So We Went Looking For Apartments...

We are still students. Fiance graduates from undergrad in less than two weeks, and starts medical school in August. I graduate next May. We went to the town of his med school last Friday (about two hours away from the university we both attend now) to look at apartments. We spent the night there because we went to his "Second Look" (which is like a pre-orientation) for the medical school Friday which took all day, then looked at apts and scoped out the area the next day. We fell in love with one place in particular and are looking to sign a contract with them and move in around July.

It felt good to finally see the town where our marriage will start. It's in Tucson, AZ about two hours from Phoenix and it has a baaad reputation for being boring. Well, I guess we're two boring people because we loved the place and the affordability of nice apartments to choose from. A far cry from the jacked up prices surrounding ASU!

I remember a few months back, I ran into a mutual friend of a friend on campus at school. This girl and I rarely talk and the living arrangements of my fiance and I came up in the conversation. I told her we were looking to rent while he was in med-school. She responded with "Oh, well, MY boyfriend (who isn't in school) is looking for a house. I have to have a house when I'm married, and if he has it now, that's less work for me to do when the time comes. But, you know, that's just me."

This is not the first time I've heard a girl try to push the opinion that marriage=house. It just sticks out in my mind because this conversation really made me realize how much I'd grown apart from wanting to remain "frenemies" with people who compare notes and whatnot. I've had a long history of similar situations with this person: my life, my man, my everything is better than x, y, z. I am learning to let people's values/customs not compete with or crowd out my own. If you've never had to deal with this, fine. For the rest of you women who can relate, wave a hand in the air. Alot of people view marriage as a rite of passage, and it just amplifies some of the silly things people get caught up in even more.

So, I will move into an APARTMENT with my husband this July. I am no bourgeoisie person by any means. And it will be a welcome haven for us from the stresses and difficulties of the outside world. And later, when we are more firmly established we can build our foundation together, look for a house together, and feel that we truly grew up together. Like we've been doing.

Marriages come in all shapes and sizes. Some people enter into them with no children, with children, with no exes, with a slew of ex-partners, divorced, never before married, virgin, not virgin, interracial, interfaith, age gap, long distance....And I never look at any one any different than the other. I understand that every marriage will bring joys and challenges and I can't base mine as better or worse than anyone else's. That's the problem with thinking that there is a cookie-cutter way to do things. I never stop to think about all of the diverse lives of some of my favorite blogging brides. Most of the time, we relish in fun wedding details and don't care to share our lives with the world. I realize that the nice thing about the bloggers I read all have one thing in common: excitement for the next step in their lives. The positivity is so full on these blogs that I never find myself reading about the silly things that sometimes get in the way of real-life interactions. (How big is your ring, how much is the wedding, whose paying for what, what are your living arrangements etc.).

I choose not to share much of my personal life on this blog but I do think that sometimes the things we have in common (meaning myself and my readers) go beyond planning a ceremony and reception. We all had to get through some journey to get to this next step where we are ready to get married, and we still find ourselves learning about ourselves and our partners.

And I want to pass on this link to a very relatable (for me) post on weddingbee.com about a bride whose dealing with a slew of awkward situations involving facebook/wedding. My solution? I deleted mine, for wedding related reasons and others.