Six Months

Six months ago, Drew and I got married.

Can you believe it? We certainly can't, mostly because our math-challenged minds thought that it's been  our six-month anniversary for the longest time (or at least the last two months). I promise we really do understand the basic concepts of addition and subtraction.

Anyway, the last six months have been crazy, amazing, challenging and so much fun. Since getting married we:

• moved to a new apartment/town
• became an aunt and uncle
• spent our first Christmas as a married couple
• celebrated our 2-year dating anniversary
• returned to Disney World, where we first met, for our honeymoon
• purchased our first real furniture (dining room table + couch)
• have had an amazing time enjoying the first few months of marriage!

I'm pretty amazed by how much has happened since we got married. The past few months have been jam-packed for us, and, as you can see from my list, we've experienced a lot of changes and new experiences. I know the next six months will be just as crazy for us, and I'm really looking forward experiencing everything with my best friend by my side. I can't wait for the many years we have ahead of us!

Also, as a fun side note, today is not only our 6-month wedding anniversary, but it's also my younger sister's 20th birthday and our nephew's 4-month birthday! Crazy! Guess there's just something about the 8th of the month in our family.

Ten for Tuesday

I'm starting a new feature here to showcase a list of what's on my mind at the moment, what I'm obsessing over, or whatever other thoughts I feel like sharing.

In case you couldn't figure it out from the post title, I'm calling this new feature Ten for Tuesday.

I'm trying to post more regularly, and I think adding another structured feature (the other being Thankful Thursday) will help me achieve my goal.

Since my days as a single girl are numbered, I decided to write about the ten things I'm most looking forward to about marriage. This should be an interesting list to look back on in six months or a year, to compare it to what I actually enjoy the most about being married.

And now for the inaugural Ten for Tuesday list:

Reasons I'm Excited to be Married

1. No more waiting or countdowns. I don't know how we've been able to bear so much waiting in our relationship. First waiting to be reunited following our long-distance relationship when we first started dating and then the countdown to marriage. Now we'll just get to simply be together.

Only FOUR more days! This is the real final countdown.

2. I get to have an excellent roommate. Forever. I already talked about how much I dislike living alone.

3. I get to be part of a new family. I don't mean being a part of Drew's family, although I'm excited about that as well. But I'm excited to start a new family that's just me and Drew, with our own traditions and habits and other exciting stuff.

4. Drew and I get to do all the boring stuff together. For awhile I've been excited for when Drew and I can do all the lame stuff no one really thinks about together: grocery shopping, folding laundry, running errands, sitting around at home. We already get to do this quite a bit since we've spent most weekends during the past 15 months together, but now we'll get to be boring and normal together all the time. Sometimes it really is the little things.

5. Making my apartment our apartment. Drew started moving some of his belongings into my apartment a couple of weeks ago, and it already feels different than when this was only where I lived. I mean, for a few more days I still am the only one living here, but we're making this place ours instead of just mine. We've already rearranged the living room furniture and redone the bathroom (new shower curtain and bath mat so it's less "college dorm room," according to Drew), but there's a long way to go to making our living space truly ours.

6. Making plans for the future. I love thinking about how, after Saturday, Drew and I get to make plans as husband and wife. We get to go on our first vacation together and start planning for our first holidays as a married couple. I can't wait for all of the plans that await us - where to live, how to spend our anniversary, what adventures we want to have... it's going to be good!

7. No more wedding planning. I've definitely (mostly) enjoyed wedding planning, but I'm completely okay with the fact that I will never have to plan a wedding again. It's a lot of work and can be frustrating and exhausting at times. I'm ready to enjoy the end product and everything that follows. 

8. I'll have someone to share everything with. All of it. Every thought, emotion, hope, fear. Each dream and dumb story. My home, my bed, my closet. The laundry, the dishes, dinner. Good experiences and bad experiences. My heart. Anything and everything. We get to do it all together.

