Lying in bed the morning after our wedding and shortly after making love to my husband for the first time, I asked him, "What made you decide to wait until marriage?" He looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "When I was about 14, I had a dream about you."

I asked him how that was possible since we had only met three years ago when we were 17. He said, "I had a dream about the perfect woman I would marry and I knew that I wanted to save myself for her."

With tears streaming down my face, I realized we both had reached our dreams. After three years of being friends, dating and being engaged, here we were virgins no longer and in the arms of our lifelong mate. It was the greatest gift in the world and unbelievably worth the wait.

Getting to this point was a long and winding road. And like every road, it was rocky.

My parents, my sister and I had a very strong, trusting relationship. My parents raised us in a Southern Baptist Church where there was a strong congregation and a very active youth group. My sister is seven years older than I am and seeing her as a member of that group made me want to become just like her.

When I was in seventh grade, I joined the youth group. By this time, my relationship with my parents was even more solid and planted firmly in my walk with Christ. I knew at this point in my life that I would never do anything to disappoint my parents, my sister, my Lord or myself.

This meant never coming home to tell my parents that I was pregnant, never putting myself in a situation where I would feel pressure to have sex and choosing my friends wisely. It meant choosing abstinence until marriage. It meant making sacrifices.

But I kept busy. I became the drum major of our states marching band, the newspaper editor, a Bible study leader and a track trainer. These, along with my church activities, left me no time for dating.

That was a sacrifice I made, but it didn't mean sacrificing my friends. My circle of friends grew even stronger in 1995, when my church got involved with a national campaign called True Love Waits, which encourages teens to promise to wait until marriage to have sex.

In front of our parents, pastor and other church families, the members of my youth group all pledged to remain abstinent until marriage.

During my high school years, I valued my schoolwork, my church and my activities too much to divide my time with any guy, as selfish as that may sound.

But I wasn't kidding myself, either. All my friends were dating, going to proms, going to parties and having so much fun. It was hard. I never thought my time would come.

But it did. Unexpectedly. The summer after my senior year, I was getting ready to move away to college when I started dating Adam, the man who is now my husband. We had been friends at work for about a year. But one night, as we sat next to each other in a movie, the feeling hit us.

We could hear each other breathing and feel each other's pulse as it got faster just sitting arm-to-arm in the movie. As we said goodnight, a feeling came over me. I was falling in love.

Over the next couple of weeks, we talked about our hopes and dreams. And we each told the other about our commitments to stay abstinent. We decided it would be better if we didn't get too serious. Instead, we decided to let the relationship develop naturally, especially since I was leaving for college. He would stay home to attend college and our lives would grow apart so we thought.

I moved two hours down the road to Kansas State University. The next few months of our long-distance relationship were filled with weekend trips home, phone calls every night, daily e-mails and teary letters.

In February, our first big test came when Adam came to take me to the Crystal Ball. With our parents permission, we shared a hotel room.

This was a giant next step, but one we knew we could handle. I remember lying in bed with him, our bodies touching and our hormones racing. Neither of us moved because we were afraid we would not be able to hold back. But as the hours went by, we realized we could sleep in each others arms without sex.

About a month later, I decided I couldn't live with a long-distance relationship any longer. I transferred to a private college about 20 minutes from my parents house. It was one of the scariest decisions of my life. I was basing my entire education, my future, on my relationship with this man.

In August, Adam proposed. For the next year, we planned our wedding and our new life together. Staying abstinent was harder than ever. Every night, when Adam tucked me in at my parents house, he had to leave instead of get into bed with me.

But we kept our promises. And, as we grew in love and in our relationship with God, we also grew to be the best of friends.

On Dec. 18, 1999, Adam and I pledged our lives to each other. As we drove back to our new home, me still in my dress and him in his tuxedo, we were quiet. We knew what was expected of us. But we also knew that having sex was not the reason we got married.

In those three years that we were friends, dated, fell in love and planned our wedding, we planned our life together, not our time in bed. When we got home and talked about our wedding day, we decided sex didn't seal a marriage. The vows did.

So, we decided to let nature take its course and not be pressured into having sex on the wedding night.

We fell asleep in each others arms in our marriage bed. In the early hours of the morning, we made love for the first time. It was the greatest moment of our lives and each moment has just gotten better since.

It was after making love for the first time that Adam shared his dream and I shared mine with me.

And, it was then that we realized we had made each others dreams come true.

Kristi Northcutt, 21, lives in Salina, Kansas.