When COVID forced us to postpone our wedding, Mike and I decided, “OK, let’s have two weddings instead.” Are you confused yet? Well, welcome to the year 2021. Sit tight as I try and explain.

When we made the tough decision to reschedule our wedding, we were upset that COVID postponed our big wedding celebrations, but we were not going to let it postpone our lives. So we decided to still get legally married on our original wedding date of June 11, 2021. That decision was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out what that June 11th “Minimony” would look like. If you read my last blog post you’ll have learned that Mike and I think about things and situations VERY differently. So as you can imagine, the road to June 11th was an interesting one. At first, we were going to do a little ceremony in our backyard and have a big party with our friends and family after. We had bought an old “fixer-upper” home in the fall of 2020 that we still had a lot of work to do on-a lot of which probably would not be complete by June 11, 2021. In my head I thought “Great plan, we’ll say some vows in our backyard, get lots of alcohol, friends and family will come over and we will call it a day.” Boom. Done. After all, I had PLENTY of experience party planning as I used to throw an annual party in my Grandma’s backyard called “Grandma’s Daytona” inviting all our college friends over to day drink on her pool deck, AND I had just thrown Mike a successful “Mike-Tober Fest” Party at my apartment for Mike’s 30th birthday. How hard could throwing a wedding be?

Well, for me life was beautiful there for a while but little did I know poor Mike was loosing sleep over the whole thing. After a few weeks he finally came to me to tell me how stressed he was. I tried to calm his nerves, reminding him that I’m basically an event planner with all my experience but then he was asking me all these questions about bathroom situations for people, electrical outlets, tents in case of rain, food, etc. to which I responded “What’s with all the questions?! We’ll get it figured out! The wedding is like months away!” (As you know I am a last minute person.) He was also stressed that our house was a construction zone. I told him that as our closest friends and family they should love us for us and not the state of our house. Plus maybe we’d get lucky and some people may be inspired to pick up a hammer or a paint brush while they were over and we’d get the place done a little quicker. My joke fell flat with my audience.

After many more conversations we finally decided to get married at the perfect place, a place that meant a lot to both of us-Sister Lakes, Michigan. I had been going up to Dewey Lake since I was a baby and Mike had been going up to Indian Lake for many years. Our parents were so gracious to offer their homes to us so we decided to make a weekend of it. We’d get married on Dewey Lake on Friday, June 11 and then hang out at Indian Lake on Saturday. We’d keep it to just our immediate family.

We were thrilled we had finally come up with a plan for our wedding. Mike immediately started creating his spreadsheet of various costs. I immediately started designing koozies for the weekend. I thought I’d be done after that. Well… I was wrong. Turns out that weddings, no matter how big or small, are a lot of work. And they are NOTHING like other parties. NOTHING.

Since I knew I had a a lot of work to do, at first I did what I like to call “productive procrastination.” I ordered sunglasses for everyone, commemorative beer mugs, Body Armor drinks for everyone’s next day hangovers, sent a lot of Snapchats and told A LOT of people about the koozies I ordered. Honestly I was ready to kick back and relax after ordering the koozies.

But then as the day grew closer and closer my mom and sisters started asking me questions about flowers and decorations and what I was wearing. The phrase “It takes a village” is an understatement when it comes to me because without my family I do not think I would have made it this far in my life. They wanted to help make my day special, and will the little information I gave them, they helped make it the best day ever.

-When they asked what type of bouquet I wanted, all I said was, “I don’t know, I just don’t want to look like I’m holding a stalk of cauliflower.” And they found me a beautiful bouquet.

-When they asked what type of dress I wanted I said “Oh you know me, I could look good in a potato sack! Hahah Just kidding, I just don’t want to look like I’m making my first holy communion in my white dress.” Mike and I both look very young for our age-fold our hands and throw a rosary at us while we are dressed like that and we could easily be mistaken for making a different sacrament.

When it came to ordering dinner for the wedding I did do that one all on my own. (Excuse me while I pause to pat myself on the back). I used my skill of “making decisions based on doing zero research, only on if the person I’m talking to on the phone is nice to me.” So I called up a Mexican Restaurant near my parents’ lake house that I had never eaten at, really became besties with the girl on the phone, and the next thing I knew tacos were on the menu for the wedding! Looking back, I guess it was a little risky going with a place without ever sampling their food or knowing anyone that had ever sampled their food. Thank God that worked out because how awkward would that have been if everyone got food poisoning on my wedding day? Yikes.

