Leedberg.com

The online home for Greg Leedberg, since 1995.

Sunday, August 12, 2007

I'm married!

Well, for those you who know me or have been reading the blog for a while, you should know that I got engaged to my long-time girlfriend (of 6 years!) last summer. I'm really happy to say that, after a year of wedding planning, we're now married, back from our honeymoon, and re-adjusting to normal life.

More than anything, I was really surprised at just how much planning is involved in a wedding. We literally started planning right after the proposal (July 3rd last year) and kept doing stuff right up until the day before the wedding (July 22nd this year). But, in the end, all of the hard work and stress was really worth it. Every vendor that we had turned out to be really great, so even though it took us, in some cases, months to decide on a particular vendor, it was worth it. This leads to my biggest piece of advice for other soon-to-be-newlyweds: Allow a year for planning, start planning right away, and make a schedule of when things need to be done (there's lots of examples online).

The entire wedding experience went off with no problems at all. There's so much that can go wrong , starting with the rehearsal all the way to getting back from the honeymoon, but everything seemed to go perfectly. And most importantly, we had a great time at our wedding. It was a lot of fun! And the honeymoon (we went to Aruba!) was great as well. It was great to get a break from wedding planning, and to just spend a week relaxing with my new wife.

It was strange to know that so many people had travelled so far (we had some out-of-country guests, even!), just to see the two of us get married. But, I think that is the point of a wedding, and I now realize that that's really what makes it so much better than eloping -- you get to share one of the most special days of your life with everyone who's close to you. I wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Which makes it all the more meaningful that everything went well.

At any rate, it feels great to be married. And there's still more marriage-related business to be taking care of -- it doesn't stop after you say "I do". Selecting pictures for our album, name changes, insurance changes, financial changes, it just keeps going.

But, you know what makes all the work bearable? I get to go through it with the greatest girl I've ever met -- who now happens to be my wife. :)

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