Well, the wedding is over. I’m a married man who spends his Saturday nights eating Cheetos and cake. Why would anyone ever get divorced if this is what married life entails? Other than menopause, I can’t come up with a reason.

Before we dig deeper into the wedding, which is going to surely take us several blog posts, I’d like to offer a little bit of advice on planning for the big day. Without any experience, much of a budget, or outside vendors to really do anything, Jenny and I managed to pull off what was easily the best wedding I’ve ever been to. Of course, it was also my first.

There were a few musts for the wedding. We needed rings, fancy people clothes, a venue, someone to perform the ceremony, and a bunch of other smaller things along the way like two witnesses just in case one of them is a liar. The hardest of all was probably finding the officiant as it forced us into talking with a stranger. I did find one guy online offering a rate at about half of everyone else. The rest were easier as we only really needed to visit K-Mart a few times. The great thing about K-Mart is none of their employees enjoy small-talk. You really must appreciate someone who shuts up and does their job with an angry brow across their head while hating your existence.

Our venue for the wedding was booked rather early on. Since every place locally required a ridiculous amount of people to reserve a room, we decided the wedding should take place somewhere a little more intimate. A hotel room was reserved after I creepily explored in advance to make sure it could hold our guests; plus, Amberlynn Reid if she decided to show up. It would require some rearranging of furniture to make it ideal. Thankfully, the room was haunted and the furniture was constantly being rearranged by the tortured souls of the dead! We saved a lot of money here by using our hotel room as the venue in one and picking the room where few survive the night.

The hard part, however, was getting it all done rather quickly. See, we’re cheap people. Thus, we only booked the hotel for two nights. The wedding was set to take place at 11AM on Friday and we didn’t get to the hotel until about 10PM the night before as my arrival home was later than expected. Additionally, we still needed to pick up my tuxedo before settling in at the hotel.

Like classy people, we rode a public bus to the hotel. We also paid in dimes. Remember, this is a budget wedding. You need to save costs wherever you can. If I had my way, I would have seduced the driver for a free ride. Since it was our wedding, though, I splurged a little more.

Once we got to the hotel our setup began almost right away. Jenny already had in her mind how the room would look. Since she is more visually creative than I am, she took the lead as I half-watched The Santa Claus in the background. All I was really able to contribute was height and someone to blame her farts on.

For months, we had planned to create a “fairy light” effect using Christmas lights. The exact design wasn’t known until a few days prior. A few choices were a doorway, an arch, or a heart. Since we absolutely hate McDonald’s and St. Louis, the arch was not going to happen. We instead went with the heart design as it tested us more than a simple doorway. Plus, doorways of lights usually lead to portals from other dimensions. We weren’t risking this; not on our wedding day.

I’d say it took us about a little over an hour to design the heart fully. It was completely a project done together too as Jenny used her abilities to identify beauty and preciseness. Meanwhile, I contributed everything I knew about basic architecture all of which was learned through hours of Roller Coaster Tycoon as a teenager. I am also a pro at stacking my dishes in the sink for weeks at a time. The lights and hooks we used weren’t expensive at all. Everything came out looking very nice.

In addition to the lights we also clipped photographs of us together all along the heart. Let me correct that. We taped them to the wall and then they fell off in the middle of the night like some wart you thought you were doomed to have on your face forever. So, the next morning, after a combined two hours of sleep, we had clipped them to the outer edges. This ended up better in the long run as they were more visible during the actual ceremony. It also allowed us to use the paper clips I donated to the office at work and had to re-steal.

If you Google how much most people spend on weddings you’d find the medium price is about $10,000 plus the loss of a lot of patience. Jenny and I managed to forego bankruptcy thanks mostly to our creativity, intuitiveness, and ability to accomplish things without talking to other people. I think when it comes to important events like this you really need to have an idea what YOU want. Wedding planners are mostly hags nobody wants to marry anyway. This wedding, the best one I have ever been to, turned out just the way we wanted it. The lighting was great, the Skype connection with Jenny’s family in the Philippines cooperated, and there was a ton of cake to eat after.

What more could we want other than the $8 spent to take a cab home the next day?