I can’t believe it’s been ONE YEAR since the best day of our lives and now we’re here in Turks and Caicos Islands celebrating our anniversary. It feels like just yesterday I was a soon-to-be gushing bride, planning our fairytale wedding and enjoying every single moment of being engaged. That saying “time flies when you’re having fun” is the biggest understatement I have ever heard…
This past year of marriage has been like all the other 9 years I’ve spent with Jonathan; the best of my life. Being married to my best friend just makes life that much sweeter, but it’s always been that way with him. He completes my life, he makes it so fun, full of adventure, laughter, and all the things that make my heart so full. I say it every day, and I thank God for it, that I am truly the luckiest girl in the world to do life with the man of my dreams, who I have been able to call my husband for the last 365 days. I still look at him to this day the way that I am in all of these photos, with pure love and admiration. I’m in awe of the man that he is, and I’m so humbled and proud to be his wife.
So yes, marriage is bliss and I’m more in love with my husband now than I’ve ever been, but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy. We have our moments, our disagreements, and times when we annoy each other; we’re human. Through all of it and at the end of the day, we always remember what matters most and we overcome it together. I think what’s super important, and it’s something my mom has always taught me, is to always maintain a high level of respect for one another. That has been something that’s really helped us when we get into arguments. Sometimes we have to take a step back and remind ourselves of it, but everything we do, we do with love.
We lived together before getting married, and it wasn’t something that my parents necessarily agreed with since they’re old school and wanted me to do things traditionally. It had nothing to do with Jonathan personally because my family loves him, sometimes I think more than me haha! It was just the way that they were raised and what they believe in, but they also understood that it was the best decision for both of us financially to live together before the wedding. So since we did, being married wasn’t all that different from what we were used to. We already shared a bank account and did most of the things that married couples do. The one thing that just became more real and required more serious conversations was about investing our money. We work with financial advisors now to do that and plan our future goals, which has been great and we feel very secure and confident about the path we’re on to save and build the life that we want together. That has required us to be very honest with each other and talk through what’s most important to each of us, what we want when, and so much more that we didn’t necessarily ever talk in depth about before getting married. We’ve had some great conversations and have realized just how much we align in our values and the things that we care the most about, but we also have things that we don’t completely agree on, and that’s fine too. Not agreeing on everything is part of what makes our relationship so healthy, because we get to learn from and challenge each other.
As I lay here typing all of this with Jonathan right next to me, I’m getting that feeling of being in a fairytale again, just the way that I felt exactly one year ago today. We’re celebrating at one of the most beautiful beaches in the world, and we’re just so grateful for all of it; to be here with each other, to be in love, to have the best family and friends in the world who celebrated with us on our wedding day and are now wishing us a happy anniversary, to be husband and wife… So to summarize how our first year of marriage has gone, here it is, plain and simple: it’s been a fairytale with bloopers in between and we haven’t gotten off the cloud that we’ve been on since we said “I do.”