Legally Married- 3 years!

 

Hey hey Monday! Today marks 3 years since Shane and I got legally married. While we don't really celebrate this date, I thought it was worth commemorating on here.

For those who weren't around back then, we got married at the church where we met (Second Baptist Church) in Houston, Texas with just our good friend/Shane's former boss/pastor, Russell, and his wife Liz there. We got legally married for military reasons/benefits/etc. 

Getting legally (and oftentimes, secretly) married after getting engaged is extremely common for military servicemembers and their spouses. In fact, I don't really know any other military couple that hasn't done this! While I was hesitant to do this at first because I didn't want to take away from having ONE special day (oh, the irony...), it made sense for many reasons. To still make our "one" big day super special later on, we honestly treated this as if it was any other day and like we were just running another wedding errand! 

We did tell our parents beforehand (and got their blessing with doing this) and just one or two other people that were close to us. The intention was to keep this legal "wedding" always private and secret, but when we postponed our supposed May 1 wedding due to COVID, we ended up telling everyone else that we were actually already married.

So, on October 24, 2019, just 2 months after getting engaged, we headed to the courthouse in Downtown Houston to get our marriage license and then had to see a judge to get it waived so we could get "married" that day. Texas has a law where you have to wait a certain amount of time after getting your marriage license before getting married, to prevent drunk and haste marriages, hah, but the judge waived that time expectation for our military reasoning. Shane was in Virginia (or elsewhere) for military training at the time, so when we planned for him to come in town that weekend, we decided it was perfect timing to get this legal marriage part done.

Getting "married" around Halloweentime was not in my original plans, but it did make for some interesting decor over the desk where we dealt with all of the paperwork at the courthouse!

I was extremely glad when we found out that we didn't have to actually have a ceremony at the courthouse, and that we could still have Russell marry us at the chapel at the Second Baptist campus where we spent MANY MANY a day when we were dating. This chapel was also where we had our later December ceremony. Russell graciously ended up marrying us time and time again after this small, private October ceremony! 

My mom actually happened to be in town at the time, but we didn't even have her go to the church with us because we didn't want to make it a "big thing" and we didn't want Shane's parents and my dad to miss out. Right after our short ceremony, where Russell mostly emphasized and focused on the engagement so as not to take away from our future wedding, we went back to my apartment to pick up my mom before doing lots of "actual wedding" planning. This was before our May date would eventually be postponed.

Our first stop was to stop by our jeweler at Uptown Diamond in Houston to pick out my wedding band. It was so special having both Shane and my mom there for this! 

We then headed to our caterer for our first tasting. Once again, I was blessed to have both Shane and my mom there for this! When we did the second tasting later on, Stephanie joined me for that.

On our busy day of wedding planning, we ran a few other errands, and then Shane and I had to rush to some outdoor gardens to meet our photographer for our engagement pics! It's kind of special how it turned out- our engagement pics were taken on the day that we were (unknowingly to most people) married.

What a unique yet special memory this day and wedding event had turned out to be. It's very hard for me to wrap my head around this being THREE years ago! And to think, our ultimate wedding celebration ended up happening over 2 years after this day...yikes. What a wedding/marriage journey we had!

Thanks to all of those who have given their love and support to celebrate with us...from October 24, 2019 and every wedding together since, hah!

Hope you enjoy your Monday. Shane and I are unpacking after getting back last night from his 30th birthday trip! If all goes as planned, I'll be back here in this space tomorrow with a recap of our little getaway!