Wedding vs Marriage

"Wow!!! Its been a year already"...I have heard that from so many friends and family when I tell them that this week Daniel and I are celebrating our 1 year wedding anniversary. In so many ways this year has gone by VERY quickly, and I too often find myself thinking "a year already" how can that be? This time last year I was putting the final touches on our special day and getting ready to say "I do" and think that a year has already gone by blows my mind. The year leading up to the wedding seemed to take forever, and this one has blown by. This got me thinking about wedding and marriages...

My friend Miriam asked me before we got married why we were getting married and what was the purpose of a wedding. I told her that it was a day to show people how much we care about each other and that we planned on spending our lives together. Her response was simply, I plan on doing that with Greg and we don't need a special day to make that happen. Fast forward 1 year...and they are getting married in August (and even though I wont be there, I am SOOOOO excited and happy for them). So what changed for them? After many years together, they just wanted to make it "official" in every sense of the word.

To Miriam and Greg, and to Daniel and I, a wedding is just a day while a marriage is how your live your life together. Many people get so carried away in the "wedding" that they forget that it is only a day, mind you a very special day, but it is one day in your life. If people spent as much time planning the marriage as they did the wedding, I think a lot more married couple would be much happier.

So much time and effort goes into planning the wedding and then no planning goes into the marriage. A successful marriage takes effort and compromise. Its tough some days! There are ups and downs that you go through and if you aren't working together, it will fall part and quickly. Trust me, I have been there. My first marriage fell apart in less than a year! I am so thankful for the lessons that I learned from that marriage, because now I know what it takes to really love someone and to be loved back by them. I am so thankful everyday to have someone in my life who I can just be me with, someone who doesn't judge me if I am having a bad day, but instead knows just what to say to make it all better.

I would say that I am lucky to have had a beautiful wedding and (so far) a great marriage, but I don't think luck has anything really to do with it. Both have been a lot of work and I am receiving back from it what I put in.And like our wedding, our marriage wouldn't be a success either without the support from our family and friends...so thank you!!!