In the Beginning…

There’s no better place to start than the beginning, so that’s where I’ll start – with an introduction. Back in May, on a beautiful, sunny, warm Memorial Day weekend, I finally married my husband after five and a half years of dating.

We met my second day of my freshman (his sophomore) year of college. Far from love at first sight, however, I thought my husband was a pompous jerk (and his impressions of me weren’t much better!). After our paths continued to cross, we slowly became acquaintances and then friends, but I wanted nothing more to do with him. In fact, my husband had to ask me out nine times before I would agree to go out with him on one date!

Unfortunately for us, our post-marriage living situation will be a bit unconventional, and because of it, the proposal was far from a surprise. At the time when he was thinking of proposing, he was in his third year of medical school (he graduated the weekend before our wedding), and as anyone involved with the medical school process knows, you often have very little say in where you wind up for residency, particularly if you pick a competitive field, like my husband. I happen to be pursuing a Ph.D. in oncology and am currently in my fourth year, with several years left to go, so we knew there was a very good chance that we would be living apart. Knowing this fact, rather than surprise me with a proposal, we chose to sit down and discuss the situation in detail – after all, starting a marriage out living apart for the first 3-4 years is a less than ideal situation.

Obviously, we decided to forge ahead. Since I knew he was planning on proposing, we actually went ahead and met with vendors, and had signed and booked our venue before he had even officially proposed! As it turned out, my husband is doing his one year internship here in D.C. where I am located, but will be moving several states away right around our one-year anniversary, and we’ll be living apart for the next 2-3 years until I finish my degree.

Welcome along for the journey as I highlight some of my favorite projects from the wedding, and share some tips that I learned. For me, the biggest challenge that I faced was just trying to get everything done on my own – I work 80-90 hours/week in the lab and do not live near my family or bridesmaids, so all my DIY projects were really all done by me, not distributed and done with the assistance of others. Furthermore, I had the task not only of planning a wedding long distance (D.C. to Philadelphia), but planning a wedding for a city in which I have never lived (husband’s hometown) which certainly created a few challenges! But, in the end, I wouldn’t change a thing – I was able to marry my husband, surrounded by my family and friends for one of the most important days of my life, and in the end, that is all that matters.