Becoming a Hurwitz: What Awaits You After the Honeymoon

photo credit: Maile Lani 

On November 10th, 2013, I tied the knot with the most amazing man that I have ever met. It was a beautiful day, filled with so much love, friends, family, rainbows*, and amazing New Orleans culture. We felt so blessed that we had found each other, and that we were able to share our vows of love and commitment with the people we love most. The following day, we were off on our honeymoon and just a short hop, skip, and a week later, we were back home. Married life could officially begin...

... just kidding!

Think of coming home from your honeymoon. You are completely relaxed after a week of pampering (or in our case coming home from Disney World, a week of simulation rides and Disney princesses) and are excited to settle down, and live life normally as husband and wife. Now forget all of that, because it doesn't happen that way. You my friend, have things to do! Before you can cuddle on the couch, watching TMZ sophisticated, grown-up television shows there are a few important tasks you need to take care of first.

(*this is a lie, there were no rainbows)

Thank You Cards:

First thing on your list are thank you cards. You want to make sure that you have properly thanked all of the people who attended your wedding (as well as the people who sent gifts and well wishes but could not attend!). 

We must have invited only something like 40 people, right? Does everyone still have the same addresses as when we originally sent the wedding invitations? Can we somehow escape doing this and just blame the United States Postal Service? 

No? Crap. 

Bryan and I had originally planned on making video recordings of our thank you's and e-mailing them to all of our guests. And yes, after we came home from the wedding and saw all the things we needed to do, we laughed too. Thank you cards were a tricky thing for us -- we wanted to make sure that all of our guests knew just how much we appreciated their generous gifts, while fighting the urge to write "thank you so much!" and send it as a facebook status. In the end, thank you cards are one of the most important parts of your wedding. Your guests are a major part of your big day, and you need to let them know just how grateful you are for that.

Putting All of These Gifts... Somewhere:

Wow, look at all these gifts! I can't believe so-and-so got the Breville 2,000-watt Ivory colored espresso machine! Awesome!

Where is this going to go? 

Months ago, when Bryan and I walked into Williams-Sonoma and he made the grave mistake of giving me the registry gun, I never took into account the possibility of not everything fitting in our one-bedroom apartment. The thought of taking size into consideration had never entered my mind. And I can officially say, that if I were to do it all over again... I would have done exactly the same thing. So since I didn't exactly learn any sort of lesson, I need to somehow fit all of these gifts in our apartment so I can put them to good use. 

What we chose to do was instead of jam the old with the new, we gave our kitchen a brand new inventory. We got rid of all our current supplies (circa college years) to make way for the new and improved. I then revamped the kitchen to give more space for electronics and supplies we had never had before. When all was finished, we had a working kitchen with amazing equipment. I could cook meals that I never had the tools to cook before, and I couldn't wait to start making new, creative meals that we could enjoy together.

The Wedding Was How Much?!?:

"If I die before this wedding without ever having a seven course dinner again, I am going to be so angry."

Weddings are expensive, which I'm sure everyone is aware of by now. As the economy maintains its downturn, weddings for a majority of people (just like vacations or Christmas shopping) become more and more expensive. Even through months of saving, my career as an event planner, and my husband being a certified public accountant, we still gasped a bit at how much our final expenses were. However, in my opinion the splurge of a wedding isn't what's dangerous -- it's what comes after the wedding is over. 

Let's face it, when your wedding day is fast approaching, your finances are tight. You have been putting everything you can into your wedding (and all the last minute details) and can't wait until you can finally have something liquid that you can use to live your life again. So when you are finally hitched, the temptation of taking all that money you would normally put to the wedding and buying a pair of black suede Christian Louboutin shoes becomes very, very real. When you return home from your wedding, take a real hard look at your expenses with your new husband. Combine your incomes and expenses and see just how much money you have to spend each month. Then you can decide how much of that you'd like to dedicate towards savings (short term and long term planning), investments, vacations, etc. When you're prepared to throw all your money towards that new bag (or in my case, reservations at Per Se) try to find out just how much money you really have to spend. 

Also, as a financial side-note, make sure you change your marital status on your paycheck to married! You declare less in taxes because you file jointly and may be entitled to get a little boost in your bi-weekly or monthly paycheck. Just double check your effective tax rate to make sure you won't be owing money come next year :) 

Changing Your Name:

Coming back to work, no one knew what to call me. It probably didn't help that when they asked me what my full name was, I couldn't give them a straight answer. Some brides legally change their names before the wedding. This poses somewhat of a problem however if you are travelling immediately after and you booked your reservations under a different last name. Since we had a destination wedding, I preferred waiting until I got home and then procrastinating. 

In order to avoid the daunting task of tracking down numerous forms to fill out, I signed up to www.missnowmrs.com. The website charges around $30.00 and is put together like a survey. You fill out all the questions and the website creates each form for you (IRS, Passports, Licenses, etc.) all ready to print, and ship. Although missnowmrs has gained quite a bit of popularity, I posted this because some brides still do not know about its wonders. Hopefully, this will help someone save some time, stress and prescriptions on Xanax pills. 

photo credit: Maile Lani

So this is all I have for now. Excited to start this blog to showcase all of the adventures the two of us will have. To post all of the fun times as well as the things we learn and go through together. And as I wrote my 50th thank you card, unpacked a gorgeous All-Clad stock pot, squealed at my excel budget spreadsheet and filed my IRS forms away, I couldn't stop thinking, "it feels so good to be a Hurwitz".