9. Getting to say goodnight, every night. Just like those cheesy decor signs.

Yep, just like this. via

10. I get to spend the rest of my life with my best friend. Self-explanitory.

How I Want to Remember My Wedding Day

I love borrowing ideas from other blogs for posts. This one is inspired by a similar post by Julie on Peanut Butter Fingers (she has excellent workout tips, FYI).

I've heard from so many people that your wedding day flies by so quickly, which is hard to believe right now since planning the wedding has pretty much consumed the last nine months of my life. Will all of our hard work and countless hours of wedding preparations feel pointless if the day moves too quickly? Will anybody besides Drew and I even notice all of the effort that went into the details?

But then I have to remind myself that all of the details - colors, table decorations, stationary, what clothes we chose to wear - are more for us than for our guests. Of course we want to show our guests how much thought we put into the day so they enjoy the ceremony and reception as well, but at the end of the day our wedding is about us. And, more importantly, it's about us (finally) being married.

So what do I want to stand out in my heart when I look back on our wedding day in a month or a year or in 50 years?

How I Want to Remember My Wedding Day

I want to remember spending the day with family and friends. I've lived in three different states in the past three years, so keeping up with my friends and family is tougher than I'd like. When I'm constantly moving and going through different stages of becoming an adult, it's hard to visit my friends from college or even keep them up-to-date on what I'm doing with my life.

I had a phone conversation over the weekend with one of my college friends who recently got engaged about how weird compiling a guest list is when you haven't seen some of your closest college friends since graduation. How do you decide who to hold onto? Well, I made my decision on which friends I wanted to see on my wedding day a few months ago when our invitations went out, and I'm so excited to see them and spend time with them (however little) on my wedding day.

The same goes for my family, who all live in different states, that I rarely see. I want to remember the most recent reunion I'll have with my friends and family and cherish the time I get to spend with them on what will probably be the most important day of my life. And I am so blessed to have wonderful friends and sisters standing next to me at the altar. I hope the craziness of the day doesn't prevent me from enjoying the company of my friends and family and appreciating all the time and money they took to spend my wedding day celebrating with me.

With my parents, sisters and brother-in-law at my cousin's wedding this summer.

I want to remember how I feel walking down the aisle. In my mind, walking down the aisle to meet Drew at the altar is going to be one of the biggest moments of the day. I'm so afraid I'm going to be focusing on not tripping over my dress or how sweaty my hands are instead of the fact that I am literally walking towards my future. I want my focus to be on Drew and on my parents, who will both be walking me down the aisle. I don't want this moment to be a blur. I want the excitement, nervousness, anticipation of this moment to stand out in my mind long past the ceremony.

I want to remember the look on Drew's face when we say our vows.  Just like walking down the aisle, I have a fear that our vows will be such a blur in the moment that I won't remember them happening. I want to be completely in this moment. Saying our vows is the most exciting part of the wedding ceremony for me to look forward to because it's obviously the most meaningful. If I remember just one thing from our wedding, I want this to be it.

I want to remember not taking the small stuff too seriously. Like I said before, Drew and I have put a lot of time and effort into the details of both our ceremony and reception. I know not everything will go as planned. I'm sure we will have goofs in the ceremony and the reception set-up will not be exactly as I have it pictured in my mind. I want that to be okay on October 8. I want to be able to laugh at every mistake or mix-up or unexpected event that takes place that day. I want to remember feeling calm over any last-minute crises that arise and keeping my thoughts and focus on the bigger picture. In fact, I want to take the mishaps so lightly that I don't even want to remember them (unless they're particularly funny or ridiculous).

I want to remember our first dance. Drew isn't much of a dancer, so I'm glad we have a solid excuse to get him out on the dance floor. Anytime I get to dance with Drew at a wedding is special and exciting for me because it rarely happens, so I am beyond thrilled for our first dance. We've practiced dancing to our first dance song a couple times already, and even those practice runs are amazing. I can only imagine how special the real deal will be, and I hope I never forget how I feel during those three minutes and thirty-seven seconds (give or take).

