Reflections: One-Year Anniversary
OUR LIFE
Our First Wedding Anniversary
Looking back on our first year of wedded bliss — the highlights and the things we’re looking forward to.
They say life comes at you quickly, but the last year truly sped right by… The lead-up to our actual wedding felt so fast — maybe because there was so much planning, madness and excitement leading up to our surprise wedding that the countdown felt so quick. But the year that followed feels as if it passed at an even faster rate.
As we hit our 1-year anniversary, we’re reflecting on our favorite parts of our first year of marriage and all that we’re looking forward to in the year to come.
The Highlights
We traveled. Yes, we traveled to Scotland for our wedding and were fortunate enough to be able to explore the country during the weeks before and after our wedding weekend. But we also had the opportunity to visit the Netherlands and France over a three-week period later in the summer. And Victoria capped off the year of travel with a few weeks in the Philippines with family. We love exploring new places, experiencing different cultures and embracing local culinary delights. Whether it’s dancing in the rain amongst a sea of orange cheering for Max Verstappen at the Dutch Grand Prix or learning how to taste wine in a French chateau with our best friends, we’d do it again.
We slowed down. During the first four years of our relationship, we were in college. Over the past five years of our relationship, we’ve been focused on graduate school (on top of planning the wedding!). This year, we finally were able to take a step back and spend more time pursuing our hobbies — together and individually. And sigh, has it been the breath of fresh air we’ve needed! It was hard to tell how run-down we’d become until we were finally able to let everything go. We seemingly had so much time on our hands that we decided to start up this little blog….
We dreamed. All that free time opened the door to long conversations about our hopes and dreams beyond academia and careers. Since the early days of our relationship, we’d always agreed that we wouldn’t ever hold each other back or force a decision on the other — we each have free reign to pursue our goals and the other person has the option to do what’s best for their needs / wants. To this day, that philosophy has served us well and we’ve been privileged in having been able to easily navigate some relatively tough decisions. This past year, it’s been exciting to revisit our plans and take some time to draft up what the next 10 years of our life (and lives) could look like!
The Things We’re Looking Forward To
So many fun things lay ahead. We have our individual goals, of course, but there’s something exciting about tackling life together, right?
Building our Dream Haus. We’ve been on a mission to settle down and find our new happy place. We’ve put a list together of our favorite home attributes and have been searching high and low, far and wide to find a house that checks all the boxes (or at least as many as we can possibly find). And once that all falls into place, we’re really looking forward to putting our own personal stamp on it and bringing you along the journey.
Spending more time with friends. Over the past couple of years, we’ve played quite a bit of dodge to avoid spilling secrets and ruining the wedding surprise. Plus, we lived quite a distance away from our loved ones when we were located in the DMV area. Now that we’re back in the Northeast (and hopefully settling down in the area), we’re hoping to host more events to be able to spend long nights and fun days with our favorite people.
Dedicating more time to our hobbies. We’ve always loved doing our own things together. That is to say, Victoria will grab a book and curl up on the couch while James will set up a board (or video game) and settle in for a round (or two…) Now that we’re done with school and wedding planning, we’re looking forward to spending more time doing the things we love (while in each other’s vicinity because apparently that’s just how we operate). We’ll also be sure to share our favorite books and games with you — so keep an eye out.
Year 2 of married life is already off to a great start. Cheers to the coming months.
Until our next chapter!
xo, James & Victoria
P.S. Craving more life updates? Tap the links below.
