As many of you know, Wade and I have been together for almost 12 years this year. These past 12 years have been filled with joys, sorrows, ups, downs and a bunch of in-betweens-- and as the years grew older, we knew we wanted to be together forever.

Last year, we talked a lot about marriage and how we wanted to get married soon. In February, as you may know, Wade proposed. It was such a special day! We were so excited and ready for forever. What you do not know is, shortly after, Wade and I decided to have a private ceremony with a witness and devote our lives to each other in front of God... and officially pronounced ourselves husband and wife. And we have now been married for almost a year!

We decided after the private ceremony that we would tell our families but keep the marriage "hush hush". We did this for a couple reasons: 1) We knew we had to save for a wedding, but we wanted to honor God with our commitment and no longer wanted to fight certain temptations we had been. So we thought by getting married privately and then saving for the wedding, it would be a good option for us. And 2) We wanted to keep the wedding day special-- and we thought by not telling people we were already married, it would help maintain the "special-ness" of the wedding.

Fast forward 11 months into the marriage, we continue to feel led to share with the world the commitment we made to each other. We realize that marriage should be celebrated, even if a wedding comes later. Also, let's be honest, marriage has humbling moments and we married folk need support from other married folk.

We have wrestled with how to share this special news to people because we know that looking back, we could have told more people right away that we were married. We honestly had the best intentions and are happy to share the news now.

We are still planning a wedding to celebrate our commitment and union with family and friends on January 19th 2019. We have a lot of planning to do and will share more details with all of you soon! Stay tuned!

Love,

The Branches :)