Family and Friends,
Over the last two years, our “wedding” took on a life of its own, becoming a living, breathing, slightly-despised member of our family. It’s become a new favorite joke – where are we going to have this year’s wedding – and it has provided countless opportunities to learn flexibility, humor, and how to adjust to life’s unexpected seasons (i.e. all of life).
But now, we’re over it.
As we move past the “wedding years” of our marriage, we’re excited to share our non-event-rescheduling lives with you all. However, since I (Michelle) left Facebook, and Alex is literally in the clouds 50% of his life, we have struggled to stay in touch and let people know what’s going on in our lives, especially these last six months.
So, for those who care, and the others who are just curious, we’ve decided to turn our original wedding website into our family blog. It’s an unapologetically corny thing to do, and we’d be tempted to judge ourselves, but here you are reading it,…so clearly there’s an audience for it.
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First things first: We are so grateful for all those who supported us the last two years, especially those who were able to join us for our reception on May 15, 2021. (Please know that our delayed thank you notes are not an indicator of the level of our appreciation, but rather a result of our ever-changing daily lives from the last six months.)
Although it was a year later than originally planned, our reception was a wonderfully warm and memorable day for us. We were so excited to see the many friends and family who were able to come, although we were dismayed to learn that time passes twice as fast at your wedding reception, and we weren’t able to get around to hug everyone! We’re also indebted to those who weren’t able to make the journey but sent texts, cards, gifts, love, and prayers from afar. Thank you. Sincerely.
For us the highlights of that day included being able to spend the day with our closest friends, being able to get “glammed up” (for me), and spending weeks learning a choreographed first dance and then choosing to giggle and sway the whole time instead. (Turns out it’s much harder to dance with a long train than originally thought.) It was also important and special for us to dance with my dad and his mom respectively – a tradition we would have missed out on otherwise. (Alex was also delighted at the prospect of “giving me back” for a few days in order to let my dad give me away again. However, my dad reminded him that there was a strict “no take backs” policy in the document signed in June 2020, so jokes on him. But I digress.)
Thank you for being a part of our day(s) and journey and humoring all our invitations, reschedules, pity parties, etc. When we have children, we’ll try to make those announcements and celebrations as straight forward and to the point as possible, because we hear that having kids is very straight forward and not chaotic at all.
If you want to look at all pictures of our reception (or see if there are any good pictures of yourself), take a look at our photo album or text/email Michelle for a link to the full gallery. (Video coming soon.)
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Our other big announcement is that we’re Texans now, y’all. On May 13, 2021 – yes, two days before our wedding reception – we drove from Little Rock to Houston to sign papers on our new house, purchased sight unseen (because that’s what buying a house in 2021 is like). Before this, the biggest purchase I had ever made was our 4Runner, and before that, I bought a couch 10 years ago. This was a big (and slightly nerve-racking day for us and our future family. (And wow, do you have to sign a lot of papers to own a house!)
For those keeping track, we actually live in The Woodlands (or Spring, TX if you talk to the water company). We’re about an hour outside of downtown Houston which satisfies my love of a big city and Alex’s love of land, land, land. Our property features a petit yard – adorable really – but our neighborhood is a picture of the 1950s with the neighborhood kids riding their bikes to school, playing hide and seek in our front yard, and, for one especially precocious eight-year-old neighbor, giving me career advice while I sand our forever-needing-to-be-sanded dresser drawers in our garage.
We moved to Texas primarily for Alex’s job, as the last 18 months have changed the flight industry in ways we could not have predicted when we first thought Arkansas would be home. Living near a major airport has certainly been a game changer for Alex and moving to a new state has also provided an exciting career opportunity for me as well. I’ve been super fortunate to have continued working for my current Little Rock employer the last six months while we got settled, but the commute has been challenging to say the least… We knew that arrangement couldn’t last forever, and while I’ve enjoyed my time as a fundraiser, I am so excited to announce that I’m going to be a full-time writer, editor, and graphic designer starting in February 2022. I will be sharing more details about that in the coming weeks, so if you’re interested in that journey, check back soon.
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If all that life change wasn’t enough to keep us busy, Alex has been working like crazy and going to school to complete his degree. I will try my best not to go on and on about this, because he will get embarrassed and make me edit it out, but I’m so proud of all his hard work and commitment to this endeavor. There’s a lot of sacrificing when you’re working and in school at the same time, especially of “fun” things like seeing friends and taking trips. So friends, know that this season is about half-way done…and soon enough we’ll be ready to party between the hours of 11am and 7pm again!
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Oh! And we’ve been remodeling our house. WOWZA. Y’all. As someone who comes from a family of talented, honest, hard-working contractors, I have always been DEEPLY offended by any negative comment made towards contractors. Turns out…not every contractor is as good as my father, brother, and brother-in-law. Having high standards and a low filter for telling people what I really think about things has made the home improvement process…an adventure. Jokes aside, it’s been a blast to work on our own home and navigate the “adventures” together….did we tell you the one about the door to door window salesman who gave a 4-hour presentation and ended with a quote for $37,000 windows? (For context, our house is only about 1800 square feet.)
Still, there’s a new pride and joy that comes from working on our home together, and one day, I hope to finish the dresser drawers I told Alex I could knock out in a weekend. (To be fair, I never specified the weekend.) In our coming posts we’ll share some before and after pictures! Thanks to our parents for helping and advising us throughout the last six months!
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Alright, we don’t want to scare you away before we even get started, so I’ll stop there. Ultimately, we love you all, we’re grateful for y’all, we’re delighted to no longer be planning events, and we cannot wait to share our new chapters with you as we write them.
— Michelle & Alex
P.S. I’m also working on a few pieces explaining the unique details of our wedding that were important to me in an effort to write the content that I was searching for when I was planning all 57 events. If you’re into that stuff, stay tuned!
The Campbells 