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oh abby, i hear ya. i was laid off two months ago and we're still taking a big anniversary trip! suze orman would tell us we're crazy, but whatever! and good to know your stepson is doing okay!

ok, so i'm not much of a gusher in my real-life or bdw, but i have to gush for a sec hah

i've been in the middle of a career change for about a year now. going from business/project management into teaching high school spanish. it's been tough with night class, getting laid off and trying to find a teaching job when i have no real teaching experience yet.

last week i had an interview for a long term sub position for the end of the year, and found out that they are looking to extend it to go to next school year also. awesome. well i just got a call back from another school that i applied to solely for next year, and found out that they'd want me to start next month to finish out the year also! so now i have two huuuuge leads that could very well end up in two offers both for this year and next.

both schools have their pros and cons and are both actually pretty opposite. one's public, the other private. one's an hour away, the other is 15 minutes. so i'm really unsure which one i'd take if they were both offered. but i'm so happy to be in this position! yay!

Great thread! I absolutely LOVED planning my wedding and the fact that I was able to do it with my BDW ladies made it even more special. I'm glad it's all over and mostly lurk here as well.

I'm loving married life. It's funny cuz hubby and I look at each other daily and comment on how great it is to be married and how happy we are. I know, I know, we're just corny like that. The biggest adjustment for me has been being a stepmom. We have a special needs daughter and she's taking a longer time to adjust to me being around all the time. (Hubby was a single dad.) So, learning patience on all levels with that!

We're currently TTC so that's my current obsession. My new favorite threads on BDW are now the Mommy to be and TTC threads and such. We are also househunting and getting pretty close to our first home purchase so that's pretty exciting for me as well. So spending time preparing for that as well.

Well for the first 6 months or so following the wedding I was sad all the planning ws over. I planned mine so quickly (4 months from engagement to wedding, and the first month and a half was spent choosing a resort so that left 2 and a half months for all the other fun stuff!) that I didn't have time to get sick of it at all. I was sad it was over. I had the two reception after so that stretched things out for an extra 3 months but it wasn't as exciting as planning for the actual wedding and trip.

During that time of wedding withdrawal I threw myself into helping the Dreams Tulum brides plan for their weddings, as many of you know from having a peak at our awesome thread. It's been fun helping them as they are so greatful for my help. But my interest in that is slowly wearing off and I'm not needed as much as I used to be as the thread has really taken off and there is a huge amount of ressources (list of upcoming and past brides, reviews and pictures) to help out the future girls. I just wish there was that much info available when I was in the planning stage. (The same can be said of the whole forum, it has really taken off like crazy!) But I will continue to post a few updates in the thread to keep those lists and links up to date.

We will be celebrating our first year anniversary is a few weeks. I'm feeling so nostalgic thinking back to how much fun I had last year with the planning. I definetly miss the DIY projects the most. I was VERY crafty as a kid, spending all my allowances on craft supplies. I stopped doing crafts when I was in my mid-teens. The wedding was the first time I got back into making beautiful things by hand and I loved it. I'm also nostalgic thinking back about the trip, as it was a wonderful experience to spend a week with our families (it was just mine and my husband's immediate families there, 9 of us, so it was really special). I've love to vacation with them again, I want to make it a bi-annual tradition (one year my side of the family, one year my husband's) but I can't seem to convince anyone, none of them have the money to travel or if they do they have other types of travel they would prefer rather than all-inclusives. But definitely I wish we could do a trip like that again because it was really wonderful.

I have been contemplating starting a little wedding side business, either wedding planning or selling/renting wedding supplies, but haven't really done anything concrete yet and don't think I will soon, it will just stay as an idea in the back of my mind for now, along with all the other business/career ideas I have.

The one wedding thing that is still left for me to do is my photobook. I am making one using Lumapix Photofusion (like Morgan!) so it's very time consuming, it takes me an hour or more per layout. I decided to use this as I hated how mypublisher and Blurb and the other programs really limit you in what you can do with your layout (picture size and position, text position, font and color, etc). But doing it all manually definitely takes longer, especially if you are a perfectionist like me. I procrastinated for a long time as I new it would be very time consuming. I started at Christmas and am now almost half done. I have been working really hard on it the last month and hope to have it done in another month or two I really gotta get it done soon otherwise nobody will ever look at it!

As for personally, nothing has really changed. I find it funny that some of you find marrage to have been an ajustment or to have had changes in your relationship. For me and my husband, things are the same as before and the wedding was just to make it official. But we had been living together for 3 years already, 2 years of that in the house we had bought together, and we had been sharing our money since buying the house, so NOTHING changed at all when we got married, there were no new rules or routines to adjust to. There definitely was no "honeymoon" phase.

When we got married we said it would be probably 3-5 years before we had kids. Now that I see how boring our life is, I don't really see the point it waiting too long (unless I make a career change and things take off, which I would love to do but not sure what/how). It's been a year already, I think we will wait another 6 months or a year before trying, or at least we will re-evaluate then. I can't believe how many people get pregnant asap after getting married, although I guess I am one of the younger brides (25 when I got married, just turned 26).

Okay, I've babbled on for WAY longer than planned!

Erin your post 29 says it all for me... Consumed/addicted in everything wedding and BDW. I couldn't go without coming on the site at least 3 times a day(if not being here online all day at work), to find out what was going on with everyone else in their planning. Then we got back and about 2 weeks after.. Oh my I was completely lost on sooo many levels. Depressed that my day was over killed me. Everyone here at my work knew because the last year if I didn't have something wedding on my desk they thought it was odd... randomly, they started just giving me things to do. At least the AHR was in Jan and I had that to work on too. I felt better for a while.. then 4 days after the AH, Jay was laid off with 45% of the company! We planned on going to Beaches Turks and Caicos for our 1st anni with our son Noah, but that just doesn't look like its going to happen as it's March and he has only found 2 jobs to actually apply to in his line of work. My work is steady thank god, for having that. Unless we want to move out to CA, TX, or IL Jay could have a job in a heartbeat, as companies have been contacting him.

