Did you hear? I’m getting married!
As I settle into motherhood, I also get this amazing time to also start planning my very own big day. Granted this is not my first time down the aisle however, this time around it is a completely different experience altogether and I am excited to share this with you all as it unfolds.
The lowdown: Joel and I met in September 2019, right in the middle of my ‘30 are going to be my year’ mantra. Turning 30 for me I thought was going to be the year I leveled up. I would get my shit together and step into a new decade with my heart full and my head clear on the direction I wanted my life to go. Sadly, the first six months were an absolute sh!t show with my then marriage crumbling before my eyes and I felt like fragments of my soul were being scattered to the wind as I tried to work out what I had lost mentally, emotionally, and physically.
As I always say, “everything happens for a reason” (although at the time I had no idea what that reason was). I decided to focus on myself and make the rest of 2019 ‘my year’. I kept looking forward in the hopes that one day I would wake up and suddenly it would all be clear as to why things happened the way they did. I definitely stumbled along the way and I had good days and a lot of bad but I just kept on getting up each and every day and finding one thing to be grateful for. My friends, my family, the sunshine, etc.
I didn’t cut all of my hair off, though I did consider it! I did do a lot of the things people do when something major changes in their life like - Getting a tattoo, getting a piercing, changing jobs, etc. Classic makings of a story for my therapist but I digress.
I know I would not be able to do it again but for someone who had not dated in 15 years, a lot had changed. Like how you meet new people. A friend and a lot of drinks later introduced me to the modern-age dating of ‘swipe right and swipe left’ and one night I received a message from Joel.
Fast-forward six months and 2020 saw us seeing a lot more of one another thanks to the first lockdown and then twelve months after that we were a bonafide couple living together with Joel’s son and two dogs in tow. Some would say we moved fast but I will never forget talking to my friend Anna about it all when I panicked about the pace at which things were progressing. The conversation went something along the lines of…“You’re not in your 20’s trying to figure things out and who you want to be, you’ve both done that and now you’re older. It’s a good thing because now you know what you want. It’s not rushed, it just means you’re both ready now and you found someone who’s on the same page”.
We found out that I was expecting in October 2021 and on Christmas Eve in front of our son and parents, Joel proposed. I was so overwhelmed, I didn’t say anything. A prompt from Joel in the form of ‘Will you marry me…please?’ and then it was a big YES plus hugs, crying, squeals of joy, and laughter all around. We welcomed a beautiful baby boy in June 2022 and now we’re planning our wedding! It is so exciting because we will have both our boys there and it’s very special to be able to share this with them both.
Over the coming months, I will share all the planning tips and ideas I have as a bride that I hope will be helpful to you on your wedding planning journey. For now, I can let you know that we have picked 2024 as the year so we have plenty of time to plan and save for everything.
