Many Years in a House > One Wedding Day

What a week! Married on Saturday. Hiking with friends on Sunday. Picking up and packing the moving van on Monday. Driving from Denver to Oklahoma on Tuesday. Finishing the drive to Houston on Wednesday and arriving at the closing meeting on our house at 3pm.

And then there was the unpacking (thanks to the help of our amazing H-town friends).

I won't go into details because this is still a blog about weddings, not post-wedding life (even though I'm now getting e-mails from The Nest instead of The Knot). But I thought it was important to express how happy I am to be a homeowner. I now feel like all the time/energy/resources we expend on our house is an investment in ourselves, our life, and our future family.

We couldn't have afforded to purchase a house if we had spent any more money on our wedding. As it was, we nearly wiped our accounts clean. Luckily, we ended up owing a little less than we anticipated (thanks to our amazing mortgage lender who purposefully overestimated). We can use the spare money to pay off the credit card bills we racked up this past month. We hate paying interest on credit card bills. What a waste!

We definitely could have spent more on our wedding if we had used other people's money (i.e., our families' dough). But then we would've had to share the decision-making. Don't get me wrong; I adore Matt's family. But it was hard enough trying to reach a consensus with two people, yet alone four or six.

I honestly feel like I was able to have the best of both worlds: an inexpensive and memorable wedding that was a true representation of us. What a concept!

A wedding is--after all--only a day (or a week, depending on how you do it). A wedding is not even really the start of a life together (e.g., Matt and I have been in a monogamous relationship for nearly three years; we have lived together for two; and we have moved across the country together). It's so easy to become consumed by the details of wedding planning. It's much harder to remember that the "special day" should really just be one of many "special days" in your life together.

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