Weddingbee Blog

That is my quick sketch of something featured in a past Seattle magazine issue. Photocopier? What’s that?

Okay. So I guess every one of my friends could unanimously say that any one of these houses is the house for me, each boasting old hardwood floors and some really fantastic architectural feature inside, like a brick chimney exposed along the wall of a sloped-roofed attic. This past fall Mr. Milkshake and I ended up buying a circa-1974 split level home, and while it’s not the great character house I had envisioned, it’s definitely home.

What does a house have to do with our wedding? I had never wanted to live with any guy before I was married, but moving to another country with my then-boyfriend-now-fiance really didn’t make it the easiest. We’d managed for a year, renting separate apartments for $2500 between us, but it came to the point where I couldn’t stand throwing the money away when I could sink that very same rental amount into a monthly mortgage payment. It’s not the 1950’s anymore: aside from the fact that I didn’t spend the last 5 years living with my parents and learning to cook and bake, and aside from the fact that I moved out at 16 to go to unversity - bottom line is, we are 150 miles away from the homes we grew up in.

After we’d bought the house, my banker was itching to ask Mr. Milkshake about our living arrangements when he touched on the fact that we’d have two separate bedrooms in the house. By the time I saw her later that day she was just bursting to ask me. It may not be the 1950’s, and we may live under one roof, but I’m still conservative.

We lived in separate apartments across the street from each other for a full year. We “float” for our jobs, which means we have different coworkers everyday. Wven people who are 50+ years old, who I would have thought to have old fashioned values were flabbergasted to find out we lived apart. Why is this such a shock? We each got this reaction from everyone we met, and they made us feel like idiots for it, too. I certainly don’t have any qualms about other people living together, but I was shocked and somewhat offended that I received pretty much the opposite reaction from people about me not living with my then-boyfriend - like in some twisted way I was being judged for not “living in sin.” It made me feel like I was from outer space, or that I was at least a terrible outsider in today’s society.

Maybe the west coast is too socially forward, and things are different in other parts of the countryt? How many of you out there aren’t, won’t, or never did live with your man before marriage, and what parts of the country do you hail from?