Wedding ABC's

Jacob and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary over the weekend. I've seen this wedding quiz all over blogland so I thought I’d do it too and talk a little about our big day. I gotta say right off the bat; I hated wedding planning. I didn’t dream about walking down the aisle as a kid. Even when my high school boyfriend and I swore we’d get married one day, I thought about the marriage, the house and the kids, not the wedding. When Jacob proposed, I was of course happy and excited to spend the rest of my life with him, but thoughts of the wedding gave me panic attacks.

Weddings might be fun if you have tons of money and could execute your dream wedding, but we only had $15,000. Every decision we made bothered me. I kept thinking about how much we were spending on one day when we could buy a new car, go on vacations or save for our future children. After three months of ignoring the wedding completely, I finally started to plan it, but hated every second of it. I was in tears just about every night.

One night I said, “Let’s just go to Vegas.” Jacob said we could do whatever made me happy. I didn’t want to elope because I wanted my family there. So we thought about turning it into a family vacation. But we had already asked our friends to be in our wedding party and felt bad because we knew most of them couldn’t afford a trip. So Jacob paid for the wedding party (ten of us) to go down there. We crammed into two hotel rooms at The Aladdin (where Elvis and Priscilla got married) and got hitched at the hotel’s cheesy, ugly chapel. We invited anyone who wanted to come then had a reception at home two weeks later.

Attending:

60 people came to Vegas to watch us exchange vows. 180 celebrated at our reception.

Bridesmaids:

My sister was my Maid of Honor. My BFF was what we called my “brides hero.” My oldest childhood friend and my college roommate were my bridesmaids. They wore $100 casual dresses from David’s Bridal. Except for my BFF of course. A lot of people, especially Jacob’s conservative family, thought having him on my side was weird and that he should have been on the groom’s side. But he’s my best friend, not Jacob’s. And it would have been wrong to not have him a part of the wedding just because he’s a guy. If it looked weird, I didn’t care and neither did he or Jacob. It was MY day.

Cakes:

Ours was very boring, but I liked it. Square and white with Jack and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas as the toppers.

(We got married in October and that is our joint favorite movie, so it worked).

I also have to mention my bridal shower cake. It was a Steel Magnolias theme and my friend made me an armadillo cake!

Dress:

I got my dress from David’s Bridal. I’m sure you’ve seen it in many weddings with all different colors. I wasn’t excited to shop for a dress

(I had a meltdown in the car on the way). I just knew I wanted something with red on it. This one was just fine.

Engagement:

Our engagement was a year and three months. It was too long and gave me too much time to freak out. About six months into it, I started to wonder if I even wanted to get married at all. How horrible is that!? This picture was taken after my very first Mystic tan. Good think I practiced first! We tried our rings on to mimic that classic wedding photo.

Flowers:

White roses and red daisies that the chapel handed me.

(See? There is that cheesy pose.)

Groomsmen:

Jacob’s brother was the best man and his cousin and two childhood friends were groomsmen.

Honeymoon:

Jacob and I hung out in Vegas for a few days after the wedding.

Five months later we took a proper honeymoon: a three week trip around Western Europe!

Invitations:

We sent out postcards six months in advance for the Vegas wedding, then boring traditional invitations for the reception.

Justice of the Peace:

The dude from the chapel. He was actually very good, friendly and funny.

Keepsakes:

My brother took pictures of the guests as they arrived at the reception.

Then they signed a piece of cardstock. I placed their message next to their picture in an album.

Ladies Night:

We started out at my sister's casino themed apartment for games, presents and food. Then went to Chopstix, a dueling piano bar. We sang our hearts out. I was called on stage with another bachelorette for a drinking game. They sang the song Roxanne by The Police. Every time they sang “Roxanne,” I had to drink. Every time they sang “red light,” she had to drink. Cut to 2:00 and see why we chugged three beers in less than a minute.

I also have to mention three days of drinking fun we had before the wedding on Sunday morning in Vegas.

It. Was. A. Blast. My sister still says that was her favorite vacation ever.

Music:

Traditional: Canon, Here Comes The Bride and The Wedding March. The chapel chose it. We walked into the reception to "Let's Dance" by David Bowie and our first dance was the acoustic version of “Everlong” by the Foo Fighters. I found out a year later that Dave Grohl wrote that song about his wife wanting a divorce. Oops! My dance with my dad was to an instrumental song from the Steel Magnolias Sountrack.

Newlyweds:

Yay! It’s over!

Old, new, borrowed, blue:

I didn’t do any of that.

Photography:

The chapel provided a photographer, which was not very good. We didn’t have a photographer for the reception.

My brother took a bunch of candids and all the photos for the guest book.

Question popping:

Jacob was leaving town for work for a few weeks. He stopped by my office to take me out to lunch before he left for the airport and proposed in the car. We celebrated with rootbeer floats and cheeseburgers at A&W. Just keepin' it real.

Reception:

We had a traditional reception in a big log cabin at a local park two weeks after the wedding. (I got to wear my dress twice!) We ate, drank, danced and had karaoke. We partied until midnight and then all my friends went back to my house to grab some food and we hit the bars. It was actually really nice that we were married two weeks before because we weren’t stressed out or tired and we didn’t need to be alone. We just had a lot of fun with our friends that night.

Shoes:

White flip flops!

Trash the Dress:

Nope, it’s preserved in a box in my closet right now and will be there for years and years and years.

I wonder if I should sell it. I don’t have daughters, so it’ll just be sitting there for eternity.

Unique:

Our centerpieces at the reception were pumpkins, autumn leaves and fall colored Hershey Kisses.

Vows:

Pretty traditional vows that weren’t too religious.

Wedding Woes:

Me! I almost called it off two months before and again two weeks before. And I was crying the night before.

Jacob was afraid I wasn’t going to show up. How could I do that to him?! I was pretty awful. He must really love me…

X-rated:

Yep. It was. But it was nothing new since we had already been together for five years.

Young kids:

Nope.

Zzzzz:

After the wedding, we went out to a later lunch with our wedding party then they all had planes to catch.

We checked into a room at The Venetian and crashed!

If I had it to do all over again, I would have a shorter engagement, like six months tops, and I would have planned Vegas from the very beginning instead of agonizing over all the details for eight months. I also would have just relaxed. It’s not about the wedding, it’s about the marriage and ours is rock solid. I love Jacob and my boys more than anything in the world. I can’t believe how stupid I was or why I questioned anything and everything. Wedding planning is stressful. I just saw my sister go through the same thing. It’s just not that big of a deal. It's one day and your guests don't care!

And don't worry, you don't have to tell me it was a beautiful day. It wasn't. It was cheesy and corny and just plain ugly and I'm 100% ok with that.