Our wedding is exactly five weeks from today, and the cold feet has somewhat diminished, though I’m still nervous. We’ve been doing a lot lately with planning. From tuxes to flowers (red roses with white stephanotis) to booking our honeymoon (at a bed & breakfast in Asheville, North Carolina) to final dress alterations. The details of wedding planning have been never-ending, but I know it will all be worth it.

Among all of the planning, we’ve had to participate in some pre-marriage counseling led by the preacher that will be marrying us. We’ve had two meetings thus far (and we only have one more to go), but apparently the preacher is very positive about our coming marriage. At our second meeting, we were going over some marriage goals that each of us have, and luckily, our goals are very similar, and I think that made our preacher very excited to be marrying us.

At the end of our meeting, he brought up some physical goals and intimacy. Josh went on to tell him that we are both virgins, never having sex with each other nor anyone before us. Usually, people become incredibly shocked by this fact, and this time was no different; however, he applauded us. I’m nineteen and J is twenty-one, so I guess being virgins at our age is very hard to come by. The biggest shock of all: we live together. We’ve lived together since last August. People who know us say “how do you not?” Honestly, I think it’s just because we never have before in the past. Though it’s not easy not to at times, we still don’t. We’re waiting until we’re married. It was never really a choice we made due to religion; it was just a personal choice. We knew that if we waited, we’d be rewarded in the end. We’re both incredibly proud of it all.