When it came to decorations, my mom and I did make an attempt. We went to Michael’s Craft store and it was unfortunately very traumatic for me. Being in the fake flower and ribbon section of that store was my nightmare. Plus my mom kept using words like “tulle” and naming specific flowers like “peonies.” She might as well have been speaking a different language because I had no idea what she was talking about. “Mom!” I finally said probably too loudly “I HAVE NO IDEA THE WORDS THAT ARE COMING OUT OF YOUR MOUTH! What kind of tool are you looking for? And stop naming flowers please! I NEED TO GET OUT OF THIS STORE! WHAT KIND OF PLACE IS THIS?! THIS IS AWFUL WHY ARE THERE SO MANY FAKE FLOWERS!” After my breakdown, I was ready to get back to work. So I rolled up my sleeves, and called my friend Nancy and she and my friend Jan handled all the decorations. They made our little wedding setup look like something out of a magazine, it looked absolutely amazing!

As the wedding grew closer we got busier and busier. Mike was determined to stick to his excel spreadsheet list so every few days we’d check it. He was VERY CONCERNED about the garbage can situation so that was a line item and a topic of many conversations. It seemed like every time we’d talk about our little wedding he’d loop it back to the garbage can.

Mike: Ok so we have the tent, food, alcohol, now we just need to figure out the garbage can for dinner.
Me: What is your obsession with the garbage cans?!
Mike: Well… do your parents have outdoor garbage cans we can use? Where are people going to throw out their trash?
Me: I don’t know! Can’t we just tie those black garbage bags to the tent poles and people can throw their garbage there?
Mike: Oh no, no, no Kath! We can do that! Do you think I can fit one of the garbage cans we have in our garage in your back seat and drive it up?
Me: You are absolutely not putting a used garbage can that’s been sitting in our garage in the back seat of my car. That’s gross.
Mike: I’ll put a blanket on the seat so it won’t get dirty.
Me: No! If it’s that big of a deal we’ll buy a garbage can! It will be your first wedding gift from me to you.

I told him we would need to take a picture with our new garbage can, and of course we forgot. But as fate would have it, she snuck in to one of our wedding photos:

Once we got the garbage can situation figured out, I did question Mike’s “seven bags of tortilla chips” Excel line item but then he started going off on a long winded math spiel and I got bored and asked him to stop and I just said “Ok seven bags of chips sounds good to me.”

Once we finally had everything ready it was time to drive up to Michigan for the big day. The night before I stayed with my parents and Mike stayed with his. I thought it might be cute for me and my dad to watch the movie “Father of the Bride” but he said “Nah, I’ve seen that movie before!” and that was that. In typically Kelly family “Wait until the last minute” fashion we were still getting our house ready for the wedding until late at night. We had been meaning to hang up family photos since my parents’ bought the lake house three years ago, but what better time to be hammering in some frames than at 10 p.m. the night before a wedding?!

June 11, 2021 finally arrived and it was awesome. My Godfather, my Uncle Tom, officiated the ceremony. (I’ve been calling him Father Tom since). My Dad walked me down the “aisle.” My nieces and nephews served as flower girls and ring bearers (good thing they can use this “minimony” as practice for the big show in September because not going to lie their form needs some work) Both our Mothers did readings. Mike’s Godmother, his Aunt Mary led us in Grace at Dinner. The weather was scalding hot for everyone else but perfect for me (I don’t do well in the cold and I hate wind-the day was very hot and we had no breeze). What a day it was!

After a while I had to put a stop to all the photos because I had literally had enough. The photographer wanted us to do all these poses in different spots, doing weird stuff like gazing into each others eyes, or Mike whispering in my ear and I finally had to tell her “Yea, listen, this is unnatural for us. We don’t do this and we aren’t going to order these photos.” Mike and I are very real people, so we just don’t do the “foo-foo” photos, as my Dad calls it. The one photo we took of Mike “Whispering in my ear” he looks like he’s creeping on me and that did give us a good laugh so we actually may print that one out. After the 8 million photos we were finally able to have celebratory drinks, dinner and go on a boat ride.

The next day the celebrations continued as the Montags graciously hosted us on Indian Lake. We had a blast at the sand bar.

Our mini wedding was truly an unforgettable weekend. COVID postponed our big wedding but I still got to marry my best friend on our original date. Blessed and lucky-that is what we are. We had so much fun getting married, we can’t wait to get married again in September!

And my niece Ciara perfectly captured how everyone felt the Monday morning after the wedding weekend…