Newly weds - Transition to living together

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This situation is a long way off for me, but I am interested to know how you all have handled this…

For a couple that doesn’t live together prior to marriage (and do not live with their parents), once you did get married what did you do? Did one person move out of their residence and move in with the other? What happened with the other apartment/house? Rent/sell?

Did you buy a place together to move into upon getting married?

I suppose I am curious to know how newly weds have made the transition to living together. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
My situation probably won’t be of much help to you, but here goes:

My husband is in the military, so we waited to get married until he was in between assignments because that’s when he could get the most leave. Therefore, when we returned from our honeymoon we moved together to his next duty station.
 
Jay82 said:
This situation is a long way off for me, but I am interested to know how you all have handled this…

For a couple that doesn’t live together prior to marriage (and do not live with their parents), once you did get married what did you do? Did one person move out of their residence and move in with the other? What happened with the other apartment/house? Rent/sell?

Did you buy a place together to move into upon getting married?

I suppose I am curious to know how newly weds have made the transition to living together. Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
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Obviously, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to a question like this. There are a million little variables. My wife and I were both renting and had roommates, so we found an apartment a few weeks before the wedding. We cleaned and started moving stuff over, and then, two weeks before the wedding, we moved the majority of our stuff and I started living there. She just kept a few things at her old place (clothes and such) until the wedding. This was easy to do as the furniture in the rental place (bed, dressers, etc.) came with the rental and did not have to be moved.

IMO, it was nice to have a “new” place to start married life together. Having one simply move in with the other could create issues (but not necessarily, of course). The temptation would be there that this place is still “mine” and my new spouse is simply being grafted in. But then, if you really have open communication and a true understanding of the sacramentality of marriage, such feelings could be easily avoided.

Really, it’s just one of the (many) things you will need to talk through together. 😉
 
I ran out my lease and stayed with my in-laws (where the wedding was going to be) until the wedding. Then I moved into my new husband’s teeny-tiny studio apartment for a month, until the end of his lease. Then we found our own place.

It was kind of difficult because all of these places were in different cities. Luckily I’m a teacher so I wasn’t working through all this.

I must say, I didn’t feel like I was really married till we had our own place. There wasn’t any place for my stuff to go, so it mostly stayed in boxes or tucked in around his stuff. And I had no idea where anything was, in the kitchen for instance. Besides, I couldn’t stand the place in itself – it was on the ninth floor and I hate not having grass and trees around! But we weren’t going to break a lease or put off our wedding, so that’s how we did it.
 
My husband owned a house and I rented so about 5 months or so before we got married I got out of my rental moved all of my big things into my husband’s basement and stayed with my parents and his parents depending on where I was working the next day. I am a physical therapist assistant and was working at two nursing homes about 110 miles away from each other, my parents lived near one and his near the other, so depending on where I was working, I’d stay with one or the other. Then after the wedding I moved in. I STILL have things in boxes that we need to go through and figure out what we’re doing with it, but it’s just not a priority.

The tough thing for us was our sleeping schedules…my husband is a night owl AND an early riser. I like to be asleep by 10PM and I could sleep til 7 or 8AM and be happy…we’ve had some adjustments with that! :o
 
My husband and I both rented our own places. A few months before the wedding we started looking for a house to buy. Two weekends before we got married DH moved into the house with all his stuff. The weekend before we got married we moved a bunch of my stuff. When we got back from the honeymoon we moved the rest of my stuff into the house. So from day 1 of being married we both lived in the house together and just had to pick up a few left behind items in my apartment and clean it.

I’m still very happy that we didn’t live together before we got married.
 
My husband is a UK citizen; I’m a US citizen. We were married last November in the States and we plan to live and raise our family here as well. He stayed living in his parents’ home in England (and is still there currently) while we’re waiting these last few weeks for his Visa to go through so he can join me in the States and live/work here legally for good.

He sends me money in the meantime to live on. I got an apartment for us and the baby (due date is today btw :)) and I’ve been setting it up and getting it ready. Hopefully it’ll just be a matter of weeks now before he’s able to come join us.

That’s how we got around the whole not living together before marriage thing-- separate continents. 😉
 
I rented out my house two to three months before the wedding and went to live with my parents. I moved some of my bigger things into my husband-to-be’s house and changed my mailing address to his. After we were married I moved into his house. (My house was only two bedrooms and his was three.)
 
I’m not exactly what you’re looking for, but I’ll answer for some variety…

My fiance and I have been dating for 5 years so we’ve seen a number of living situations. We’ve both lived independently in separate apartments at one point, currently though we both live with our respective parents. We also live 4.5 hours apart. When we get married in September I will move over to live with him at his mom’s house temporarily while we save up and look for a house.

Not exactly ideal, as we both would love a place of our own, but why throw $1000 out the window each month for rent when instead we can save that and get a house sooner? His mom is hardly ever home anyways.
 
“Marriage is about 2 people occupying the same space, at the same time”. That is what my friend, who has been married 50 years and raised 11 children told me. You have to get used to each other as any other roommate. To start things off more smoothly, it would probably be better for both of you to move into a new place together and start over, than to move into one’s already existing space.
 
I had lived on my own for several years before getting married, but DH had been with his family. I had a nice, big apartment that we both liked, so he moved in after the wedding. He had no “stuff” other than his clothes and books.

I just had a twin bed, so we bought a new bedroom set, which was delivered a week or two before the wedding. One of my favorite wedding photos is of my mother and me reflected in the mirror over the new dresser on the morning of the wedding.

Having two full bathrooms really helped the transition! 🙂

Betsy
 
I was in college until 2 months before the wedding and dh lived in a house near his work. When I graduated from college he went up and picked up my belongings that were at school and drove them to his house. I went back to live with my family (where we were going to get married) until the wedding. When we got married and got back from the honeymoon, I moved in to his house, which is still our current home that I like very much :). We just celebrated 6 years of marriage and we never had problems “adjusting” or anything, no rocky first year, even though dh had purchased the house before I had ever met him, had been living in the house for over 2 years before I arrived, and 🙂 and had to deal with me and all my stuff invading the house :).
I agree with everyone that each unique situation will have unique solutions.
 
I agree - the responses vary so because everyone is different. For example, DH lived at home and he moved into my flat when we married. Then a few months later, we moved out to a bigger house with room for babies!
 
We were able to buy a house immediately with our combined incomes. Worked out well and neither of us felt like we were moving into space “owned” by the other.

I think it is a GOOD thing that all the chaos and conflict of learning to live together happens after the marriage. I was listening to two colleagues talk at lunch yesterday. One had recently married (after living with his now wife for years first). He commented that nothing was any different after the marriage, and hollowly attempted to make that sound like a good thing.

How sad! Things SHOULD be different after you wed. One of the genius insights of the catholic faith is that the physical world is NOT disconnected from the spiritual. If the spiritual reality of marriage fails to manifest any difference in the physical world that is a bad sign for the depth and completeness of that union! What we can see and touch and feel IS connected to what is happening inside our souls. Those who play house before marriage are only depriving themselves of the chance of a wholistic marriage experience, a profound coming together of two into one in every sense.
 
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