Musings on a Marriage – From Becki Durrans

One of the regular feature in the ‘After the Wedding’ section of the Blog is a feature called Musings on a Marriage. It’s where I invite recently married ladies (or men) onto the blog to talk about their life after the wedding, to discuss how marriage has changed their relationship and if it has lived up to expectations. I talk about weddings so much over on the other blog but that is about planning the wedding, not the actual marriage. So this is going to be a place for all of you who are married to discuss your feelings on the subject and any issues that have come up since the wedding.

Last time the lovely Laura shared with us her musings and this time it’s the lovely Becki. Becki used to write for me on Boho Weddings in the Diary of a Boho Bride, her full wedding can be seen HERE, so it’s lovely to have her back on this blog 7 months after her wedding day.

I’ll pass the Blog over to Becki………

I am delighted that I have been invited by Kelly to this wonderful new blog to discuss what life is like after the wedding day. The actual marriage itself, what does it means to me? To us even? Is it any different from before?
I suppose if I can offer a few pearls of wisdom along the way then that’s a bonus right, but what I would firstly like to say is this, and sshh don’t tell my husband, but i’ve got absolutely no idea what I’m doing with this marriage malarkey really and that is actually quite alright! No really it is, one thing I think I’ve learnt along the way is that there is no right or wrong way of doing things, no marriage handbook to follow and everyone I know is just secretly winging it the way they know best.

So what does marriage mean to me and us as couple? Well that is where Jonathan and I have, over the years, been on completely different pages, in fact at one point we weren’t even reading the same book never mind being on different pages! Sorry for the crap analogy but you get the picture.
Even after being together for 12 years, marriage just wasn’t important to Jonathan, he actually feared the finality of it even though he knew he wanted his future to be with me and he was committed, but this final hurdle was a great big 20ft brick wall and one which nearly defeated us both.

And I think it is really important that I tell you this honestly because you may otherwise have read the diary of a bride posts and seen the final wedding day and think to yourself, wow they’ve got the perfect relationship and the perfect wedding day and the perfect life and my journey to wedded bliss sucks in comparison (I know I’m so guilty of this in the past) and it’s totally not the case.
But I’m so happy and relieved to say that he came to his senses of his own accord and that is something that although it was hell to live and even continue to love through, it was something that has made us even stronger in so many ways.

So the right here, right now story of our marriage is that we wouldn’t change it for the world.

Marriage has always been extremely important to me, I was always the one with the whimsical doodles in my school books of my name with my latest crush’s surname attached to it, I was absolutely the one wearing a net curtain around my head and tottling down the aisle in my mums high heels holding the fake flowers from the vase in the living room and I was most definitely the one playing “houses” by arranging all the boxes stored in the attic into separate houses and pushing my baby in the pram from one house to the other.
This is me and this is what I’ve wanted from my life ever since then (amongst other things I may add) and I now feel totally insanely happy that Jonathan is with me on this too. We are officially Team Durrans and marriage is totally the foundation for all we have planned. I love that my name has changed, even though it’s a ball ache having to inform everyone and is still a work in progress even 7 months after the wedding and even though we don’t officially own our own home yet as we are still renting, we have just moved into a bigger house in preparation for if we are fortunate to have a baby further down line at some point, although having the dog is more than enough at times!

Marriage to us in a whimsical way feels amazing, on a practical level it feels more secure like we can officially take a breath for a bit because we both know where we are at now, we feel like this is it and whatever comes our way we take it as a team. It’s not really something I considered too much before the wedding, I didn’t know how it would feel or if anything would change at all, but it has and it’s even just as simple as the little flutter in my stomach whenever I say “my husband” or hear him say “my wife” and it’s flipping ace!
We’ve been together longer than most marriages actually last these days and I’m pretty certain because of all our experiences together, good and bad, we know each other inside and out now.
But don’t get me wrong he still knows how to wind me up, I still cherish the nights where he goes out and leaves me home alone watching Nashville to my heart’s content and we most definitely argue our difference in opinions till the cows come home so don’t be under any illusion that since the wedding we’ve found some kind of holy grail of matrimony. Trust me it doesn’t exist and those who say it does are lying!

So from what I’ve learnt so far, there’s no handbooks to follow on marriage, no strict rules or regulations, other than don’t kill each other I suppose, but I guess that’s a pretty basic rule to live by really. No timelines and no deadlines and there’s definitely no definition of “normal” so don’t compare yourselves to people on the internet (totally stolen that line from pinterest!) and it’s perfectly okay to want to bop the next person on the nose who asks you when they’ll be hearing the pitter patter of tiny feet!

Love Becki

xxx

I’d love to hear your thoughts, has marriage changed anything for you? have your expectations of marriage been met now you are married and not engaged. Please feel free to leave a comment below.