What does marriage feel like?

This is the question that everyone keeps asking me since the wedding.

How do you feel?

Does it feel different?

How has your relationship changed?

If you had asked me on August 3rd if I had anticipated feeling any different after the wedding, I would have told you no. The only difference is that I would no longer feel the pressure that is associated with planning the events that go along with a wedding. Now, 2 weeks after the wedding, I can tell you that I do feel different. I feel:

Proud

Confident

Inspired

Even more in love

Motivated

This may sound odd, but being a married woman gives me a sense of pride in myself and in our new family. Since we started living together once we were engaged to save money, we were almost 100% positive that we completed our relationship's time in the adjustment phase, and we would enter marriage "prepared". Well, premarital counseling eliminated those thoughts and helped us realize that we are far from adjusted. It will take more than just a year and a half of living together to be adjusted in a serious relationship AND for us this was good news. After the honeymoon, we were happy to see that all of the "OMG we live together" excitement wasn't eliminated since we lived together for the past year and a half.

Personally, I was sick and tired of hearing people frown/make comments/suggest that moving in together before the wedding would take away all excitement. In our situation, it made sense. Neither of us was living at home when we got engaged so that would be double rent, utilities, ect, in New York, mind you. Saving for a wedding would be impossible AND we were not in a situation where our parents would be paying for the wedding. So shortly after he asked my father for my hand in marriage, we moved in together and started to save aggressively for our wedding. And honestly, with all of the last minute stress of planning a wedding and the details that need to be completed after the wedding, I couldn't imagine having to merge 2 lives into one and apartment/house hunting. Judge me if you want, but I would greatly appreciate if you spare your words of trying to make me feel guilty/sinful/ect.

After the wedding, as we finally get to organize our house, put away gifts, and really work on beautifying our living space, our relationship feels so fresh! We really waited to personalize the house until after the wedding because we didn't want to splurge when we knew the wedding was coming. We used what we had from our 2 bachelor/ette pads, and made it work. Now it feels like everything is coming together. We are super happy, excited, and more in love everyday. Staying like this takes a conscious effort, but we are putting the work in to lay a firm foundation for our marriage.

I cannot wait to see what forever looks like.

And I promise I will do a full wedding recap soon! It's taken awhile to get our photos back and the file size is huge, so they take extra long to download. A picture filled post is long overdue!