Happy Birthday to Engaged Marriage!

I almost had a heart attack last week.

On Friday morning, a reader emailed me to say Engaged Marriage “looked funny” and no posts were showing up.  When I clicked over, it was clear the site had been hacked or the host server had been corrupted in some way.  Literally, almost one year to the day since I launched this site, I had a moment of trepidation thinking that all of the content shared between us could be gone forever.

Thank God for back-ups!  Within a few hours, I was able to restore everything back to normal with only minor interruptions (sorry to those that received duplicate blog posts in their email inbox on Friday…this was the culprit).  However, seeing the life of this site flash before my eyes made me realize just how much it has become a valued part of my life, and it reminded me that we just passed the one-year mark!

Looking Back to the Start

It’s crazy to think that just over a year ago, I had literally never even read a blog in my entire life.  While on vacation last August, I felt a call to share our pro-marriage message to an audience larger than the participants at the marriage preparation courses we present at a few times each year.  I figured I should look online and see how I could get started.  



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Nine Years

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

-Mignon McLaughlin

I can’t believe we’ve been married for NINE years (and together for nearly fifteen).  It really does get better every day because we choose to love each other the best that we can.

Happy Anniversary, Bethany!  Thanks for keeping me around.

Technorati Tags: My Story

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Announcing the Giveaway Winners & A Sex Challenge!

I hope everyone is enjoying a great weekend with your families.  We have a busy weekend planned as usual, including our first family trip of the year to Busch Stadium on Sunday afternoon to watch our favorite St. Louis Cardinals in action.  I’m sure it will be a lot of fun, but we’ll have to see how we hold up to the sunny, hot and oh-so-humid weather in the afternoon…especially Bethany who is now around 8 months pregnant.

I am excited to share with you the winners of our Get Rich Slowly giveaways this week!  I chose each one based on how many entries they had using a random selection from Random.org.  Here’s the rundown:

Michelle won a copy of You Need A Budget which will help her and her husband meet their financial goal of “staying out of debt as they start adding to their family.”  If you haven’t read my review of YNAB, please take a minute to do so and check this software out for yourself.  I truly love it!

Lesley won a copy of Your Money: The Missing Manual by leaving a comment on our Facebook page.  If you haven’t joined us there yet, please come over and see what 415+ folks are doing as an engaged Facebook community!  



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New Here? Welcome to Engaged Marriage!

Engaged Marriage continues to grow through the enthusiasm of our community and the willingness of ultra-cool folks to support and share our message.  Today, I am beyond excited to let you know that one of my online heroes, Darren Rowse, is featuring a guest post I wrote on Problogger.  Please take a few minutes to head there and read “7 Tips to Keep Your Family On-Board for Your Blogging Journey.”

With growth comes new readers, so I put together this post (which will become a permanent “tab” at the top of site) to give a quick overview of what we do here at Engaged Marriage.

Who Is Writing This and What’s This Site All About?

First of all, my name is Dustin Riechmann and I created Engaged Marriage.  That’s me pretending to be strong in the picture.  That’s actually not a photo of Illinois where I live.  It’s Cancun, Mexico where we vacationed for a week in August 2009.

This is sort of relevant because it was during that vacation that the idea for this site started stirring in my mind.  My wife thought it was just some sort of delirium brought on by too much cheap tequila, but it turns out that the idea stuck.  



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Guess Who’s a New Monthly Columnist at Simple Marriage?

This guy.

I am excited to announce that Corey at Simple Marriage has graciously asked me to join his team as a monthly columnist. Simple Marriage is one of my favorite sites, and I’m confident it’s a place Engaged Marriage readers will enjoy and feel at home.  Corey is an excellent writer, a devout Christian and an all-around awesome proponent of great marriages…through simplicity.

I will providing monthly posts on the topic of Careers & Money.  This is an area where I have a lot of interest and passion, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to spread the word about the power of pursuing work that you love, living with a plan and achieving family financial freedom.  It’s a vital part of having an extraordinary marriage.

I would really appreciate it if you could take a minute to visit Simple Marriage and read the announcement post. It would mean a great deal to me if you could show your support in this way, and we would both love to hear from you in the comments section.  Feel free to share your thoughts here or there about topics you’d like to see covered in the area of Careers & Money (I have two places to write about it now).  While you’re there, also check out the rest of the Simple Marriage writing team.  



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