At MAB Artistry, it’s no surprise that we love weddings. It’s a major part of our business after all. So what better way to highlight weddings than have real MAB brides share stories from their weddings!
In MAB Bride Diaries, our brides are sharing funny and inspiring stories from their big day and days leading up. Some are even stories of insight and how they handled a stressful situation. All stories are shared with us anonymously so the brides can feel like they can share the full feeling of their story! Read on for our first story from NavyWife19!
Every woman dreams of their wedding day as a little girl, meeting the person of their dreams and getting married. I was no exception to this! So when I got engaged I happily pulled up my Pinterest board and started looking through my ideas. What I didn’t know was the Navy was about to throw a big wrench in my plans.
At the time, my fiancé had been picked up for a career transfer with the Navy which would send him to CA for 3 years of grad school and language training. We wanted to be married prior to the move and his current command believed this wouldn’t happen until the fall so we started planning a wedding for late summer. It came as a big surprise when just 3 days after getting engaged at the end of March, my fiancé was told he had to move at the beginning of May, barely a month away!
That following week was a rush of trying to figure out the logistics of getting him back to DC for a summer wedding. Can he miss a day or two of class? Could he take a red eye? Can he fly back a couple times before then or will all of this be over FaceTime? Then the biggest question. How will we obtain the DC marriage license when we both need to be there to get it? I quickly realized in talking to my fiancé, that he would have very limited time off so the likelihood of him being able to fly back often was close to zero. Basically meaning an end of summer wedding wasn’t going to happen.
“And immediately I broke down crying…”
Sitting on my couch one evening, I googled the local courthouse by his naval base in Southern MD and saw that only one of us needed to be present to get the license and that you could make an appointment during the week to get married. So I sent my fiancé a text giving him this option, a casual “we could get married next Friday at the courthouse!”, and you could pick up our license after work one of the days before. And immediately I broke down crying. I never wanted to get married at a courthouse! A courthouse wedding was never in my dreams as a child and certainly never made it on my Pinterest board. It wasn’t my aisle lined with flowers and candles or rows of close friends and family watching me get married. I felt like I was giving up my dream just to get married before my fiancé had to move.
As I’m spiraling out and having these thoughts, it hit me that the wedding wasn’t truly my dream. My fiancé and our marriage was! I knew from the moment I met him that he was it for me. We’d been together for almost two years at that point and it was never a question of if we’d get married, but when. Was a courthouse wedding really so bad when it just meant starting our forever a bit earlier? After sleeping on it and talking with my fiancé the next day, I felt more sure about the decision for us to get married just a week (a week!!) later at the courthouse. We could have a larger wedding celebration at a later date and celebrate with our family and friends then. It would have the added benefit of less stress over anything going wrong because we would already be married!
“…the wedding wasn’t truly my dream. My fiancé and our marriage was!”
Our courthouse wedding ended up being kind of perfect. It was only us, my maid of honor and her boyfriend. I wore a little white dress, had a bouquet of hydrangeas, and took the time to go get my hair and makeup done. It rained a little, we laughed a lot, and we created some of our favorite memories. Our courthouse wedding held all the emotion that I had been worried it wouldn’t. The vows still held all the meaning and I still felt like a bride! We now celebrate two wedding anniversaries, since we had our bigger celebration right before Christmas later that year, and I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way!
Do you have a story from your wedding that you’d like to share? We’d love to hear it and feature your wedding in MAB Bride Diaries! Submit yours today using the button below!