Once Upon a Time...

...I got married! 

Yep, it's true! Boyfriend and I tied the knot!

And... I guess that makes him Husband now, rather than Boyfriend. Hmm. I can dig that. 

Anyway, you are probably thinking any number of the following things:

-"Wow! I didn't know you were planning a wedding."
-"You didn't invite me and I'm sad."
-"It's about time!"
-"Wait- you got married? Were you even engaged?"
-"Cool! Way to go!"

Let me explain:

About two and a half years ago, Husband and I decided that we wanted to get married. We also agreed that we didn't want to shout it from the rooftops until we knew how everything would go in terms of the kind of wedding we wanted and such. About six weeks before Thanksgiving, we were talking about how excited we were to have my parents come up from North Carolina to spend the holiday with us and we were like, "hey what if we just get married at Thanksgiving?" We both really liked this plan right away. In order to make this plan work out the way we wanted, we had to do a couple of things. The first: steal Thanksgiving dinner away from Jamie and Jason so we could be married in our home (which meant we had to tell them what we were up to). The second: get Holly and Alex to travel from Michigan. I ended up having to tell Holly what was going on as well (followed immediately by her crying, haha) so she could ask off from work. I also tried to get my grandparents to come, but my grandma was not well enough to travel. Also on the guest list were our dear friends and neighbors Elisa & Chantry who moved to Pittsburgh from Utah and thus didn't really have any family to spend the holiday with. We also told them so we could hide champagne at their house.

We didn't want a huge thing. I've been a bridesmaid four times in the last four years and I have seen the huge amount of work and stress that can go into a larger, more traditional affair. I was 100% not interested in that. I just wanted Husband and I to be married. That's really all (and if you know him, you know that he is definitely not a big to-do type of person, so that worked out well). We started researching our options and learned that, in Pennsylvania, you can choose to do a self-uniting license (This means that you marry yourselves. There is not allowed to be an officiant if you choose this option, just two witnesses). It's incredibly easy. We went through the same process as anyone else applying for a marriage license, but when we went to the City County building here in Pittsburgh to finish applying, we just checked an extra box. That's all. Seriously.

On Thanksgiving day, we were both so nervous that I am sure everyone knew something was going on. First of all, deciding to host Thanksgiving dinner is already a pretty big deal (we'd done it before, so we totally knew that going in). Throw in the whole getting married part and you've got an interesting thing happening. Neither of us even changed into our dinner/getting hitched clothes until RIGHT BEFORE we served dinner. It was bananas.

Anyway, we sat down to dinner and neither of us could eat at all. My father in law looked at me across the room and asked why Husband wasn't eating. Haha. Eventually, we stood up and Husband thanked everyone for coming, saying how nice it was to have our families all together for the holiday, blah, blah, etc. The rest of it went something like this:

Husband: ...and we want to tell you that we're getting married...
*cue gasping mothers here*
Me: Right now.
*cue crying mothers here*

So Husband whipped the document out of his pocket (Jamie and Holly served as our witnesses and had signed it before dinner), he signed it, I signed it and we put rings on our fingers and TA DA!!!!!!! Married. 

We finished up dinner, answered questions from our families, had a first dance, cut a carrot cake and just generally had an excellent time. We made some phone calls to let others know about our exciting news as well.

As of Monday, we've been married now for eight months (!!!!!!!!) and it has been just wonderful. We are both so, so happy to be married and are looking forward to many long and happy years together.