Shane CoBefore my wedding took place a year ago, I spent some time blogging about the events and planning that led up to the big day. Everything went off without a hitch. Well, it’s been exactly a year now since my wife and I tied the knot, so I thought I’d give a bit of an update on the first year of marriage.
We made a very nice weekend out of our anniversary. We went to the exact same resort where we got married 12 months prior, and even visited the spot where we exchanged our vows. It was a bit weird knowing that the last time we stood there was not only a year ago to the day, but was also filled with our closest friends and family members. The only time that will ever happen in our lives. For our anniversary, the hotel made us a mini version of our wedding cake, and it really allowed us to appreciate our first year of marriage and recreate many feelings from the wedding day.
The first year of marriage was a learning experience, that’s for sure. Even though my wife and I spent a tremendous amount of time together in the years of dating and the time in which we were engaged, there is something different about the permanence of the designation of husband and wife. Prior to our getting married, I had known for some time that I was going to propose to her, I knew she would say yes, and once engaged, I obviously knew that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together. However, it wasn’t until this year that, I suppose you could say, it ‘sunk in’. For example, if one of us upsets the other, I get more of a feeling of, ‘I have no choice but to figure this out with her’. It’s a bit hard to explain this as a positive feeling, but to me it has been a wonderful growth opportunity. The Wall Street Journal recently had an interesting op-ed piece on ‘Advice on Marriage from a Divorcée’. I thought it was actually quite a clever take on a topic – advice from someone for whom it didn’t work out. If anyone has any thoughts or experiences they’d like to share about their first year of marriage, words of wisdom on longevity in a marriage, or anything else fun to share, it’d be great to hear some stories.