At a wedding last summer. Notice how we're planted in our seats and not on the dance floor.

I want to remember the drive away from the reception. This seems kind of random, but there's a good chance this will be the first time since the ceremony that Drew and I will have to ourselves all day. I want to remember what we talk about in our first moments as a married couple. I want us to cherish that alone time we have to look back on our wedding day while everything is still fresh in our minds.

More than anything, I want to remember how happy and loved and amazed I feel all day to be surrounded by family and friends while I marry my best friend and love of my life. I know I won't remember all of the details of our wedding day, and that's okay. That's what the pictures are for, right?

If you're married, what do you remember the most from your wedding day? If you're not, what's on your list to remember when your wedding day comes along?

A Lesson from Tori Spelling

Planning a wedding takes a lot of work. Beyond the appointments with vendors, the shopping, registering for gifts, addressing save the dates and invites, there's a lot of self-reflection that goes into planning a wedding.

Remember, a wedding isn't just going to a church and throwing a party, it's starting a marriage. Marriage is all around, but, at least for me, wasn't something I considered too much before getting engaged.

I mean, I thought about marrying my boyfriend and how amazing it is that my parents have been married for nearly 30 years. I've seen movies and read books. I thought about marriage, but the consideration I gave it before getting engaged is nothing compared to what I think about now. Before I was thinking of marriage in terms of what it meant to other people or in other situations. When it came to thinking about marrying my now-fiance, I thought about how I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. But it's more than that now.

Now I think of marriage in terms of what it means to me personally and as part of a couple. I think of mundane things like what it means to share a bank account or a bathroom. What it means to be with each other every day, all the time. It's going to be amazing, particularly because we've been long distance for the majority of our relationship, but it may very well also be a struggle. Part of the struggle will be, and has been, fully sharing my life with another person, for better or worse.

I recently read Tori Spelling's memoir "sTORI Telling" (don't judge, it's actually really good). In her book she discusses her first failed marriage and her relationship with and second marriage to Dean McDermott. One revelation she makes is of the conscious changes she makes to her own behaviors  to better herself and her relationship with Dean. While the two are working through ending their first marriages, Tori talks about her deliberate choice to be open and honest with Dean rather than acting timid and alone:

I'd hear Dean on the phone with his wife discussing the children. When he hung up, I'd have withdrawn. He'd ask what was wrong, and my first instinct was to say, Nothing, nothing's wrong. I'm tired. I have a headache. But I decided to break that habit. I always told Dean the truth. I'd say, "I feel like you're going to go back to her." It was scary, making myself vulnerable like that, but I was determined not to repeat my past.

I really love that she admits this decision, because this has been true for me too in my relationship. When you're single and your actions really only affect yourself, lying is easy. No one gets hurt. There aren't many long-term consequences to white lies outside of a relationship. But once your life and someone else's are intertwined, you have to open up. You can't hide. If you do then you're not giving the other person a fair and honest chance to know you. And knowing each other's worst and most insecure moments but loving and supporting each other anyways is a huge part of being in love. It's a huge part of being in a committed relationship. Besides, when you're in love you no longer want to hide anything about your life from your partner. At least Tori and I don't.

Wedding Marriage planning has taught me this. Considering my future, the rest of my life, with my fiance has shown me that the key to relationship success is honesty and trust, even if opening up is scary or awkward at first. I'm at the point where complete transparency in my relationship is second nature, but at first this was something I actually had to decide to do, just like Tori. I had to make the choice between hiding within myself and closing my fiance off from the "real" me and telling him everything I thought and felt and allowing him into my life in a huge way.

And maybe that's the biggest message of all: marriage can't be superficial or it's doomed to fail. Marriage is a complex relationship which involves every part of the people in the relationship. It's a two-way street in which we have to both open ourselves up and let the other person in. You can't have one without the other; it's reliant on total harmony. And that's a great and beautiful thing.