Carly - I feel it a million times over .. what happened to fun and fancy free.. now it seems so planned or not at all. 8o(

Otherwise things are pretty good all around... with all the Home Depot cards are got we have repainted rooms, bought new fixtures and started with the smaller updates to keep Jay busy during the week. All things wedding and AHR are paid off, THANK YOU reception cards.. LOL

Oh and babies... OMG NOAH needs to stop with "I want a little sister.. not a brother a sister K". We planned on making his little dream come true, but with Jay not working.. we want to wait it out till we have more in the savings again. We did it once before broke, directly during Sr yr of college.. I just don't want the stress again of $$.

I'm still jumping on here at least once a day... but it's sooo hard connecting with other girls as we are the "Old Ladies" on here and a million new girls so hard to keep up with them. No matter what, I don't - I know I can't stop coming on here and checking out to see whats going on.

Great idea Erin! It's so fun to see how the married ladies are doing!

DH & I have been married for a little over 1 month and together for over 13 years. I love married life and calling him my husband! Planning for me was taken to an entire new level after discovering BDW! I found so many inpirations for DIY projects and that is the part I miss. I am very happy to be done trying to organize our guests . Even though we told ourselves we wouldn't worry about anyone else on the cruise it's way easier said than done. Everyone got along great, but it was an intense week having them all together. Thoughts of expanding our family are keeping us busy right now . I've been sticking around BDW because of the awesome people I have met here! And I really want to see the girls who are yet to be married through their weddings! I also love to help out other cruise brides if I can.

Don't worry 2bebridejamaica, as time wears on you will start to get over the wedding withdrawal. I know for me it was really bad in the first few months but now in the past 6 months or so it's died down a lot. It's resurfacing a little this more though this month since it's our 1 year anniversary.

I am so glad I was not the only one who went throught the "What Now" post wedding. I would get on BDW and just wish I was still making plans! Don't misunderstand, I LOVE LOVE being married and my husband is amazing.....I think my life was just so consumed with planning for the wedding that afterwards it is kind of shocking. Luckily we already have 2 kids and we moved so I had a lot of other stuff to keep me busy!

Erin, this is going to be my official new fave thread I think LOL! Good Job!!

Wow! I love this thread! It's so good to see you all again! I've missed my old friends.

I really miss the planning thing. I'm actually looking into some sort of side business to keep my toe in the pool, so to speak.

And the KIDS thing! Holy crap. What is it with people. I actually had my GYN ask me about when we were going to start a family now that we were married. Um... And to top it off, my SIL just had a baby (sooo cute) and now my whole family is all baby-crazy. It just makes me nuts!

My new advice for anyone thinking of marriage is to marry an orphan. I don't know about you guys, but my in laws drive me f-ing crazy. Seriously, my MIL is honestly and truly neurotic.

But married life is fantastic. And married life with dog is even better. I never thought I'd love being married, but I do. It's great.

My, my, my....what a GREAT thread! And soo many responses. I agree with Betsy that this will probably be my new favorite thread since it gives me a chance to see what everyone else is up to.

So, we're quickly approaching 1 year of being married & I wonder where the time went. It seems like just yesterday, we were in Jamaica with family & friends, having the time of our life.

I honestly don't miss the planning, but I love looking at the planning threads & seeing what new Jamaica brides are up too. The only thing that I hate is when I see new ideas that I wish were around when I was planning! LOL...I mean, its not like I didn't steal/borrow enough ideas from you ladies, but its still fun to see the DIY things that people come up with that I never thought of.

In terms of marriage itself, its pretty good. I still can't believe I have a husband and still find myself laughing/smiling when I have to refer to Chris as that. Right now we're just enjoying life together & thinking about what the future has in store for us. Often, I feel like we're quickly becoming the "old married couple" since we don't have too much of anything going on right now!

I must say though that the biggest adjustment for us has been living together. Although we were together for about 8 years before getting married, we never lived together. And I used to tune people out when they said that living together was a whole new thing & that I wouldn't really know him until we lived together. I figured that the few nights a week he spent at my place, or I at his, meant something. I mean, I knew his habits, so how much different would it be living together?

Well, now I know. I don't think its a major difference, but we probably both have habits that the other really didn't recognize until now! LOL

And OMG....THE BABY QUESTION DRIVES ME INSANE! I get this question all the time. I mostly wish people thought about the things that came out of their mouth, before they actually asked. Like people remind me that we've been married for almost a year & theres no baby. I think to myself, yeah I know that, but how do you know that I'm not trying? KWIM? Do I need you to remind me that its not happening?? Sigh...anyway, I digress....

As of today, we're counting down to a cruise on Serenade of the Seas which leaves next week. We'll celebrate our 1 yr anniversary & Chris' bday.

Then since I've been dying to return to Jamaica, we just booked a trip to ROR for June, with a small group of 10 friends.

I can't wait to be back at ROR. I look forward to it mostly because while I had a great time during our wedding week, I was so busy with the wedding that it was like a blur. So this will be my time to really relax & enjoy ROR.

But the really funny thing is that, with this return trip to ROR, I feel like I should do so much. I feel like I need OOT bags, travel mugs, all the things I planned for my guests for the wedding. Ofcourse hubby quickly told me "heck no"!!! But I think I'm getting the travel mugs! Can't beat those for $1 each! What he doesn't know won't hurt him!