Pack Your (Tea) Bags

Mr. Kettle and I both lived in the Chicago area when we met 4th of July weekend 2010. Six weeks later, he got a job offer to teach in St. Louis. Wanting to be a gainfully employed adult not living with his parents, he gathered his things and moved there less than a week later.

This wasn't an issue at first. I was unemployed, desperately applying for jobs and getting tons of "thanks, but no thanks" e-mails each day. I had a ton of free time and spent a lot of in down in St. Louis. I think that's partially the reason our relationship was able to move forward so quickly. We simply had the time to focus wholly on us.

When we began discussing marriage, we had to figure something out. Mr. Kettle first suggested I move down to St. Louis with him. I was worried about being an unemployed mooch/kept woman/short order cook. I was also worried about being a complete and utter disappointment to my parents' hopes for both my career and my chastity.

While we were discussing options, he was getting increasingly frustrated with the long-distance-ness of our relationship. It was more about missing me than anything else, which I find really sweet of him. He had gotten used to waking up next to me, and hated going back to it when I reminded him I still needed to spend at least some time at my house in Chicago.

Right around this time, I got the job interview with my current job. That whole process from first interview to hiring took a little over a month. Also during this time, Mr. Kettle was moving not-quite-so-subtly towards proposing to me. Further complicating things, his boss informed him they were interested in giving him a promotion to being in charge of multiple schools in the district as they were changing their arts program throughout the school district. It would be a great promotion with a lot more money. Things had just gotten complicated. Real complicated.



Image: Alliedow's Blog

We came up with three options.

Option #1
Commuter Marriage. We both hated this idea immediately, but we felt compelled to consider it. I was still on the fence about living with him before we were married. That was mostly from worry about the judgement of my parents. Knowing we were trying to have a wedding for them, I didn't want to do something that would make them feel less than supportive when it came to paying for the wedding. But with me having a great job offer in Chicago and him having a great job offer in St. Louis, it just seemed hard... to figured out how to get us both to one place. How would we pick who's job was more important? If we lived in different cities for a while, I could see about transferring to him later or something like that. Sucky option, but still an option.

Option #2
Push Back The Wedding. This was another idea we both immediately hated. Had we just gone and gotten married when we first talked about it, we wouldn't have to worry about pre-marital co-habiting. But if I started my job and he got his promotion, it would be hard to live apart. Neither of us wanted to be newlyweds living in different states. Pushing back the wedding would give us time to work and save money. But then we had a Sonny & Cher moment and realized we didn't care that much about money. What we cared about was being together.

Option #3
Suck It Up And Risk Parental Anger And Live Together Now. I wasn't comfortable with this option because I felt like I had done enough in the last year to disappoint my parents (the whole med school thing) and I didn't want to only further make them question their parenting abilities. Did I mention I was worried about what my parents would think? Plus, choosing one of our careers to prioritize didn't really sit right with me.


Momma Kettle and Daddy Kettle are really very supportive; It's me, not them (personal photo)


Mr. Kettle saved the day. His logic and reasoning really helped me get over myself and be honest about adult decisions that needed to be made for my life.

Right after I was officially offered my job, Mr. Kettle made the decision to move to Chicago. He said he would figure out what to do about a job once he got here. Luckily, he's a very good musician, so he plays a number of gigs around the city and state and Midwest and country so he's always got some income.

He told me to trust him that we wouldn't have to talk to my parents about living together until we were engaged and told me to start looking for apartments. My man is nothing if not subtle. Yup, he's sure a subtle guy...

He proposed the day before Memorial Day. He then went back to St. Louis and gathered his things and moved back to Chicago. Luckily, his roommate was getting married the following weekend and more than happy to take over the entire rent in exchange for not living out some weird reverse Three's Company.



Image: City of KIK

That next week, my mother suggested Mr. Kettle and I move in together. I was shocked, but quickly jumped on that band wagon of thought. From there, it was less than a week before we picked out an apartment and signed our lease. Less than a month after getting engaged, we'd moved into our new apartment in Hyde Park. Moving day was a bit like our first wedding party hangout since we have so many of our friends in the wedding party.

Want to see pictures? Sure, why not.


Mr. Kettle is getting ready to take a video of our possible apartment. This is our huge bedroom. The closet door is broken because they hadn't fixed it yet.



The last tenant left the apartment in a mess. A hot mess. But I could see potential. Can you see the pendant lights above the granite bar counter? Oh yeah, I was feeling it.

This is our kitchen on move in day. They had really fixed the place up. Or at least they did a major de-crudding.

That's BM Libra having a "bright idea" with the light bulb from one of my lamps. BM ATL ('cause she lived in hot-lanta) looks tired. And hot.

She looked that way 'cause I haz a lot o' stuff.



That's GM Cuz ('cause he's a cousin) really happy the food finally arrived we said we'd get them for helping us move. That's BM ATL again, looking sleepy. That's also BM Mon's ('cause his people are from Jamaica, mon!) elbow in that shot.



This was after we loaded in the boxes that had to be unpacked and somehow actually fit in this space. How would we get it done? Magic.

So we settled into our new place and promptly forgot we still had to go through the process of getting married. Luckily, we had things coming up to get us going, such as our engagement photos.

Up next, I'll talk about the first three DIY projects I had going. They were made to formally invite our wedding party and as props for our e-photo shoot.

All photos personal unless otherwise stated.
Did you and your FI live together before you were married? Did you wish you could skip all the rest of the wedding stuff once you were settled in? Do you have lovely friends to help you move?