They Had Been Together Forever

The love story you rarely see on TV is often the one that endures: two people who build a life first, then choose the moment that truly fits to say I do. We open up about couples who didn’t rush—some waited through degrees and residencies, some raised kids and paid mortgages, and others navigated health realities and insurance choices before making it legal. Along the way, we unpack how pop culture’s whirlwind romances can distort expectations, and why the slower path can be just as passionate, more grounded, and often more joyful.

I share favorite ceremonies that prove time is a powerful witness. You’ll meet second-grade sweethearts who honored a playground promise as adults, a pair who turned twenty years of “someday” into a celebration of everything they’d already built, and college friends who reconnected after other marriages and timed their wedding to gather kids, aging parents, and even early grandkids in one room. We also talk candidly about COVID’s hard lessons: in states without common law protections, legal marriage can unlock hospital access and decision-making rights when it matters most.

If you’re feeling pressure to follow someone else’s timeline, breathe. There’s no deadline on commitment, and no single script for a meaningful ceremony. Long-term couples bring humor, calm, and deep knowing to their vows—not as a beginning, but as a continuation. Whether you’re newly smitten or decades in, you get to choose the moment that makes sense for your life, your family, and your values. If this resonates, tap follow, share it with a friend who needs permission to wait, and leave a review with your own slow-burn love story—we might feature it next.

Chapters

• 0:04 Welcome And Episode Theme
• 1:10 Personal Updates And Pregnancy News
• 2:54 Pop Culture Speed Vs Real Timelines
• 4:00 Why Couples Wait To Marry
• 6:46 Finances, Careers, And Health Factors
• 10:55 Labels, Age, And Prior Marriages
• 16:26 Second-Grade Sweethearts Story
• 22:21 Twenty Years Of Someday

