Love Is Blind’s Kwame Appiah and Chelsea Griffin Appiah are celebrating two years of wedded bliss!
The couple, who met and wed on season 4 of the Netflix hit, hit their second wedding anniversary on Monday, May 6.
“It’s a huge, huge, huge accomplishment,” Kwame, 34, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “We both feel really special and really happy and really accomplished about the moment, and also glad that we’re getting to take on a new part of our life and our journey together as we’re approaching this anniversary as well.”
“It’s really interesting because when you get married in this way, it feels you do so much after the fact of getting married,” adds Chelsea, 32. “Obviously you have to lay the foundation and get to know each other and decide to move forward with getting married to this person, but after, you’re doing so much more in your relationship and in your marriage. And so two years to me, we’re so proud and it makes sense, but it also feels longer. And I mean that in the best way possible, because we’ve done so much and have come so far and have grown so much in two years.”
Though the two love to travel, they won’t be doing an extravagant anniversary celebration this year as they’re preoccupied with another major milestone: they just bought a house!
“The house has had to be the special plan right now,” Kwame explains. “Fortunate for us, our birthdays are preceding our anniversary in pretty close proximity. Mine’s March 31st and Chelsea’s was just last weekend. And so we got to celebrate in some pretty big ways… but this year, the big thing is going to have to be the house that we’ve got. Financially, we definitely put a lot into it.”
Notes Chelsea: “And you know what’s so crazy is that our official end date of our apartment and our official move date is actually on our two-year anniversary exactly. Call that coincidental, call that the universe, call it whatever. But I think it’s special.”
The process, which took them approximately six to eight months to find the perfect home, taught them a lot about patience — but also a lot about each other.
“Prior to this, we looked for one apartment and it was the one that we got and we both fell in love the moment we saw it and we were like, ‘Yep, this is it.’ And we lived there,” Chelsea recalls. “We really didn’t learn about each other’s qualifications or things that we wanted in a home or what’s important to us necessarily… We definitely learned a lot about each other and it was an adjustment. It’s a big financial decision. And I think it came at the right time for us in our marriage feeling more solid than ever. And I’m really proud of us.”
She continues, “Kwame was literally my hero through the whole thing. There were many times where I had to just tap out emotionally. I couldn’t handle it, honestly. And my emotions were just too tied in, and it’s just you need to have more of that logical, level-headed mind. And I think that was Kwame’s forte, and he did everything he could to get us into this house. And he racked his brain for days on days on days on end when we had to come up with money here, money there. It’s a beautiful miracle and I’m really, really, really proud of him and I’m really excited for us.”
Though they won’t be getting each other gifts this year, Kwame and Chelsea say they were able to show their affection in other ways before purchasing the home.
“We threw each other really special birthday celebrations,” says Chelsea. “And Kwame threw a small gathering at our apartment as kind of a birthday and a last hurrah there. And I threw Kwame a birthday pizza party at an escape room. And so we put a lot of effort and energy into making sure that we felt loved and celebrated by our close people around us. And to me, that’s greater than any gift I could have.”
As they enter their next year of marriage, the pair are excited for their next chapter ahead as they settle into their new home.
“We’re excited to have barbecues this summer, have our friends and family over,” Chelsea shares. “We have an outdoor space. We have a gorgeous big deck. I think we’re just excited to have friends and family and enjoy some barbecue and grill and have a space. We actually have a dining table with six chairs — we have never had a dining table!”
Adds Kwame: “We have a huge deck and all I can think about is we are walking into Seattle summer — Seattle has the best three months of summer anywhere on earth — and I’m excited to have friends over. I’m excited to start our barbecuing, and I’m already looking at grills.”
“It’s really funny moving into a place,” he continues. “The minute we started transitioning to next part of our life, I started realizing, I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is why people get so excited about Home Depot.’ And now I think about it all the time… it’s really cool getting to put all these pieces together and host some friends and some family.”
They’re also excited to make these memories by each other’s side, and keep learning more about their soulmate.
“For me, it’s Kwame’s patience with me,” Chelsea says of the most surprising attribute of Kwame’s. “He’s incredibly patient, and I don’t give him enough credit for that. I can be a person of varying intensity. I think that’s a nice way of saying it. And when you’re moving and when you’re stressed out and when you’re snappy, he’s really gentle with me, and I really, really appreciate that a lot. We’re having a lot of fun together. It just keeps getting better and better, to be honest.”
As for Kwame, he says Chelsea is “a very passionate human being.”
“She’s very, very passionate about other human beings that she cares about,” he explains. “I’m someone who, I love my family a lot, but I don’t show it nearly as much in the way that I express my affection. And I think Chelsea has really helped me with that, with how deeply she loves and how deeply she cares for the people around her, so much so that it overflows in the way that she shows that. And so I think that that’s a really beautiful thing.”
Love Is Blind seasons 1-6 are now streaming on Netflix.