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!
Holy Hannah! This month has FLOWN by and we're less than a week away from Sasquatch! We have been ridiculously excited about this. I requested my time off from work all the way back in December and Josh bought the tickets right when they went on sale. During our long car rides to Seattle and back we've made lists of everything we need to bring (of course I have NO idea what happened to the lists!) And now we're down to the wire and totally unprepared! Well, I guess not totally... we did buy a couple of things for camping (now I just need to find where I stashed them!). So this weekend will be eventful. Laundry, packing, shopping, getting the house ready for the housesitter, moving a ton of stuff... As much as I'm looking forward to our mini-vacation, I'm a little stressed out about getting everything ready in time. That being said, I am so stoked to cross another bushel of bands off of my bucket list! The lineup is pretty incredible. I'm sure we will come home happy and exhausted, and maybe a little bit sunburned (that reminds me- I better remember the sunblock!). Even more so than the live music, I think I'm most excited to get to spend some quality time with my best friend. With both of us working full time, even though we see each other every day... I feel like I never see him sometimes! With as busy as things are leading up to our departure, and as busy as we'll be as soon as we get home, it will be really nice to have a few days of down time. 
I just love my Jenna. She gives great advice, always listens and is never judgemental. I always call her my sister because one- it saves me two syllables by dropping the "in law" and two- she is my sister! The best one I could ever ask for... which is apparently extremely confusing for the people in my life because it's always assumed that we're biological sisters because we look so much alike (at least that's what I've been told about a zillion and one times). I only wish we had more time to spend together. Between both of us having kids now and working, we rarely get a chance to hang out. But she's always there when I need her- like when I needed a date for the Evelyn Evelyn show! 
She makes me laugh so hard. She's always finding the most random things on the Internet. She is a fantastic ridiculous dance party partner. She was there every step of the way through my courtship with Josh to give me advice. She's even the one who came up with the nickname "Mr. Perfect" (which is still what it says on my cell phone when he calls). 
