REAL Marriage Advice: Part One

Hellllooooo Marzipanlings. Today is a VERY exciting day over here at Casa de Marzipan, as I am revealing a major project that I have been working on secretly behind the scenes for quite some time.

In September, two of my very best friends in the entire world, Miss Kait and her her adorable sweetheart Kolby are getting married. Now. Kait is not my first friend to get married, however, this wedding is certainly very near and dear to my heart, as we have known one another since the teensiest age of four. I have been thinking and thinking and thinking about what I could possibly do as a Marzipan-style prewedding present for her, and I came up with this concept:

I have polled my absolute favorite and most wonderful blog and twitter friends, begging them to bring me their romantic stories, their wedded bliss, and – most importantly – their REAL marriage advice. These are women that I have grown to respect and admire, and I feel honored that so many responded to my little plea. I wanted to compile all of this advice for my dearest friend, as she readies herself to become a married woman come Fall.

Now – this feature will come in two parts. Today, I will be introducing all of the participants as they regale you with their bios and engagement stories, and then, after you’ve fallen truly, madly, deeply in love with them – part two will be posted tomorrow (Saturday), and will include their lovely answers to all of the probing questions I sent them. Excited?! Me too.

Meet The Ladies:

Lindsey Ivory [who completed this interview EVEN THOUGH she had a baby this week]:

• BIO: Hi. My name is Lindsey and I blog over at Lindsey Ivory | A View Into My New Life! I tweet in between @LindseyIvory. Apparently I am not too original with the name game, but I came up with these during my first trimester, and it was all I could do to stay awake let alone be witty. So anyway, I am writing this on May 20, 2010, my official due date. Oh, right…I’ll back up a bit. Twelve years ago I met my now husband while we were still in high school. Six years later he proposed and a year later I married him. One year ago we decided that we really wanted a baby, and exactly nine months ago today we were apparently getting busy. So that’s me. And now I sit here at my computer, knowing that at any minute my life is going to be turned upside down with this new life that we have created. It’s pretty exciting and I am getting impatient because I really want to meet my baby. So to help pass the time, I am going to answer some questions about being engaged and getting married. Because to be honest, so far my husband and I are rocking it (with work, of course)!
• ENGAGEMENT: First a little background: The summer before my senior year of college Jon bought his first house (the same house we call home today, six years later). It’s about two hours away from where we went to school, so I drove up most weekends to hang out with him, and together we started the remodel process. The first room we completed was his office, which was located at the back of the house. We painted, installed new baseboards, added a built-in storage bench, built and hung shelves, had carpet installed…and then I organized and decorated the room for him. It was very red and very Ohio State (his and my soon-to-be alma mater) and we were really proud of our first project. Onto the engagement: On a Friday night later that fall, I had just driven up from school and I arrived before he got home from work. Normally I would have walked through the house looking in all the rooms and all the closets picturing what I wanted to do with the spaces. Luckily I didn’t do that this time. On his way home from work, Jon called and asked if I could run out to pick up some asparagus. I didn’t know why he wasn’t just stopping himself, but it meant that we would see each other a few minutes earlier, so I didn’t think anything of it. Two stores and one bunch of asparagus later, I opened the front door and the house was completely dark…except for a trail of candles. I followed them around the house, and every few feet there was a red rose and part of a poem. At this point I still wasn’t expecting a proposal (I know, I know), maybe just a candlelit dinner. The candles led me back to the office and the room was completely aglow with hundreds of candles and a few dozen red roses (this is why it was good that I hadn’t walked through the house…all the roses were in an upstairs closet all day). At this point I (finally) knew something was going on and when I turned around, Jon had walked into the room and gotten down on one knee. From there it is all a blur, but I walked out of the room with a ring on my finger and tears streaming down my face. Even today, after seeing and hearing about hundreds of proposals I don’t think Jon could have done it any better. It was so us, and today we still spend the majority of our time working on projects around the house.

Sarah:

• BIO: My name is Sarah and I blog at Long Legs Healthy Life, which chronicles my journey as a young newlywed trying to live a healthier life. I was married on 08.08.08 in Toronto to my wonderful husband Adam.

Emily:

• BIO: My name is Emily. I’m a mother of three kids 15 months & 2 month old twins. I have a blog called “this is the first day of my life” and I tweet like a mad person (@emmie_bee) I live in The Bay Area, CA with my kids, husband of 5 years, two dogs & a cat. My husband & I, though not married long, have been together for 13 years- in fact we’ve been together since I was 14. Does that make me an expert? I’m not sure. But, I’m willing to pretend.

