Friendships and Marriage

Marriage changes a lot of things.

Your priorities.

Your choices.

Your decisions.

Your life.

It also changes your friendships.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these girls who has millions of girlfriends. I have a select group of women who I would call my friends. Women that I can talk to openly and honestly and who I can rely on. Women where if there has been a long period of silence, I can pick up the phone and catch up without any problem.

Since getting married, I have seen my friendships change. Unless I make a conscious effort to speak to someone, weeks can go by without any contact. Life is so busy that if I'm honest any time I have, I want to invest in my husband and my marriage. That's not to say that once you're married you no longer have friends, it just means that your priorities change.

In the same vein, you start to find yourself relating more with other married people, not because they are better in any way but because you find yourself with common ground. You feel you can relate.

It's a balance I guess.

Single people, how have your relationships changed with your married friends? Is it better or worse?

Reflections...The Ceremony

So our laptop has officially died. We're not sure what's wrong with it, but it keeps freezing and even after reinstalling Windows, no joy. So not only have we lost everything on the hard drive {thank goodness for Dropbox which will recover the majority of stuff}, I lost all my draft posts in Windows Live Writer :(

So I'm writing this from another computer, but the good news is I can continue recaps and today we're picking up at the Ceremony.

For Mr E and I, the Ceremony was the most important aspect of the day for us. I know a lot of people focus on the reception and food etc, but for us we really wanted people to be blessed by our service.

We met with our Reverend to go through the ceremony a weeks prior and he was super flexible with what we wanted to do and how many songs we wanted to include! Whilst we didn't organise ourselves to write own vows, we were able to shape the ceremony how we wanted it.

Our readings came from:

Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their work:

¹⁰ If one falls down,
his friend can help him up.
But pity the man who falls
and has no one to help him up!

¹¹ Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?

¹² Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

1 Cor 13 and Songs of Solomon 8:6-7 and they were read by Mr E's Aunt and my good friend, Buki.

Worship and songs were really important to us and we had my best friend SB leading worship, which was amazing. She had a team of backing vocalists and band who were so good and the worship was beautiful.



We said our vows and exchanged our rings…    

Then had our first communion together…

 

We were then prayed for by the Elders…

We sang some more and then we danced our way out…

My only regret about the Ceremony was that due to my lateness, we didn't get to sing all the songs we had planned and the address had to be done at the reception.

Apart from that we really, really enjoyed the service and I think our parents did too!

Mr E’s parents… 

My parents…    

Our Programs…


I created the programs for our Ceremony myself using a mixture of Photoshop and Publisher, with an inclusion of our monogram. I literally pulled an all-nighter the week of the wedding to get them completed. Mr E couldn't understand why I wanted to do them so badly and why I didn't delegate the task, but I wanted the Programs* to be a reflection of us and personalised, so I HAD to do them! My dad printed them and they turned out great!

TIP: Let your Ceremony be a reflection of you. If you want songs, have songs. If you don't want readings, don't have readings. Just do what you feel is right.

Next up...Reception!

{*I will do another post showing the inside of them, once I can find the file in Dropbox!}

Ten Secrets to a Successful Marriage!

{Image Source}

Happy Monday!

Hope you all had a good weekend! Mine was very restful, which was just what the doctor ordered!

Coming up to 4 months of marriage, I am learning a lot about what makes a marriage successful. Kinda do's and don'ts to make our marriage the best it can be.

Here are ten principles of success that I found over the weekend.

