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Today is our three year wedding anniversary! As I look back on pictures, I’ve been thinking about how different our life together looks today from how I imagined it would be on our wedding day. And that’s a very good thing, because I love our life right now so much.
In our three years of marriage, Nick and I have moved across the ocean three times.
We move to new cities we have never visited, not knowing what to expect, not even having a place to live. We stay in hotels and go house hunting. We drive around and explore our new neighborhoods and find our new favorite restaurants. We sleep on our air mattress and improvise one-pan meals while waiting for the movers.
The movers come. We unpack boxes and hang up pictures and arrange furniture. Time flies. The movers come back and pack us up, and we do it all over again.
In one of those moves, we lost almost everything we owned. But nothing that actually mattered.
We walked on a glacier in New Zealand and drunk mulled wine in Denmark.
We climbed up a mountain in Hawaii to watch the sunrise. We stayed up late and looked up at the stars in Yosemite.
We cuddled under blankets during a cold Connecticut winter in a drafty house. We took naps under palm trees in Hawaii.
We go grocery shopping. We meal prep. We go to the gym. We fall asleep watching TV. We take turns cooking. We eat the same meals over and over. We clean the house. We make budgets. We fold the laundry and get stains out of carpets and forget to take out the garbage.
Nick washes the dishes. I dry them.
We sit on the couch reading books. We binge watch Netflix shows (currently: Better Call Saul). We have impassioned arguments about Harry Potter and Star Wars and Game of Thrones other nerdy things.
We laugh about ridiculous things that no one else will ever think are funny. We sit around doing absolutely nothing.
Nick makes me coffee even though he doesn’t drink it. I make him chili even though I hate it.
Sometimes we want the same things. Sometimes we want opposite things. We’ve always been able to figure it out. Sometimes we make mistakes and we just apologize and move on.
We believe in each other, encourage each other, challenge each other.
Once we bought each other the same Christmas present (t-shirts from our favorite brewery). Sometimes we accidentally wear matching shirts from our universities and we don’t bother to change.
On our wedding day, our priest told us that your wedding day shouldn’t be the best day of your lives. He said that it should just keep getting better and better. 3 years later, I can say that it has only gotten better and better, better than I ever thought possible.
I had no idea that year 3 could be better than year 2, but, somehow, it was.
While in year 2 we were still on our “two year honeymoon,” in year 3, we were faced with some hard choices. We changed our entire life plan. We took risks and made choices. We learned that life is full of surprises, and, more importantly, how to be on the lookout for them.
We let go of everything we thought we knew and everything we thought we wanted. We reevaluated what matters to us. During the past year, we learned a lot about being open, about communication, and about what we really want out of our life together. It’s made us closer and happier than I ever could have imagined on our wedding day. And I was pretty happy on that day.
I can only hope that the next years will be exactly the same and completely different, filled with the same love and same traditions and new adventures.
This is too sweet, Carolann!! Happy Anniversary to you guys! We’ve accidentally bought one another the same gift, too 🙂 I agree 100% with your wedding priest!
Thanks Audrey. I don’t remember much else that he said, but those words stuck with me. He said he always feels bad when people come back to him 10 years after their wedding and tell him that their wedding was the best day of their lives. I think that they probably just mean it was an incredible day, but for me, that was a piece of encouragement to look for the good and to keep working to make our marriage the best it can be. 3 years in I feel like we know each other so much better and that to me makes it even better.
Happy Anniversary! It really is amazing how fast the time goes by. Wishing you many more wonderful years together. 🙂
Thanks so much Jenn! Time certainly flies when you’re constantly moving around 😉
But it’s an awesome adventure!
This made me so happy to read! Happy anniversary, friend! You were a beautiful bride!
Thank you so much Chelsea! It was such a beautiful day.
This is a beautiful post! Happy Anniversary!
Thank you Erika!!
Happy Anniversary!! I love all the happiness in this pictures. 🙂
Thank you!! It was such a happy day! Nick had just gotten home from a 5-month deployment and we were about to move to Hawaii to finally be together. And we were married! I didn’t think I could handle all the happiness 🙂
Happy Anniversary 🙂 I love reading posts like this!
Thanks! I do too! I never considered myself a sappy person until I started blogging and crying my eyes out over strangers’ love stories :)))
This is so inspiring! I love the post:)
Thank you Irene!!
Happy 3 years, you guys! You have had so many adventures together! Wishing you many more!
Thank you so much, Rachel! The past 3 years have been filled with so many amazing times. I can’t wait to see what’s next.
I love what your priest said on your wedding day that your wedding day shouldn’t be the happiest day of your life but that it should get better and better! It sounds like everything has been getting better and better for y’all, even though y’all had a pretty difficult year when you lost everything. And I love that y’all got each other the same thing one year for Christmas! I think that’s a sign that y’all are meant to be!