When you’ve experienced struggles and loss in your life, you know that you are capable of being strong. You know that you are able to handle whatever life throws at you and that’s a great feeling. A better feeling is when you find a reliable person to support you through life. Someone that you know will always protect you and do things in your best interest. Someone you can be vulnerable with and not feel the need to “impress”.
Before my husband and I got married we’d been through multiple job layoffs, family death, friendship losses, long distance separation and spells of depression, anxiety and anger. We felt like we had been tested again and again and each time we found that we could always trust one another to be there and lend support and love. So we were confident that we were ready for a real commitment and marriage didn’t scare us.
We had a long engagement, 1.5 years, and we spent a year of this time living together in a house that we jointly purchased. During this time we also bought a dog together – it’s safe to say that we were pretty committed prior to our wedding day.
I utilized the long engagement to plan the wedding ahead of time so that there was no pressure as the day approached. My plan worked like a charm and I was able to avoid a lot of stress because of my organization and time-management.
The day of the rehearsal came and the expected, unexpected drama began. In the middle of the rehearsal dinner the venue manager called me to say that our tent provider was violating the rules of their agreement by causing damage to the property. I left the dinner and drove down to the site to get everything straightened out. Things were resolved fairly quickly but my heartrate was a little high.
The rest of the rehearsal went well and my Matron of Honor came home with me for the evening to stay for support. After she went to sleep I was on the phone dealing with family drama until about midnight. My heartrate was up again, so I took a sleeping pill to get myself to bed.
I woke up and got my hair and makeup done. During my makeup session I got a call that my flowers were given to someone else! Luckily my in-laws were able to deal with this and get them back! To help me avoid a heart attack my wedding gift was passed along to me from my husband. It was a beautiful diamond bracelet to wear during the wedding, plus some amazing perfume! Gahh! He did very well!
I arrived at the wedding venue right behind my parents and was quickly presented with some homemade moonshine by my dad. What a guy!
I changed into my dress and strategically avoided my husband up until the ceremony began.
The ceremony was perfect. There was light rain up until it was my turn to walk down the aisle, then the skies cleared. The words of commitment from our pastor resonated with us and our vows brought many people of tears. We were beyond thrilled to face the crowd as Mr. and Mrs. when we were officially announced.
The reception was beyond fun! We danced so much and the time just completely flew by!
I was able to surprise my husband by singing the song for his Mother/Son dance with his best man playing the guitar and singing backup. It was very special and went off without a hitch.
We were both so sad when it came time for our last dance. We wanted to night to last forever!
Our best man drove us to our hotel and got us all settled, even ordering us pizza to soak up our alcohol! We tried to get to sleep quickly to prepare for our early 7am flight to Mexico. It was very hard to wind down from a day like that; the perfect day.
This past year that we’ve been married certainly hasn’t been dull. We’ve had our share of good times and bad – as to be expected. I think that we have continued to learn better ways to problem solve in our relationship and have been able to get better at compromise. We have grown in many ways and have respect for the challenge that marriage is. We are most definitely up for the challenge!
