Holy moly! ONE YEAR. Where has the time gone? It feels like yesterday I was still planning our dream wedding. I can’t believe it has been a full year since the best weekend of my life. The last year has been filled with many laughs, new places, new friends, and a few tears..but it has been the best year of my life spent with my favorite person in the world. I thought it would be fun to give you guys both Patrick and I’s perspective on our first year of marriage! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you guys enjoy reading this post as much as we enjoyed writing it!
Patrick
Through this first year of marriage, I’ve learned a lot about my relationship with Rachel, as well as a lot about myself. While I’d love to sit here and say this first year has been a perfect, and easy transition in to married life, it hasn’t always been that way.
When Rachel and I got married a year ago today, our life didn’t change a whole lot. Yes, we were wearing wedding bands and calling each other husband and wife, but we had already been living together for quite some time. It almost felt like we had been “married” long before the actual wedding happened. For that reason, I think we were both relatively comfortable on our wedding day. Fast forward 6 months later, and we’d be making another big decision.
In July of this past year, I was offered a job to move out to the east coast. I won’t bore you with the details of what I do, but it was a job I felt I needed to take. I knew asking Rachel “Hey, do you want to move to Georgia” wasn’t going to go over well. Although I knew she wasn’t very excited, or excited at all, to make this move, she was going to make the best of it.
We moved out here to Georgia without any real expectations of what life would be like out here. We had become accustomed to life in a big city, with anything you wanted or needed right at your fingertips. It has been a bit different out here, in a much smaller town. It has been a huge adjustment, that in some ways, we are still going through now. While it might sound bad at first, this move has helped us grow up in many ways.
This first year of marriage has taught me this; Marriage is a huge commitment, but an incredible one! I get to share the rest of my life with my best friend. We have somebody to celebrate the highs with, and vent to about the lows. But the most important thing of all….I’ll always have somebody to get up and let the dogs out in the morning when I REALLY don’t want to (which is all of the time).
By no means is this permanent, as we both know that home is about 1,200 miles back west on I-20, but I have no doubt in my mind that we are better people, both for our marriage, and for ourselves because of this experience.
Rachel
Marriage for us began when we said our “I do’s” and walked down the aisle after our beautiful ceremony. Patrick and I lived together before we got married and so many people told us it would be different once we got married but I never believed them. I always thought that since we already lived together, it would be just the same. Boy was I wrong. There is something different about knowing that your significant other is who you will spend the rest of your life with. You will wake up with them every morning and go to sleep by them every night. There is something different about knowing your search for the perfect one is over and you’ve sealed the deal knowing that you’re married. Marriage to me is still so weird and crazy, but it is truly one of the coolest and most special things.
Our wedding weekend was special to us in so many ways. It’s still crazy to us think that after three of dating and a year year of planning, that this day, the day we spent countless hours planning went by so fast. Our wedding weekend was truly one big blur to me. So many people told us that it would be like that but I never believed them. Thank the lord for pictures and videos! I was so overwhelmed by the amount of love that was in the air and couldn’t believe all of our favorite people were actually in the same room for a few hours. I don’t remember the small details like the food, cake (I cannot wait to finally enjoy a piece from the top layer today!!), the flowers, or the music. The one thing I can truly remember though is the look on Patrick’s face when I walked down the aisle, and the special moments we had with our friends and family before and at the ceremony and dancing the night away.
This past year Patrick and I got married, went on our honeymoon to Whistler and Seattle, lived life in Houston for a few months after our wedding, Patrick landed a new job so we picked up and moved to Georgia, met many new faces, been in many friends weddings, spent our first holiday season married together, watched my sister marry her best friend, visited many new places including a few days in Colorado with our best friends celebrating our anniversary and birthdays. I have learned so many things in this past year but there are three that really stick out in my mind.
- Home is where you’re together. When Patrick came to me and told me that he got a new job opportunity, I was completely unsure of what to do. I had lived in Texas my whole life but there was nothing stopping us. We decided that we didn’t have kids yet, didn’t own a house, and figured we needed to take this step now for Patrick’s career. It has been one of the hardest things I have ever done but I have realized that no matter where we are as long as Patrick (and our pups, lol) are there, that will be home.
- Always kiss goodnight. I cannot explain the feeling of comfort I have when Patrick and I kiss goodnight. It’s a feeling of knowing that no matter what happened during our days, we will always have each other.
- If you can survive a long road trip with three dogs together, you can do anything. This year with moving and driving back and forth to Texas to see family, we have made many road trips with the pups. 13+ hours in the car with three dogs would make anyone crazy, but I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else! There is nothing better than having a good conversation, singing your favorite songs, and stopping for a blizzard with your favorite person.
This past year has truly been so amazing and I cannot wait for the many, many years of memories ahead with my HUSBAND!
