Tiffany and I had planned to waltz into a municipal building and just have a justice of the peace give us a quick and dirty unionization. No fuss. No cameras. No public. And given the short notice marriage visas allow (90 days), we felt this made the most sense. We didn't want to put anybody out or anything. But of course, families being families and all, they wouldn't stand to simply read about it in the (figurative) papers. They wanted to be there, even though we kept insisting there wasn't going to be the sort of there that could host more than a handful of people.
"We're just gonna stand in line at a courthouse," we said. "It'll be boring."
"We understand, but want to be there!" they said.
"OK, but we're going to wear t-shirts and jeans and we're not going to be holed up in a hotel or something all day away from the dogs…"
"Yeah, yeah, sure fine."
Before we knew it, we had 18 people book flights to Vegas, with durations ranging from a couple days to a week. Tiffany's family, consisting of three pairs of adults and a half dozen minors, decided to rent a house. It was then suggested instead of trying to get people to a courthouse, why not have the ceremony at the house, where there could be parking and barbecue and swimming and dogs?
Sure, why not indeed?
And so it was.
Until about 8:00AM the morning of.
Tiffany and I were taking a bath (risqué!) when a call came in from her mom. Apparently the house was gross and they decided not to stay there. So…
Everyone ended up crammed into our tiny little apartment, with semi-functional A/C, beer and soda in a Styrofoam cooler, Chinese takeout spread on a table, real seating for three or four and folding chairs for the rest.
The justice of the peace came over too, and we were married in the courtyard with creepy neighbors spying on us through the blinds.
But that's OK. Television has taught us that all weddings are crap. Luckily we didn't have clowns and bands and hobbits to have to coordinate, or things might have gone really bad (and we wouldn't have had Chinese leftovers for a week).