After celebrating our one year anniversary and new engagement at a lovely restaurant in Richmond, we began making the calls to our loved ones. Most of them knew it was coming anyway, but it was still fun to spread the official news.
Just a few weeks later, I began my senior year and it was such a relief to know how to “plan” for life after college. Since Kev was just beginning his last 2 years of college in Lynchburg, I knew I’d be moving there once we got married.
We started making some of the bigger plans such as date and location fairly quickly, since we knew venues would book up quickly. We decided on a July 19th wedding date at my home church in Baltimore, so I could have a little time in between my college graduation and the big day. It was already going to be quite a busy summer anyway! My mom was a huge help in getting most of those initial appointments lined up, since I was still in school.
I enjoyed every last bit of my senior year. I lived in an on-campus apartments with 3 of my good friends and had a great time. Between fun with my sorority, finishing up ministry on campus, and working a part-time job, it was a busy but fun year. My course-load wasn’t too bad, since I had finished up most of the requirements for my major.
Since we were both living away from the people who would officiate our wedding, we prepared for marriage by watching pre-marital counseling videos. During one of my visits to Mississippi that year, we did have one face-to-face talk with Kev’s pastor who would be helping officiate the ceremony {along with my old youth pastor who was with us when we met and my present pastor}. We probably would have benefited more from face-to-face premarital counseling, but we did the best we could and we’re learning as we go! 🙂
I don’t recall any big fears or issues as we prepared for our marriage. We did start to discover that we weren’t as alike as we thought. 🙂 We had the major things in common that really are the crux to making a marriage work, but we learned that neither of us was as perfect as we had originally thought and we even argued some. Our issues weren’t anything that a talk with a wiser person couldn’t cure.
I graduated from college in May and moved back to Baltimore until our wedding. I worked at a temp agency while finishing up final details for the wedding and continuing to look for jobs in Lynchburg. The fact that I would be getting married soon started to sink in as showers began happening {although my sweet college friends through me a shower before we graduated too} and wedding gifts started piling up. I still hadn’t found any promising job opportunities in Lynchburg, but I wasn’t overly concerned. I figured I’d hit the ground running once I was living there permanently anyway.
A couple weeks before the wedding, Kev and I drove my belongings down to Lynchburg so we wouldn’t have to deal with all that after our honeymoon. We were able to furnish most of our new apartment with a hodge podge of hand-me-down furniture between the both of us and it was so special to see our first home come together. It wouldn’t be long before we’d be husband and wife and our adventure as a married couple would begin!
