Marriage Notes

We're officially moved out of our apartment. I'm so relieved, especially because I spent the last weekend in it with the stomach flu, sleeping in the bathroom and purging all kinds of nasty bodily fluids. Then cleaning so we would get our deposit back. Enter complete exhaustion.

We've been spending lots of time with our lifegroup lately, a group of other young, married, kid-less couples from our church and having great conversations about navigating through all things marriage.

As I was cleaning out some old piles of notes during the move, I found an activity Ben and I did together before we were engaged. We went through a book together called, "101 Questions to Ask Before You Get Engaged." Before I go any further, let me be the first to admit the cheesy-lameness of an activity book like this, but humor me.

In going through it question by question, answering each one no matter how redundant we thought it, we learned gobs about each other. Things we were SURE we discussed in enough detail (but really hadn't), explored baggage we never would've guessed we were toting, and dipped into things we hand't yet dealt with (like combining finances, views on kids, splitting family time, etc.)

Some notes, goofy doodles, and our answers to the questions in a journal from several years ago.

(haha)

I'll leave you with a card from our wedding, and some of the best marriage advice we've received to date:

"Keep your house clean, and your sex dirty."

Our Wedding, Part One

I realized recently that I've never actually blogged about the day we got married. And while our photos are all over Facebook, it's just not the same without being able to tell the story myself. So here it is! The day we got hitched.

(Note: All of the below photos were taken by Peter Hoffman of Peter Hoffman Photography. Steal, use, rip off these photos without permission, and beware my wrath!)

  

I got ready at home, sat at my kitchen table and had my makeup done while my Mom did the dishes, surrounded by my bridesmaids with family members popping in and out, my itunes lulling me with favorites, and shoved my face with a sandwich in between shadow and blush.  All the chaos and comfort of my own home set me at ease. 

I wrote our vows with Ben over the phone, as he left two months before our wedding to take a job out here in Colorado. We had our good friend Trevor, the pastor of our little house church, run the ceremony. I can't imagine our ceremony officiated by someone we didn't know. It made so much more special to have inside jokes cracked by someone who sat through hours of pre-marital counseling with us. 

 

 Having my best friends and sister-in-laws with me meant more to me than almost anything. I spent most of my childhood years getting along much better with guys than girls. Too much drama. But in the last 5 years, I've fallen in with girls who will stick by me no matter what, and I love them like they are my own family.

My Bridesmaids are wearing rolled paper bead necklaces from Beads of Hope, which we sold at FMSC, the organization I used to work for. Making the necklaces helps income-less women in Uganda get back on their feet. In my mind, they were more valuable than pearls.

My beautiful friend Ania made it to my wedding, which was an amazing blessing as she lives in Poland. My other two besties didn't get to have her there on their big days, so I'm especially lucky that she could stand up with me. 

We got married at an Arboretum in the Chicago area and stayed true to our outdoorsy nature. Who needs church weddings when God is everywhere? I also want to stress how amazing Ben's groomsmen were. They were all available when needed, and willing to help with anything and everything. Ty even held my train and walked us from location to location while we took photos outside. 

Our wedding was supposed to take place on an open lawn, surrounded by hedges, on stone steps. But at 5:28 for our 5:30 ceremony, the skies opened up and spilled a massive thunderstorm from out of nowhere. At first, I was devastated that the wedding I'd been planning for over a year was crashing down before me. But after a 45 minutes delay, the venue surprised me with this gorgeous and never-before-done alternative. And it was perfect.

My Secret-softie of a  Dad letting a few tears down as he gave me off was extremely special (he usually hides his emotion well).

And we were hitched! The ceremony went by amazingly fast, and all of the sudden we were husband and wife. We walked out to a few good friends' acoustic rendition of "Never Had Nobody Like You" by M. Ward, and got ready to party!

Because this is already obnoxiously long, I'll put reception pictures in a Part Two post. Stay tuned!

Things I'm Liking This Week

There's been a little bit of stress in our household lately, and it's mostly job related (as usual), and uncertainty about what the next few months have in store for us. So in hopes of not using our blog as an outlet to complain, here's a little fun from this drab week.

The Ink Nest
Stumbled across this designer's blog while looking for tattoo inspiration yesterday, and was thrilled to find a sense of style so perfectly matched to mine. Ideal inspiration for my next ink!

Check out The Ink Nest blog!

 New styles at work
Meaning this adorable pair now belongs to me

The fact that this basement will soon be a climbing wall
So I can stop sucking at my favorite sport. Winter training here we come!

More in-tents time together
Going up to Grandby a few weeks back was the first time we've slept in a tent since August. Which we realize is completely lame. We're excited for Bela & Heidi's visit this weekend for some more camp/climb time!

