“Are you serious?”, “No way!” and “You’re so lucky!” My husband and I have gotten pretty used to hearing these phrases since they occur each time we tell what has become Our Story. We’ve shared it dozens of times here at home, in the heart of the Midwest, on the beaches of Mexico and on board a flight to the great Northwest. And each and every time the reactions are hilariously identical.

So now it’s my turn to share it with you, my favorite engaged people.

Like you, we began our journey from engaged to married here on mywedding.com. A website was made, pictures were posted, and, my personal favorite, a blog was created. On our site I posted a picture of my favorite author (best-selling author Karen Kingsbury) and me with the caption “Matron of Honor Hopeful”, just for a laugh. My friends laughed.  My family laughed.  And then they all laughed together when I told them not only had Karen seen the joke on our site but she said SHE WOULD COME AND BE MY MATRON-OF-HONOR!

And she did!  She read a scripture and a poem that she’d written just for us at our ceremony.Now when I said we’ve told this story all over, I left out one place. One very impressive place. And that would be during the ten o’clock hour on the Today Show. You know, where everyone gets to share their wedding story and pictures…Apparently it’s not every day that a girl posts a picture and after a few exciting emails and phone calls finds out her favorite author is coming to her wedding, so our story captured their attention.

Before we traveled to The Big Apple for the Today Show appearance, a few other pretty big things had to happen… such as OUR PERFECT AND SUPER SPECIAL WEDDING, a “New York honeymoon” given to us by Zondervan (Karen’s publisher) and mywedding.com, and our actual honeymoon to the beautiful and amazing Vallarta Palace in Mexico… and then we finally headed back to NYC for THE TODAY SHOW!! We boarded 13 planes in a matter of three weeks – it was quite the first month of married life!!!And while some might say all of the unbelievable and amazing events are over, I think that depends on how you define unbelievable and amazing. I’ve always been someone that loves celebrating the little things – finding the perfect R and E for our save-the-dates, for example – so now I could not be more excited to include you where our married life begins. Just a few months ago, I was right where you are – consumed with all things wedding and dreaming of The Day. And while I absolutely ADORED everything about my wedding season, from Ryan’s cool proposal to our fourth honeymoon (lol), the wedding is only the beginning. Because the part that comes next – the part that I’m so excited to give you a glimpse of every week in my column – is perhaps the most exciting of all…our marriage.