Funny Stuff from our First Year of Marriage

Kalyn at Love. Laughter. Happily Ever After. has started a very sweet series, Marriage in One Year that I am super excited to read about. The series features 10 brides who got married in June 2012 who are going to share their experiences from the first year of marriage, but anyone is invited to link up. This week is all about the funny moments from the first year.

In March, Chris and I celebrated our third anniversary, so we aren't too far from that newlywed mark. Our first year of marriage was an interesting one, to say the least. Here are three of my favorite funny memories from our first year:

1. This one technically happened before we were married, but it is too good not to share. After Chris graduated boot camp, we got engaged and decided that we would get married in the court house and plan our wedding later. I flew down to Chicago on a Friday, and that afternoon we went and got our marriage license. In our excitement, we walked out without our license. It wasn't until after the cab driver dropped us off at the mall (so I could find shoes) and drove away that we realized. We literally got to the vital records office as they were closing for the weekend. I was nearly in tears the whole time, but now we look back on it and laugh.

March 2010

2. Hands down our favorite story.. Chris and I were pretty broke our first year of marriage, there wasn't much room in the budget for furniture, and a credit card wasn't really an option for us. The only furniture we had for about six months was a bed, a dresser and two bar stools. We lied down a comforter and pillows in the living room and used that as a couch. When we started looking to buy one, we were not willing to spend over $500 for a couch, and I am a big germophobe, so I wouldn't buy a second hand one off of craigslist. One day, we stopped by Rent to Own next to the grocery store, and we noticed a used leather couch for $200. I didn't have a problem with buying leather used, since I could wipe it clean, plus it was comfortable, so we were ready to get it. Then we realized, it was part of a sectional, and it only had one arm. For some reason, we were okay with it. So we had that ugly one-armed couch for two and a half years. Chris even grew attached to it and begged me to let him keep it in Caden's room instead of selling it to get a nice and bigger one! Oh, the one armed couch.


Our first month in our apartment looked like this. Thank goodness we have a giant entertainment center though.

3. Speaking of furniture, our dining room set is another good story. I have a passion for antiques, which we can't afford, so I had an idea to get an old dining room set from the thrift store and fix it up (something I still want to do). Chris agreed to do the dirty work, and one day we found a set of six chairs that were super cheap ($30) because they needed new seat covers and were a little banged up. We brought them home, and they just sat in the dining room as if some little kid had been using them to play school bus. One day, Chris took the first step and unscrewed the seats from the chairs so that he could sand the wood and I could reupholster the seats. Once again, they just sat there. My in-laws planned a visit, so we decided to buy a table, but we could find one we liked in time so we just bought one of those long plastic tables.. It was embarrassing looking. Not to mention the fact that we had to tell everyone to be careful because the seat bottoms were not screwed into the seats. Only one person took a tumble that weekend! It was actually a lot of fun that we didn't have any furniture our first year because it encouraged our family to tell us their funny stories about their makeshift furniture when they were young. Don't worry, we now have a normal table that we bought from a furniture store. We are still talking about buying patio furniture though..