Fifteen Years Pt. 2: The Party

I had a whole series lined up to regale you all with stories from our marriage, but I realized it's all stories I've covered here and told you in person. So instead, pt2 is going to be about the party we threw over the weekend and will likely be the last of this series. 

Once we approached the 10th anniversary, we thought, maybe we do something special. We've made it much further than a lot of people. 

That was 2018, and Sal and I had planned a trip to Napa for our 10th anniversary. The planet had other plans for our 10th. If you remember 2018, most of California was on fire. Therefore, no wine for us.

In 2021, we had talked about throwing a huge 13th anniversary party in honor of the insanely bad luck we've had. But karma looked us in the face and laughed and continued a global pandemic. A lot of the restaurants we wanted to rent out weren't open for dinning yet.

So fast forward to the 15th, a nice multiple of 5. Feels like an important year. It's the year you're supposed to give something crystal to your significant other. We're halfway to 30 years. 15 feels like a good year to finally celebrate. 

We talked about what we wanted this party to look like. 

Did we want to renew vows? No, not really our style. 

Some sort of dress up formal party? Nah, too big of a barrier to entry. 

So we adjusted the conversation to, "if we were getting married today, what would that look like?" 

Our original plan for starting life together was to move Sal out to Myrtle Beach to start her job. I would stay back in St. Louis and find odd jobs for a couple months while I applied for things out in Myrtle Beach. Then we would get married sometime in late spring/early summer and I would move out there. 

Well, once Steve, Sal, and I were on day 3 of moving Sal into an apartment by herself across the country, the plan quickly changed to getting married at a restaurant less than 2 weeks later so that she wouldn't be alone. 

Wasn't the most romantic wedding, but it did include most of our best friends at the time. It also included the highest person I've ever met, even to this day. He was our waiter and he was fantastic. Very good mood, very good food suggestions, he just couldn't open his eyes very far. But he lightened the mood. 

I don't know if you know this about me, but I really don't like dressing up in a classical sense. It's uncomfortable and unless you have a tailored suit, I frankly think it looks kind of dumb. But it was my wedding, and everyone was telling me I needed to dress up. So my thrown together idea of "what would an adult trying to look nice on a budget do," I shaved my beard and purchased an incredibly ill fitting button down shirt from Kohls.

I look sweaty, bloated, and like someone you wouldn't want within 200 feet of your children. 

Sal had to fly in from Myrtle Beach to make the wedding. She got off a plane, slapped on some makeup, and made it to the wedding with barely any time to spare. And she looked fantastic. Which just highlighted how much of a schlub I looked like. 

We got married on a Sunday, and went to the court house on a Monday to make it legit. Having our first meal as a married couple in some dive bar in downtown St. Charles.  

We moved to Myrtle Beach, made a bunch of friends, started feeling like adults, both got laid off, and moved back to St. Louis in less than six months, just in time to have a big ceremony in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. 

It wasn't the wedding we would do now, but I don't know that anyone knows what that is especially when you get married young. Unless you were someone that had been planning their wedding their whole lives, you sort of just throw your hands up at some point and say, "Put a white dress on me and book a venue."

This time, I was dressed much nicer thanks to the fine people at the nearby mall Saavi. However, my idiot decision making struck again, and I shaved my beard. Now, having lost a little weight from our first wedding, I was looking a little slimmer and a little less creepy. So instead of looking like someone you shouldn't hire to babysit, I now looked like Potato Head. 

We had a great time. But since we got married so soon after graduating college a lot of our friends had spread out across the country and couldn't make it. And the mere drive time of 90 minutes kept most of my family from coming. 

The ceremony was a blast and I wouldn't change it, (especially the truck that pulled up in the alleyway during our vows blasting Nickleback's classic "Figured You Out") but it wasn't all the people we would've wanted there. 

And of the people that came, we aren't friends with a 1/3 of them anymore. Things happen. People break up. People have kids. You lose touch. 

So, when we started talking about this party, we had the following requirements. 

1. No formal anything. In fact, no dress code. Come naked if you want
2. No shaving, male or female. In fact, I was to do the opposite of shaving and not shave for many months. Last trim was October. 
3. Lunch/Afternoon on a Saturday so that out of towners could join

We also have made a lot of friends as adults that we wish we knew during our original wedding. A lot of people we wanted to celebrate with that weren't there for the first one. So we wanted a chance to celebrate us because our adult friends and family are such a huge part of what makes us work.

So we started the great search across St. Louis. And you know what we found, venues really don't want to take your money. We weren't getting many replies from venues. Then, inspiration hit in a fantastic pizza place our friend Deb found near the brewery. 

• They had an arcade, so activities were covered for kids. (And adults)
• They had a big drink list.
• They had fantastic pizza. 
• And the decorations... fantastic. 

Basically if you gave me an interest free loan at 14 and told me to design my ultimate business, this would be it. 

It was a great party. We had about a 50 person cap since we were paying by the head and for drinks. We had to make a couple tough decisions and really shake down some people for their RSVP status to see if we could dip into the rest of our list. 

3 hours is not enough time when all of your favorite people are in a room and you want to talk to them all. 

The added bonus was when the 3 hours was up, we had been handed our kitchen back to us, so we were able to host people for the first time in well over a year. It felt great to have people sitting around our table, laughing, drinking, and hanging out.