If the hubby and I were traditional types of people, we would probably just now be getting married. We, on the other hand have been married for six months (today). Like most military couples, we took a quick trip to the altar. We technically had a seven month engagement, but we planned our wedding in about three months.
Yes, we somehow managed to pull off a “real” wedding in three months. Dress, flowers, venue, hair, rings, the whole nine yards. When we were engaged in July 2011 I wanted a fall wedding. Since I didn’t think fall 2011 was realistic, I had my heart set on fall of 2012. Then military life reality struck; we had no idea where the hubby/we would be in fall of 2012. Call it naive or wishful thinking, but I decided we wouldn’t set a date until the hubby received his next set of orders. Months went by without any word from the Navy. Finally, right before Thanksgiving, the orders were in… and not at all what we wanted. The hubby would be leaving in February. So a quick winter wedding before the hubby left was the only solution. Tears were shed. Of course, I was immediately mad at myself for not planning for a winter wedding from the beginning. Lesson learned and the planning began. I forgot to mention that not only did I get married in three months, the venue was six hours away so I never saw the venue until after it was booked. There were days I was thrilled to marry my man so soon, but there were moments when I thought there was no way we were going to pull the wedding off.
I remember going wedding dress shopping in December for my February wedding and only being able to select a dress from the stock. I ended up finding two dresses I liked that both fit almost perfectly. Well, except for being ten feet too long for my short stature. The one I ended up selecting had a lipstick stain on the hip (who wears lipstick to try on white dresses?) so we got a huge discount + a discount for buying a sample dress so we came in way under budget. One perk of a quick wedding. The dress shop was wonderful and had the entire dress cleaned. No more red hip!
The wedding wouldn’t have been possible without my Mom and Grandmother who spent hours on decorations. My grandmother spent the entire month of January at my parent’s house crafting. The made 150 favor bags, 13 centerpieces, mantel arrangements, dancing shoe tags, etc. You name it, they were working on it.
Worker bees going strong
Three months later, I was walking down the aisle.
we did what we came here to do
After a quick honeymoon to the Biltmore, the hubby left for training one week after our wedding day. The harsh, harsh reality of military lives.
Last married couple picture for a while
Our engagement/wedding was my first taste of the hard reality of military life. I learned that you can’t always get what you want when you are married to a military man. Sometimes your fall or spring wedding becomes a winter wedding. Sometimes the flyers for a tropical honeymoon have to be put away for a later vacation. Sometimes your career has to be put on hold. Sometimes you have to live places you don’t want to live so that you can actually live with your husband. I’ve learned you have to seize the moment because sometimes that is all you get. As spouses, we make a lot of sacrifices and our lives don’t always go as planned. That is the thing people don’t really talk about. Maybe they don’t even think about it. Sure, one family member joins the military, but everyone makes sacrifices. With all of that said, I would never, ever in a million years trade this life for anything else. The pride I feel seeing my husband in uniform outweighs all of the negatives. Okay, seeing him saluted is pretty darn cool too.
You Might Also Like
Beauty Still Remains 