Ty Pennington Celebrates 1-Year Wedding Anniversary with 'Best Friend' Kellee Merrell in Sweet Post

The honeymoon phase isn't over yet for Ty Pennington and wife Kellee Merrell.

The couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary on Sunday, with the HGTV star, 58, sharing a sweet tribute to Merrell, 34, on Instagram.

He called marrying the social media manager the "best (and easiest) decision" of his life in the caption of a video montage of clips and photographs captured by Three Lines Creative on their wedding day in 2021. "10/10 recommend marrying your best friend," he wrote in the caption.

Last November, they tied the knot at the 19th-century home in Savannah, Georgia, that they have been renovating together. The setting of the intimate ceremony — attended by just eight guests — was fitting for the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition alum, who now appears on several HGTV series.

The couple's original plan had been to wed in Italy, but the then-ongoing travel restrictions due to COVID-19 interrupted that. Instead, they brought a piece of Europe home, eating caviar and drinking champagne on the brick patio alongside their backyard pool.

The restrictions also played a role in how small the gathering was. Most of Merrell's family, all from Vancouver, Canada, were unable to travel to Georgia for the ceremony, and Pennington said it would be "really horrible" for him to get to celebrate alongside all his friends and family if his wife could not. "It was just more intimate, and I think, to be honest with you, vows are supposed to be intimate," he told PEOPLE at the time.

Pennington, who was a lifelong bachelor until meeting Merrell, said in the lead-up to the ceremony that he never really envisioned himself getting married. "I started working on Trading Spaces in 2000, and I really never stopped. When you're never home for more than seven or 10 days at a time, it's really hard to stay in any kind of a positive relationship."

It was Merrell that changed his mind: "I just knew I couldn't let her go."

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The lovebirds first met in 2010 while filming a TV show in Toronto, and each had a "crush" on the other, but neither admitted it. In 2020, they reconnected and quarantined together. The following year, Pennington popped the question over morning coffee.

"I have admired Kellee from afar for years. She's a beautiful person inside and out," Pennington told PEOPLE exclusively after the engagement. "Luckily our paths finally crossed at the right time. It's one of those things where you just feel happy being around a person. I never thought I would get married, but she changed that. Glad I waited for the one."