(note that my extremely good looking husband is pulling off  the "wife beater" look)

Mostly, we're just excited for a little simplicity over the next few weeks, and for our business to let up so we can do what we do best (just  hang).

Pizza Bundt

We stumbled on a unique pizza recipe lately that we are loving for a fun meal when people come over.  Because Ben is Italian, pizza is kind of our "thing," and we are constantly looking for new and fun ways to present it.

It's an easy no-rise dough, individual pizza balls with the ingredients inside, and sauce for dipping. You and your guests pull off the chunks of pizza and dip them in the sauce.

You simply roll out the dough, pack it in with ingredients and cheese, pinch the dough edges together in a ball shape, and then brush with an olive oil and garlic salt mix, and pack them into a bundt cake pan.

A few tips: husband and I made the mistake of making one of these bad boys for the two of us on our first attempt, and after picking through a quarter of the bread and slumping down in our chairs with food babies, we realized this is at least a 4 personal meal. On our seccond time making it for our friends Robert and Katie, we realized it's a least a 5 person dish.

We also found that if you're using pepperoni, be sure to double up to on the slices (I know, really healthy) so you can taste them, and that a chunk of mozzarella is better than shredded cheese.

 And here's the easy dough recipe (we ignore the "let the yeast sit" part and just toss everything into our kitchen aid).

A little Colorado love

So it turns out we like to make memories in July. We started dating on July 1st, got engaged on July 4th, and got married on July 11th. This next week, we'll be celebrating the 1 year anniversary of our move to Colorado.

This move has been a long time coming for us. Ever since I spent my first year of college in Fort Collins, Chicago was slowly killing my sense of adventure. We prayed for years that something would come up when the time was right and I was done with school, and after making us fidget for a few months, God came through with an amazing job for Ben out of thin air. And here we are!

Our first year of life here has been a struggle, but the best kind. We came with hardly any friends, almost no family, and half the jobs we needed. I looked for work for months, went from temp job to temp job, and struggled in the meantime with missing my best friends and family members back home.

But a year later, I feel like we've finally arrived. We've fallen in with an amazing crowd at Northern Hills Church, at a young adult service called theMill. We're bursting at the seams with lovable buds now, and even having trouble keeping up with them all. I have two jobs I love, Ben is kicking butt at his, and we seriously can't get enough of this state.

So below is some love to Colorado, and some of our favorite memories so far in this incredibly beautiful state!

Driving down 93 on our first week in town, we couldn't believe we actually lived here

From our first Colorado hike in Golden Gate Canyon

Vail visit, Ben's first time up here

From a glorious afternoon bike ride in the middle of the winter

Some sunset slacklining and North Table climbing

Our first ever moose sighting during Date Day at Rocky Mountain National Park

And finally, showing a little love to my husband on our second Golden Gate hike

Aspen Anniversary Weekend

I can hardly believe we're already past the year marker. It seems like last week that I was frantically throwing final details together and feeling like the day would never get here. But now that it's come and gone, I can look back and say that marriage has been a thousand times better than I ever dreamed it would be.

We celebrated with a long weekend in Aspen. It was a first time visit for both of us, so we went into it with no plans and no expectations. What resulted was a super relaxing yet adventures weekend, with hiking, fancy (and incredibly overpriced) meals, and hours of browsing in stores we will never make enough money to shop in.

Our favorite part of the trip by far was our hike of the Maroon Bells just outside of town. This is a gorgeous area, with Bell-shaped 14ers flanked by a lake, surrounded by rushing water and wildflowers (it's one of the "most photographed spots in Colorado"). We did a short hike around the lake, where we were in such awe of the view that it didn't seem real.

We finished the celebration back in Boulder, with a tradition we'll be partaking in until the end of time: free Slurpees on our anniversary (7-11).

When a torrential downpour started at 5:15 (just like it did before our outdoor 5:30 wedding last year), we just laughed. We did hear that a rainy wedding day was good luck!

Why We Jumped Ship

We're blogspot newbies, transfers from over at Tumblr, and we've decided to make this our new blogging home. While we enjoyed our time there, we think we'll have an easier time connecting with and learning from other newlywed bloggers in our new diggs.

So feel free to check out our old blog here. If you'd rather stay local, here's a quick update on who we are.

We're the Mercuri's. We're Newlyweds (just passed the first year mark this week!), and Chicago natives (sort of). Ben (husband) is a graphic designer with Crocs shoes and a photographer in his ever-waning spare time. I'm a ex English Lit major turned Social Responsibility coordinator (which I also do at Crocs), and I sell outdoor gear to Coloradans at REI on the side.

After our wedding last year, we decided to take the plunge, and move away from our family and friends to live out our dream of moving to Colorado, where we are now currently adventuring near Boulder.

So that's us. We'll be here sharing whatever comes our way!