venus understandably needed a break—”To stay interested in tennis,” she explained to Oprah Winfrey in 2003, “I have to mix it up with other things”—so the following month, she quietly swapped vows with Preti in Ischia, Italy.

“But we didn’t have enough time to do the paperwork,” Venus told Vogue, hence their subsequent week-long celebration in Florida that culminated in a civil ceremony Dec. 20, followed by a lavish wedding the next day.

Yet as much as they cherished tying the knot—”I can’t describe how beautiful, calm, sacred, exciting, and exalting it was,” Venus told Vogue—the couple know that married life isn’t an endless party.

So, they said “I do” to showing up for each other every day. “We focus on simple things,” Preti, who said he was “very protective” of his wife, explained to The Knot. “Small things make a difference.”