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:04

Welcome to the Wedding Wear with a fish eating by Amanda. The Wedding Wear they have been together forever. Hello, friends, and welcome back to The Wedding Where, a podcast where we listen, we don't judge, and today we talk about couples who took things a little slower than maybe what we would think of. Today's episode is The Wedding Where They Hidden Together. And this is the couples who didn't rush. The couples who took the long road, the ones who had been together for quite some time, yet looked up one day and realized maybe it's time we say I do, even after they've lived a quarter or a half of their lifetime together. Before I get into the episode, I just want to give some life updates. The year is moving very, very fast and very, very swiftly, which is really awesome. But just like last year, it's going to be a crazy year. So thank you all for bearing with me. If episodes aren't out every week, every two weeks, we're working over here, just trying to keep the trains moving on time. And while I'm in a lull period right now without some weddings, the spring and the fall are amping up to be absolutely crazy and absolutely chaotic. And if you are a loyal listener on this podcast, I'm going to get you filled in on some information before it hits the general population. My husband and I are expecting. So that jumbles up my fall a whole heck of a lot more with a little one on the way. Don't worry, I've got coverage. Weddings will not be canceled if you are a couple of mine and you're freaking out. Check your emails if you are an August or September couple for what the game plan's going to be. But no worries, we've got it all underhand. Can't wait to introduce you guys to my new sidekick, side efficient. She's fantastic. Her name's Blake. And I look forward to having her on the podcast really soon so that she can introduce herself and get that all set up for you guys. Okay. Enough value, Amanda. Back to telling us stories. When we talk about love stories, or we think about them in terms of mostly pop culture, they're fast. They're really fast. It's a meat cue, a spark, a stolen look, a whirlwind romance. I mean, yes, we know that the celebrity marriages that happen in five weeks often end in divorce in two days, but you hear a lot of stories about the we we just knew. We just knew and we had to be together and no forces on earth could stop us. And very quickly they are engaged, married, riding off into the sunset before a season finale. And yeah, I did just quote Bridgerton kind of there. If you follow shows like that, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Meet in the springtime, court in the summer, married by fall, a baby through the winter, and done. But that's not always real. And there's more than one timeline for love stories. And because there's so many whirlwind romances that we hear about, we kind of forget about the couples who've been together forever. The ones who maybe go to wedding after wedding after wedding, hearing, and when are you getting married? Or the ones who don't really need a commitment or a legal commitment to know that they love each other, to know that they're going to be together. And that's a little bit of the couples that I've married that I want to focus on today. I'll probably do another episode at some point focusing on the shorter side of that spectrum where they only knew each other a few days or they knew it was love, had to get married very quickly. There's a ton of those I've done as well. So, what does this forever that we picture look like? Sometimes it looks like growing up together. Sometimes it looks like growing old together. Sometimes it looks like the micro commitments, or if there's kids involved, they are not micro at all. The commitments that you make as kind of the building blocks of life together. And before you know it, you've built a whole house, raised a whole family. And that is true of the couples that I've married. I've married couples who have never known really a life without each other. And I have couples who raised their kids together and blinked, and suddenly the kids were 18 and 20. And the thought of, oh my gosh, right, we were gonna get married at some point, but it never seemed to be the right time, the best time happened. Those who lived together for decades and didn't feel a need were happy with where they were. And those who maybe had a little bit more of that quick summer romance thing when younger, but lost each other for a little bit of time and came back together. And when you add up that length of time together, the pre and the post, it can be quite substantial for how long they've been a part of each other's lives. And the one thing that I really love about marriages for couples who've been together a long time is that I honestly should just get up there and say the number of years they've been together because their love and their story has already stood the test of time. And that is really powerful, sometimes more powerful than all of the vows that you could come up with to say. And there are so many reasons why couples wait or why they choose not to marry, or that marriage isn't a necessity for them. And none of them are wrong. Some of the more common reasons that I've heard have been finances, because weddings are expensive. It is more important to buy a house, buy a car, make sure that there's food on the table, make sure everyone's gotten through college, grad school, additional degrees. A lot of professionals, doctors or lawyers that I've married. It's been a 50-50 split, you know, who they met in college that they fell in love with, whether they were getting married before the professional degrees, because you wanted that person, you know, by your side through commitment for your future journey, or more commonly in the millennial generation. No, you both go and do your degrees. You're both together, even if you're together but apart, and you work through it. And upon getting those advanced degrees, you then finally have a little bit of the time and certainly more of the money to sit down and say, okay, let's get married. Health is another reason because insurances are crazy and sometimes you don't want to muck with who's on which insurance or what covers what. And if you're dealing with some really tough health issues, sure the first thought on your mind could be, I love this person and I want them to know I love them and to spend any days I've got left with them. But on the flip side of the coin, I've got enough on my plate just thinking about my health or worrying about the health of my partner. Don't need to complicate things with filling out a marriage license, with finding a time, a place, a location, a person to get married, especially if you've always had dreams of doing a little bit bigger of a ceremony. You don't want to shelve that, especially if you're sick, because you never know when your next opportunity might be. Labels are another reason. They know who they are to me. They know how important we don't need to be husband, we don't need to be wife. We don't, we don't need the labels. I also hear age sometimes. Oh, we were too old to get married. It wasn't the cool thing anymore. All of our friends had already gotten married. We so we were just together and it didn't matter. We're already doing life together. What really changes? And one of the last reasons I hear quite a bit on why there's a wait, if you will, is previous relationships that went wrong or previous marriages, and wanting to be more intentional, more certain the next time around, or having been burned through both the marriage and divorce process, that the the ends don't justify the means. So that's sometimes where I get people that will say we want to share our commitment. We don't want it legal. We don't want any document that says that we are legally spouses. And don't worry, if you're confused on what all I could be talking about or how exactly that all works out of having a wedding but not being married, I will cover that all next week. With all of the couples that have been together for a long time, it wasn't that marriage was missing, it was just it wasn't a necessity yet. Or in the case of one of my stories, it wasn't possible given their ages until a certain time. So I married a couple who had been together since the second grade. So cute. It was adorable. And when I met with them, they actually told me that they were already married. And I gasped. And they explained that there had been a schoolyard ceremony for these two second graders back in the day. And they had considered that when they got together, when they got, you know, married. And throughout the years, they never strayed, they never wandered. They viewed that as pretty gosh darn important to them. But now, as adults post-college, they wanted to make it legal. So I had to reference that in the script. I had to say, you know, commitments between two second graders are adorable, but they are not legally binding. You have had your commitment, your patience, your perseverance through, you know, the last 18 plus years that you've been together, tried and tested. And now today you're legally getting married because that kind of determination needs to be rewarded. And I love that. They haven't done a day apart. They