1. Happiness is not the most important thing. Everyone wants to be happy, but happiness will come and go. Successful couples learn to intentionally do things that will bring happiness back when life pulls it away.
2. Couples discover the value in just showing up. When things get tough and couples don't know what to do, they need to hang in there and be there for their spouse. Time has a way of helping couples work things out by providing opportunities to reduce stress and overcome challenges.
3. If you do what you always do, you will get same result. Wise couples have learned that you have to approach problems differently to get different results. Often, minor changes in approach, attitude and actions make the biggest difference in marriage.
4. Your attitude does matter. Changing behavior is important, but so is changing attitudes. Bad attitudes often drive bad feelings and actions.
5. Change your mind, change your marriage. How couples think and what they believe about their spouse affects how they perceive the other. What they expect and how they treat their spouse matters greatly.
6. The grass is greenest where you water it. Successful couples have learned to resist the grass is greener myth – i.e. someone else will make me happy. They have learned to put their energy into making themselves and their marriage better.
7. You can change your marriage by changing yourself. Veteran couples have learned that trying to change their spouse is like trying to push a rope – almost impossible. Often, the only person we can change in our marriage is ourselves.
8. Love is a verb, not just a feeling. Everyday life wears away the "feel good side of marriage." Feelings, like happiness, will fluctuate. But, real love is based on a couple's vows of commitment: "For better or for worse" – when it feels good and when it doesn't.
9. Marriage is often about fighting the battle between your ears. Successful couples have learned to resist holding grudges, bringing up the past and remembering that they married an imperfect person – and so did their spouse.
10. A crisis doesn't mean the marriage is over. Crises are like storms: loud, scary and dangerous. But to get through a storm you have to keep driving. A crisis can be a new beginning. It's out of pain that great people and marriages are produced.

Kindly reproduced from Focus on the Family

Do you have any more to add?

Checking In...

It's been a bit quiet on the blog front this week.

Normally I try and attempt to post at least twice a week, but then sometimes you have a week like last week and life takes over.

I find it difficult to formulate my thoughts when things in my personal life are not settled. So this week has mainly been spent in a lot of reflection and prayer.

Wedding recaps are still coming but we're having problems with the laptop that we downloaded all the pictures on, so hopefully if we sort it this weekend, I can pick the recaps up again next week. We do have them backed up on a CD somewhere, but with moving house and all - it will be a challenge to find where they're hidden!

One of the good things about this week is that we finally settled on a new church. Whilst it is not as big as our old church we definitely feel at home and believe this is where we're meant to be. The teaching is fantastic and I always feel totally re-energised after listening to the Word. The Pastor is super nice too.

Mr E and I finally finished our first piece of DIY - our new ELGA wardrobe. We did it over a few days and put the finishes pieces to it on Thursday night. So nice to finally have a wardrobe and some organisation in the flat.

I had my first post on Blissfully Domestic go live on Monday. I'm writing in the blogging section, so if you're new to Blogland and are looking for some tips to get you started you might find the post helpful.

X-Factor is back on TV here in the UK. Love, love the show. Mr E and I had a great time this evening watching all the great and not so great acts. My favourite act is One Direction. They have such a great energy about them, considering that they were only formed on the show. If you're watching it - who's your favourite?

Before I go, I thought I would share some of my favourite blog posts from this week. Feel free to hop over to their sites and check them out.

• Favoured Girl is talking about Friendship In Marriage and how we should make time for our spouses
• Jessica over at Marriage to Mothered wrote a great post about making good safe connections with people
• Tsh over at Simple Mom, wrote about Choosing your Priorities and
  
• Courtney over at Women Living Well, wrote about Making your Home a Haven

How's your week been?

Patience and Tolerance

A few months ago my husband and I were visiting a family friend whose parents had just celebrated 60 years of marriage. 60 years!

In the local newspaper the reporter asked the happy couple, what it was that had helped their marriage last this long. Their answer…patience and tolerance.

As part of our couple's devotion we are currently studying 1 Corinthians 13 to help us understand more about what true love is. This week we have been focusing on patience and how we can be more tolerant of each other.

It has definitely been interesting as often we think we are patient people, until it is tested! I am learning to allow my husband to do things at his pace and not when I think he should do them {typically tasks around the home}.

In marriage I have learnt that you definitely require a certain degree of tolerance and patience in order to survive. You go from living a life where you call the shots and you do things at your own pace, to a situation where it's no longer about you and sometimes the other person does things you don’t like or are not used to and you NEED to adjust.

It’s not always easy, but it is definitely needed in order to help your marriage grow.

How are you showing patience and tolerance in your relationships {romantic or otherwise}?

p.s. speaking of patience, you might have noticed I have installed a new commenting system on the blog. Please bare with me as it beds in and let me know your thoughts, via comments of course!

Image {Alakija & Co}