Turning the worst wedding into the best wedding- need ideas!

Okay y’all, this is gonna take some background.

Some time ago, my husband and I planned a pretty fantastic wedding. It was going to be the wedding of our dreams, and over two years of planning and prepping, I’m sure you all know how much we were looking forward to it. Unfortunately, things were pretty sour throughout the process. We compromised on far too much to accommodate things we didn’t care for, we spent about $10k over our original $20k budget, and we learned a lot of really difficult lessons. On the other hand, fortunately, we also learned a lot of difficult lessons. We came out stronger than ever, so little silver lining.

I’m really going to try to make this as short as possible so I can get to the point!

We decided to have an elopement ceremony with just us, our officiant, and our videographers. (I was a poor little orphan girl who couldn’t bear seeing an empty half of the room, essentially.) A long, longgg time ago I said to a friend, “if I married the right person- I wouldn’t care about the wedding! I would get married in my pajamas on the side of the highway as long as it was right.” I also realized I looked like a ready-to-burst sausage in my wedding dress as I had gained weight. We had already bought matching pajamas for our getting ready part of our wedding video.

Which brings us to the first photo. We did in fact decide to get married in our pajamas on the side of a highway in the desert.

Okay, part two. We had a large reception planned about a month after the ceremony, timing it out so we could play the finished video during our first dance, as we’re not big on being in the spotlight and it would still let everyone see the big day without being there. I’m going to skip all the drama outside of the direct situation but essentially- I tested positive for Covid the night before. I’ve never been so sick in my life. I could not and did not attend my own wedding. The $30k was going down the drain, whether we liked it or not. So the only thing to do was to continue without me. It was the best day of our lives turned into the worst day of our lives so, so quickly. It took us a whole year to face looking at the photos, even. It was rough and it was just a very sad day all around, but very quick kudos to my husband because he put on his best face and threw the damn thing anyway, I am beyond proud of him for how well he handled everything, considering. Like what the fuck, right?? My favorite part is that A, he carried around a framed photo of me, and B, the wedding party was in all black, so my wedding literally ended up looking like my funeral 😭😂😂 we have a photo of my picture sitting on the head table surrounded by floral arrangements and it’s just so depressing looking that it’s simply hilarious now. I really could go on about that mess for ages!!!

ANYWAY- we’re throwing a redo. It’s going to be way, wayyyyyy cheaper this go around because honestly, ya never freakin know. I mean, with our luck 😂

We have two ideas for a theme, and I would so love to hear both opinions on the themes and any ideas you might have because I’m definitely not finding much out there!!

Theme idea 1: Unlucky. Black cats, broken mirrors, toppled over salt shakers, the whole 9. On a Friday the 13th, even. Really lean into the comedy of it all! Our ceremony and actual anniversary is April Fool’s Day and is very much in our lane. Could have a couple mishaps throughout- wine spilled on the dress, etc etc. We could go for the more gothic and macabre aesthetic too!

Theme idea 2: Straight up pajama party, just like we had for the ceremony. Everyone wears pjs, we have pizzas and a build your own sundae bar with classic slumber party movies playing on a projector. Board games, hell, maybe a talent show! 😂

These are weird themes, so you see why I’m not finding much inspo lol But the one thing we learned above anything is that everything could all go to shit in one second so you might as well laugh it off and have as much fun as you can.

I’m highjacking my husband’s account for secrecy as mine is public and we want to keep things on the DL for now.

Please, give me any and all thoughts and ideas you have, even if it’s something outside of the two ideas we have!!