Lauren:

• BIO: Lauren at http://merrymishaps.com (@merrymishaps) from Annapolis, MD.
  Married 9 years, proud “momma” to three cats
• ENGAGEMENT STORY: It’s hardly romantic. After happy hour one night we stumbled home, and were just talking about life in general when he asked me. I kind of had to do a double-take. “Are you serious?” Yup, he was. No ring since he figured I’d want to pick it out … which actually was a good choice. Unlike other couples who may discuss future wedding plans, we hadn’t! So he had no idea what I would have wanted. We had been living together for years, so it wasn’t completely unexpected! Engagement photo outtakes below…

LCW (so as not to confuse the Lindseys):

• BIO: I’m Lindsey, I go by LCW on my blog Waking up Williams and I tweet under Lins610. It seems like a lot to remember, but you’ll get the hang of it quickly. I grew up outside of Boston and found my way to the south, Florida to be exact. I went to college here, moved back home for a job and then moved back to Florida where I fell in love with a former friend, married him and had a baby. We love to travel and many of our college days consisted of impromptu weekend road trips.

Ellie Di Julio:

• BIO: (waves!) Hey, Mara’s friend! Congratulations on the upcoming wedding! I’m Ellie Di, head honcho at The Wholestyle Network and Apples and Porsches. I’m an American who’s been living in Canada for the last year and half. I moved up here shortly before marrying my (Canadian) sweetheart in June 2009. Love the people, but man is the weather a bitch in the winter. I’m coming up on my first anniversary, so I’ve definitely been giving this whole marriage thing some thought. And I know how annoying it can be to get pummelled with advice from the well-meaning, so I’ll try to keep this as frank and non-fairytale as possible. Down-to-earth is my style.

Elyssa:

• BIO: After my husband was laid off in January, we hauled ourselves and our two cats from the cornfields of Indiana to the salty breezes of Massachusetts, where we’ve shacked up (temporarily) in my parents’ basement. Living the dream, folks! This spring, I resurrected my blog, Fancy Pantalons, to document my journey of healing: I blog about piecing together the fragments of me, which disordered eating and anxiety have scattered willy-nilly. And trying to maintain my sanity while living as a newlywed a mere staircase away from my parents.

Heather:

• BIO: My name is Heather and I blog at www.runleangreen.com. I also tweet at runleangreen. I live south of Boston and have lived here for the past three years. Prior to that I lived in Rhode Island, Georgia and New Jersey. I am coming up on my second wedding anniversary; both my husband and I work with college students doing leadership development (at different schools). I ran my first half marathon in January and am currently training to run my second in June. Both my husband and I are New Jersey natives and so we spend a lot of time there visiting family (his entire family and my sister both still live there). I love cookies. Period.
• ENGAGEMENT STORY: My husband Matt and I met our freshman year in college outside of the snack bar in our college center. He said it was love at first sight – I just thought he was a nice guy. He apparently had a crush on me for two years but apparently I was “too cool” for him – which is ironic because I am about as nerdy as you can get. We started dating our senior year in college and dated that year and for a year after graduation. He broke up with me as he moved to Boston for graduate school. We kept in touch and my second year in grad school (I was living in Georgia he in Boston), we started dating again. After grad school, I moved to Rhode Island and the rest is history. We dated for almost SEVEN years before we got engaged. I am apparently very patient.Matt proposed to me outside the snack bar where we met. Unfortunately I know Matt a little too well and even realized the day he bought the ring – I could hear it in his voice. He is not a good lier. I had a feeling he would propose where we met – so I figured it out. It was still magical though. We even got married in our campus chapel.

Kara:

• BIO: I’m Kara @ Kara’s Marathon www.karathon.com. www.twitter.com/karathon. My husband, Matt, and I live in a smallish 1-bedroom apartment in New York City with our adopted four-legged son Barkley  Matt and I met almost 8 1/2 years ago at a screening of “A Clockwork Orange” (a group get-together with some of Matt’s friends, one of whom was my boyfriend at the time)…we became good friends and started dating a few months later.  Matt proposed in 2006, we were married in early 2008, right around our sixth dating anniversary in April.

Are you swooning yet? Want to get in on the fun?? Hop on in, introduce yourself and tell us about YOUR engagement, or gooiest love story!

And don’t forget to STAY TUNED for part two tomorrow, when these lovely ladies will be answering all of my relationship questions. xox.

Tagged as: advice, engagement, interviews, love, marriage, relationships, romance