did all of their school dances together, even in junior high. They did graduation, they talked about college together, started off going to different schools, ended up at the same school, ended up working together at the same school. They did it all together. And then when they were both actual adults, they got married. Just two people who always knew. And the reason that their story took so long is because, well, you can't get married as a child. We I had a couple, they'd been together for 20 years, and it pretty much was that they just kept putting it off. They got engaged probably nine months after knowing each other and had every intention to get married someday. But then the first plan that they had, well, along came a baby. And the second plan that they had, they had a parent pass away. And the third plan they had, well, wouldn't money be better spent on a house? And just making these other things more of a priority than legal marriage. Not more important than your spouse or your significant other, but more important than the marriage part. That's what they did for 20 years. And one day they realized, oh my gosh, the kids are grown. Oh my gosh, the kids are even talking about their own futures where they might get married. And we don't we don't have a story to tell them. The someday that they kept putting off had turned into two decades. And when we did their wedding, it wasn't about like, oh, you know, finally. It wasn't about catching up. It wasn't about, well, we we had to do this. It was really about honoring how far they'd come and how much they'd already built. And that, you know, if anything, you do a big celebration, bigger celebration, I would almost say, for a 20th anniversary than what you do for a wedding. On a tangent, if I were to make any recommendations, it would be that the amount of time and energy and money that goes into a wedding should be a fraction of what it is. And that whatever it is that you do, say, yes, let's spend this is this is our threshold. Each five-year milestone that you're together, you should be amplifying up that pot so that by the time you hit 20 years, 30 years, 40, or if you're lucky enough 50 years, there is a huge celebration awaiting you, worthy of all the years, of all of the times when you could have walked or you got so frustrated. That I think is the bigger thing to celebrate than that initial commitment. It's the continued commitment. But I digress. I had a couple who even when I married them, they did not want to be married. Well, I shouldn't say it like that. They didn't want legal marriage at all. They were very comfortable and confident with who they were and how their lives were going. But then COVID hit. And when the world shut down for COVID and things got very scary, especially for older couples who did not have any sort of legal paperwork tying them to their spouse, it meant that you might not be permitted to visit them if they were hospitalized, that you have no grounds to make some of these very scary medical decisions for them. I live in a state that does not recognize common law marriage. And so there is no safeguard of, oh, well, we've been together so long, or we're pretty pretty much partners. And since same-sex marriage has been legalized, really commitment ceremonies aren't as legally or formally accepted as they once were. So you're kind of married or you're kind of not. And in the light of COVID, it really stripped down for what else comes bundled in this legal marriage situation and does it matter? It was really about providing some certainty in some very uncertain times. And I was happy to get them on, get them in elopement, sign their paperwork, and get everything taken care of so that they could, you know, just continue going forward. And if they never said to anybody, oh hey, we're married, or that's my wife now, that's totally fine. They just needed it for some of the residual benefits. I then had a couple who took the long way around, if you will, to find each other. They had known each other in college and they liked each other. They dated on and off through college and a few years after, and they both then went on to marry other people, lost touch a bit, and probably about 10 years ago saw each other at a reunion. And one had been divorced and the other one wasn't divorced yet. But they re I won't say rekindled, I won't make that assumption, but they reconnected and started talking to each other again and re found that friendship and that trust, that bond that was at the very basis of their earlier relationships. And then when they both found themselves single and available, they picked back up. But they didn't want to scare their families. They didn't want to, you know, start screaming, hey, we found each other again, and we a thousand percent know that this is what we want to do. And gosh, it only took us on and off 15 years to figure out that we wanted to do this. So they they bit their time a little bit. They waited, they wanted for their kids to get through school, not have an upheaval of kind of like a Brady Bunch house with a remarriage of their parents. And when it made the most sense, they they did, they tied the knot together, they timed it in a way so that they they tried to find a really great balance between the ages of their now very aged parents and where they were as parents and I think very early grandparents. So using their wedding as a way to celebrate all of the generations and all of the family members that they were lucky to be surrounded by, but also, hey, we finally got here. It's the journey, journey of a thousand steps. Weddings feel different for couples who've been together for a long time. There's, at least in my experience, I have found that there's less nerves, less pressure. There's still the same emotion. You know, you might think, gosh, we've been together forever. Why am I tearing up as I say my vows? It's because today is a different kind of day. It's a special day. Within their ceremonies and their relationships, there's a lot more confidence. There's humor. Oh my gosh, the jokes that they tell and have no problem with me telling. There's a deep knowing, and also knowing that you're not likely going to have a fight the night before the wedding and call it all off and break up. That is not something seen in couples who have been together for a very long time. Their vows have some really meaningful words to them. Like we've already done the hard parts. This isn't a beginning, it's a continuation. We know exactly who we're choosing. They are some of the most grounded and joyful ceremonies that I've officiated. So if you're out there listening and you're like, gosh, I've been together with my partner for like 10 years. Oh, if they ever propose, if we ever get married, I personally think ceremony-wise, it'll all be worth it. Because realistically, there is no timeline for love. There's no expiration date. There's no right or wrong moment. There could be a better moment or a best moment. And there have been missed moments, but there's no right or wrong. You're gonna do it when it makes the most sense to you. And please, oh please, don't let society or, you know, the lady whistledown and the members of the tawn dictate that you are a spinster on the shelf if you're not married by 20, and that you have to only be out in the engaged world for a year and or gosh, college, if you meet somebody freshman year and you're dating them throughout, they're kind of like, oh, you'll get engaged by the spring semester of your senior year. That is not logical, really, at all. So whether you met last year or you met each other in grade school, whether you found yourself married within six months, or you waited and kept rescheduling over the span of six years, whether you got married while you were young, or you lived a whole life together before you said I do, what matters is that you chose to say I do, and you know that that has meant. Over all the years, I choose you and I choose to love you. So thank you for listening to the wedding where I'm excited in the next few weeks to bring you some more kind of mashups from some of these weddings I've done that have been not legal or not to the normal ascribement of time or really not to the normal time length because they've been like we knew each other two weeks. So stay tuned for all of that. And until next time, this has been Amanda. Thank you for listening to The Wedding Wear with Officiating by Amanda. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and found some inspiration or insight for your own special day. This podcast is hosted on Buzz Sprout and can be found on all major platforms. If you haven't already, please subscribe, like, comment, and share to help us reach even more listeners who might laugh a little at the wedding wear. For the links referenced in the show, visit Linktree at OfficiatingByAmanda. You can also follow the business on Facebook, WeddingWire, and The Knot to stay up to date on everything going on. If you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast, just send an email to the WeddingWare Podcast at gmail.com. And if you're ready to inquire about officiating services for your own big day, you can reach me at officiatingbyamanda at gmail.com. Thank you so much for tuning in, and until next time, this has been Amanda.