So, Yeah... We Got Married!

I really wish I would've blogged about this sooner before I started to forget all the little details. Better late than never though I suppose. The way Joshua and I decided to elope was pretty spontaneous. We had been planning our wedding for MONTHS (since before we were even engaged, lol). The only thing preventing us from setting a date was my divorce being finalized. I never imagined it was going to take more than two years and with things continually getting dragged out we were hesitant to set a date not knowing what was going to happen next. The day I became legally single, during our celebrating Joshua was holding me tight and asked me when I wanted to get married. I said "This weekend" and he said "Let's do it!" so what was originally an off the cuff remark made out of excitement quickly turned into some serious scheming.

Joshua planned just about every detail. Miraculously, I was able to keep the whole thing a secret from almost everyone. Jenna, Lacey and my Papa were the only ones I spilled the beans to aside from my work family, who had to be in on it in order for us to pull it off! In the span of a little over a week we planned our entire ceremony and the phony story to lure my parents to Seattle, bought my wedding dress, had a veil custom made (thank you, Yashmeen!), rented tuxes for the boys, arranged to fly our friend Levi up from San Francisco to officiate and dozens of other little details (like "borrowing" some of my mom's jewelry without her knowledge or consent lol).

We took my parents out to a fancy dinner to celebrate my newly singlehood status. Little did they know we got our marriage license the day after my divorce was finalized, haha! Joshua had booked all of us in a beautiful hotel and I told my parents we were going to head to the Space Needle to take some family photos but I wanted to change before we left. Josh, Benjer and I got out of our dinner clothes and into our wedding clothes and headed down to my parent's room. I knocked on the door and stood in the hallway with my finger over the peephole for what felt like forever before my mom opened the door, immediately burst into tears and said, "Thank you, Jesus" My dad, who was on the phone at the time just stared for a minute. I promptly told him to hurry it up because we had a wedding to go to.

When we arrived at the Space Needle's observation deck, I spotted the rest of our small party. Our officiant, Levi and Josh's two best friends Jim and Adrian (also known as crazy Uncle Bibby) were all sporting amazingly awesome fake mustaches. Completely surprised by this detail, I turned around to find that my groom had also put on a mustache.

Levi opened our ceremony with the priest's monologue from my favorite movie, The Princess Bride. You know the one. "Mawwaige. Mawwaige is whot bwings us togeva today..." He even did the speech impediment. It was epic. He had prepared the sweetest opening speech as well. He spoke about Joshua and I being "independently awesome" which I loved. Josh and I wrote our own vows to each other. Mine was two paragraphs. His was two pages. While I was sure he was the one that would cry, I ended up being the one needing the tissues. I barely got through my two paragraphs. Luckily, his vows were heartfelt and hilarious- an excellent combination!

We also wrote our own vows for the exchanging of rings and the I Do's. I won't share the whole thing, but I will tell you it ended with "until death or the Zombie Apocolypse parts you". We planned on getting these really awesome custom wedding bands that have each others fingerprints on the inside of the band... but with a week to plan, there was no way they were going to be ready. Instead, I got Joshua an octopus locket ring and he got me a very obnoxious, extremely loveable white owl ring (I still wear it!). Once again, another quirky and tacky detail that made the day so uniquely "us"

We ended our ceremony with the perfect kiss and a less than perfect dance to our favorite Mountain Goats song. It was joyful and uncoordinated and so much fun. It was a little like getting married in a fish bowl. We had people watching from the other side of the glass laughing and cheering and one even crying. It was a wonderful, wonderful day.

I especially enjoyed Benjamin's reaction to the whole thing. He spent a large part of the ceremony flirting with and waving to passers by. It was so cute. And although he's been calling Joshua "Daddy" since he started talking, it was almost like he knew something was different. Joshua graduated from "Daddy" to "My Daddy" which he still calls him.

I couldn't have asked for anything more special or memorable. I can't imagine a more appropriate way to have married my best friend.

"Thank you, Jesus" indeed!