OUR 1st Anniversary

Wow, I don’t even know where to begin with reflecting on the past year married to J.  I know I’ll get some full-on, sappy words in here at some point but overall Jordan Steven Hardy is THE best thing and biggest blessing I could have ever hoped to have in my life.

Even just yesterday morning, he went to bed at 1am last night after his 10-hour work day and then this morning he had to get up again at 7am.  I just layed in bed exhausted and slept in as he woke me up to cuddle before he got up, went in and made breakfast for himself, and then came back in to tell me how beautiful I was and snuggle and kiss me once more before he left for the day.

I love him so much more everyday.  I was already entirely obsessed with him after 2 months of dating him and my love, respect, giddiness, gratefulness, and complete happiness continue to grow each day that I see that adorable face and hear my favorite Aussie accent say ‘I love you, Chan.’

Our first month after being married in Australia was such madness haha.  Adjusting to the in’s and out’s of marriage was probably one of the hardest things to get used to for us.  I hear two things from people after they get married: 1.the very perfect things that go on in their relationship or 2. how hard, hard, hard marriage is.

I never fully believed either side; I knew when someone asked me how marriage is I would never reply that overall “it’s just really hard”; no way! I knew that it’d be a bit different, but when people just tell me how hard it is and put such a negative place on it I was always taken back.  But, on the other-hand, all the social media blurbs of how amazing and flawless marriage is was also something I didn’t entirely connect with.

For us, with the onset of marriage: the hard part was the ‘adjustment period’.  No one REALLY tells you about this.  You hear about marriage being ‘hard’.  But people present that in such a way that means you have to annoyingly change your lifestyle, and make stupid compromises, deal with their mess and their eating habits and their dirty dishes, etc.  No, that is not hard in marriage.  The ‘adjustment period’ that we discovered as the hardest thing that we experienced in the first week of our marriage was the selfish independence that we both had to work at releasing. It’s the habits you have of: never checking-in with anyone,  figuring that the other person already knows what you’re talking about and if they don’t then you do what you want, or just overall being selfish in that you do exactly the things you want to do when you want to do them; but you can’t anymore, all of the sudden you consistently need to remember that their feelings are your feelings and their decisions are your decisions.

Our relationship is real, we disagree on things, we like our ‘me’ time, we get bothered over selfish things; but ultimately, we are 500 % infatuated with each other and are willing to work through anything.

I am soo so happy to know that after the 2-3 months in that ‘adjustment period’ we are so strong in our relationship and happier than ever with how we treat each other and how we’re growing together.  And I’m not saying that we hated the first months of marriage, it was a dream : ), I’m just saying we never knew how good it could really be..and now we’re discovering how good it is.  We are SO on the same page about things and although we always said in the beginning of our dating how we just ‘get’ each other; now, more than ever that statement is true.  That period of adjusting was so crucial to maturing our relationship, I know we don’t have it all figured out, but I know that we are in such a good place that we’re so excited for all the things that we get to experience and go through together.  There is a very comforting confidence that comes with going through that ‘adjustment period’, we learned alot about each other and about us as a couple and with the feeling that we’ve tackled most of the obstacles against us, we’re in such a good place to be growing together in our career goals, future family goals, and overall aim to love each other and God as sincerely as we possibly can : )

We are getting sealed in our church’s LDS temple on June 27th of this month, with Jord’s parents flying out from Australia, so that’s our main little celebration; But June 20th will always be the day I got to feel the greatest love I’ve ever had for anyone and say yes to my J on the beaches of Australia.

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See OUR Wedding Day HERE

pc: Ben & Hope Photography |  edits by me