Marriage Advice | Q&A | Celebrating 1 Year Married!

Jacob and I celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary a few months ago (April 2017) and in celebration we modeled in a styled shoot as a bride and groom again! When I went wedding dress shopping (almost 2 years ago) I was in love with every shape and style, I had such a hard time narrowing it down to just one dress! I mean I wish I could have pulled a Hayley Paige and worn 3 dresses on my wedding day, but….lets be honest, that’s expensive! So instead I had the idea to dress up again for our anniversaries and fulfill my dream of wedding photos galore, different locations, and completely different dresses!

For our 1 year we went with an elopement in the sand dunes! So many photographers were interested that we ended up turning it into a styled shoot so they could all join on the epic and hot day! Being a photographer myself it was so fun to receive the photos back and see how each photog captured that day differently.

To look back on our 1 year of marriage I answered a few questions below and Jacob and I filmed a little Q&A video for my YouTube channel which you can watch below!

What has been a high point of your marriage in the first year?

There has been so many high points for us this past year, but I would say one of my favorite high points were doing all of our “firsts” again as a married couple. Having our first birthdays being married, our first married Christmas, ringing in the new year as The Lestinas. I didn’t know holidays could get even better, until I did it married. Woot woot!!

What has been a low point of your marriage in the first year?

Okay guys, I am going to be completely transparent with you. And if you are new to my blog please know now that I always keep it 100. I am always honest and real with you all! Anyways, our lowest point in our first year of  marriage would have to be learning to share responsibilities. I am a HUGE do’er and list obsessor, so I tend to take on EVERYTHING, then get burnt out, and then get upset. So this past year Jacob has learned to help more and I have learned to let go and give more to him. It’s funny looking back on our first year because during our wedding ceremony, my mentor Robin literally said these words, “Karlie learn to put the list down, Jacob learn to pick it up”. Little did we know how true that would be for us.

What do you think has kept your first year of marriage strong?

We take our relationship very serious and guard our marriage with everything we have. Now if you know us you know we are both very goofy and laid-back, so I don’t mean we “take it serious” as in we don’t have fun. When I say we take our marriage serious I mean we make it our first priority everyday, we try to always put each other first and our love for one another. I believe Jacob and I have had a pretty easy and blessed  1st year of marriage, based on other couples stories I have heard. I don’t know if this is because we were together for so long before we got married, but I defiantly know that consistently working on ourselves and our marriage everyday for each other made our 1st year strong and inevitably pretty easy and tons of fun.

How do you two overcome a fight?

Luckily Jacob and I don’t fight a ton but when we do it is almost always from a lack of communication or just not communicating correctly. We are firm believers in “it’s not what you say, but how you say it”. If you are upset with your spouse for forgetting to do the dishes the night before and you wake up to the house smelling nasty, you can approach it one of two ways. You can either have massive attitude in your voice, in your body language and be super passive aggressive or you can approach  your spouse in a calm loving tone and remind them that you love them, you understand they forgot, followed up with how it made you feel, and asking them to try to remember a little better. Communication is KEY for a healthy relationship.

What’s your favorite “simple” routine you look forward to everyday such as …. having breakfast together, watching your favorite show together, going on a walk together?

We absolutely LOVE going on walks together at night. We are huge “walkers” if thats a thing, haha. When we travel we walk everywhere, literally everywhere, in one day we can walk up to 15 miles.

What is your advice for young women (early 20s) that are dating in hopes of marriage?

Patience! Jacob and I started dating when we were 15, got engaged at 18, and got married at 21. By the time we got married we had been together for 5.5 years! Of course you technically could get married younger than 21, but the reason we waited and waited and waited was because from the guidance of our parents we didn’t want to start our marriage off with the struggles of tight finances, working and going to school so much that we never saw each other, and other struggles we may have had before starting into your careers. So my advice is to be patient for the right time, wether that be 18, 25, or 30-years-old. If the person you are with is the right one eventually you will be married! Don’t rush into a marriage because you feel like you need to because of your age, or because you have been together for awhile, you have your whole life to be married to this person so be patient while getting to know them, patient through the waiting phases, and it will be so worth it on the other side! 🙂

Going on a trip with my husband soon and would love to know recommendations for a good travel camera (for a novice like us) to capture our fun times 🙂 and preferably not too expensive.

If you are looking for a smaller sized camera for travel, that takes great photos, and you aren’t a huge camera buff so you want it to be user friendly, I would defiantly recommend the Canon G7x . This is the camera I do all of my vlogging with!

 

Below are our photos from the shoot! I highlighted which photographer took the photos at the start of the thread!

Styling/Coordinating: @KarlieColleenPhotography
Brides Dress: @BellalilyBridal
Florals: @MoonChildFloralco
Invites: @PaigePoppe

 

Nate Bowman’s photos are below!


Hovering Heart Photos are below!

Jessica Q Photos below!

Want to share a collage from this shoot? Pin the image below featuring Nate Bowman’s work!

SAND DUNES PHOTOSHOOT - KARLIECOLLEEN.COM - NATE BOWMAN PHOTOGRAPHY

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