Before we got married, so many people told us to brace ourselves because our first year would be our worst.

Well? We decided we weren’t going to let that happen.

Don’t get us wrong: That first year was tough and we made a ton of mistakes. But because we’d invested so much time on the front-end preparing for our marriage—not just planning a wedding—it was an incredible year.

We loved our first year of marriage. You deserve to love yours, too.