My Favorite Part About The First Year Of Marriage: Togetherness

Well hello there hive!

Remember me?

{Photo by Shoot Me Now Photography}

No? Well, I was that bee who got married last June and wrote about how to pee in your wedding dress without needing help and who's fiance designed LED luminary escort cards and built a 6 foot tall cupcake tower. Or if you're curious for a quick glimpse of what our wedding was all about, check out my two details recaps here and here, or my wiki.

I know it's been a while since I blogged here, and there's a whole new group of brides reading now (congrats on your engagements, by the way!). But our one year anniversary is today, and so I thought I would drop by and give you all a little update on our first year of marriage.

First of all, married life is pretty awesome!

{Photo by Shoot Me Now Photography}

We've been seriously having a blast over the past year, and as much as I LOVED planning our wedding during our 15 month engagement, being married is about a thousand times better!

Now that we're not busy DIYing and crafting and planning 24/7, we have so much time for just us. And let me tell you guys, it's pretty refreshing. There actually is life after the wedding is over, and there is nothing better than spending time making plans for the rest of your lives together, and not just plans for a wedding day!

 {Personal photo of us out enjoying life at a friend's party, with San Francisco in the background.}

So what plans have we been making for our future? Well, after we'd had a couple of months to recover from all the wedding festivities and our honeymoon, we sat down and took a hard look at our goals, and how soon we could achieve them. Namely, when could we afford to buy a house. And living in the San Francisco area, after crunching some numbers, well, it just wasn't going to happen any time soon. So together, we made a plan to change our lives for the better, financially speaking, and we set out to find somewhere more affordable to live.

We narrowed it down to either Denver, CO or Raleigh-Durham, NC for various reasons. And while this move pretty much consumed our lives for the last 9 months or so, it has been one of the most enjoyable times of my life. Working on this with my husband, to map out exactly what we wanted in a new city, scoping out said cities together, and working out the logistics of a huge move together was (and I almost hate to admit this, because I was crazy-in-love with all things weddings) way more enjoyable than planning our wedding mostly by myself, because Mr. Cola wasn't very interested.

It was the togetherness of it all that made me happy. And still does!

{Personal photo of us together in the Rocky Mountains, while scoping out Denver as a possible city to move to.}

And that's the lesson I've learned most from our first year of marriage: there's nothing better than being a united front and doing things together as husband and wife.

Sure, we do things independently like meeting up with friends, always have, always will. But when it comes to big life decisions (or even just what brands to get at the grocery store), I love making the decision together with my husband. Pre-marriage I always considered Mr. Cola in my decision making and planning, but now, now we get to do that together. Maybe it's the logical, planner in me (I think making lists is fun!), but hashing out pros and cons, having in-depth conversations and coming up with the best solution together has been one of the things I've enjoyed most about our first year together as a married couple.

Yep, we're partners in every sense of the word, and I'm loving it!

{Personal photos from our Florida vacation in March with my in-laws.}

And we really worked our partnership skills about two months ago when we made a cross country move to Raleigh, NC, to our new home. Four days in a car with our three cats and one gecko, driving 2,800 miles, while we crossed our fingers that our moving company would deliver all our belongings unharmed was pretty stressful. But we got through it in one piece, and we got through it together.

So now we're living on the other side of the country, and finally starting to get settled in and checking out our new state (a state I'd only been to twice before we moved to it!). But don't think we're going to just lie down and stop making plans now that we've completed this big change!

 {Haha, get it? A picture by Shoot Me Now Photography of me lying down, when I just said I'm not going to lie down....yeah, I'm not great with the puns!}

Heck no, we're still making big plans, and hopefully by next spring we'll be purchasing our first house together, after we learn the area a little better. And until then, you know I've been decorating and DIYing stuff around our new rental house, which I've been writing about here on my personal blog.

So that's my little update on our first year of marriage. Being married = awesome sauce!

And you know what else? I've held true to every promise I made to Mr. Cola in the vows I wrote and read to him one year ago today:

"I will try every single day to make you happy. I will listen when you need to vent, comfort you when you've had a rough day, and always be on your side, no matter what.

I vow to spend the rest of my life with you, laughing, sharing, building memories, and thoroughly enjoying whatever adventures may come our way. I vow to build the best life together with you that we can, filled with passion and achievements, and be fully devoted to the love we share.

And I promise to love you with my whole heart, forever."

Happy one year anniversary to all the June 2010 bees out there, and here's to many, many more years of happiness together as a married couple!

XOXO,

Mrs. Cola

"Nothing could be as exciting as we have now, unless it is what we will have together in the future."

{Photo by Shoot Me Now Photography, quote source unknown, via LovingYou.com}