just a little shady - I Got MARRIED! Ep. 3

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Recapping my wedding & all the things we did that I would recommend to anyone planning theirs! Submit your shady story to be featured in a future episode anonymously here: https://forms.gle/WJJ3NdovNXW4eEGS7 NEW LIMITED COLLECTIONS just dropped on justalittleshadypodcast.com Join our Patreon for ad free content, bonus content & more: https://www.patreon.com/justalittleshadypodcast Subscribe to our youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/justalittleshadypodcast Follow us on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justalittleshadypodcast/ Watch us on Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTR6yk19Q/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome back to the podcast, or should I say welcome to the wedding episode. So I know this has been a highly requested episode. We're going to get into the details of my wedding and mainly just talk about things that I did that I would 100% do again and recommend to other people who are planning their wedding right now. And so we will not be having a main episode, normal episode this week. It's just going to be me. But if you're a Patreon user, the bonus content is actually going to be what would have been the main episode. We're going

to talk about all the pop culture things and drama and shadiness going on right now. So if you want to see that, make sure you are part of the Patreon. But let's get into all things wedding. So I got married on May 18th, which is a little bit over three months now, but it kind of feels like a lifetime ago. I don't know if it's just because so much planning and anticipation went into it. And we've also just had a very busy summer with all these weddings coming up in the fall. And we have five weddings this fall. So that's actually one of the reasons we didn't go with a fall wedding. We kind of knew that it was going to be a busy wedding season among our friends because originally I did think I wanted a fall wedding.

Obviously, Michigan is just so pretty in the fall, but spring is pretty too. And I think a lot of people stray away from spring in Michigan for weddings because the weather can just be a little bit unpredictable. But thankfully, we did not get any rain and it was honestly the perfect temperature. It was like a little bit hotter in the day, but it cooled off at night and it wasn't too cold either. So it ended up working out perfectly. I am so thankful because I know a lot of people too will not do outdoor ceremonies or plan a lot outside because they just can't handle the stress of not being in control of the weather. But I somehow was okay with that, which is surprising, but I think I was just doing so much manifesting that the weather was going to participate.

And thankfully it did. It was actually wild because the weekend after our wedding, the exact venue that we were at ended up getting so much rain. So we were like, oh my gosh, not going for that Italy-ish vibe with like the big Arborvitaes and lots of greenery. So I was literally Googling like Italy type venues in Michigan. And honestly, it worked because Greencrest Manor came up, which is where we ended up getting married. And as soon as I saw it I was like this is exactly what was in my head and so I knew it was going to be perfect we did look at other venues and a lot of them were very beautiful but this one was just like exactly what I was picturing so the only thing that wasn't my favorite about it was that it was like two and a half hours away from most of our guests.

And I was originally trying to avoid having to set up accommodations and shuttles and all that. Thankfully, we had a planner that helped us do all of that and it ended up being seamless. But that was something I was worried about from the beginning. It actually ended up working out in our favor, though, because this was something we were able to do because we were in control of the accommodations and transportation. We actually were able to keep the venue a complete secret from our guests because we just told them the hotel that they're staying at, when to get on the transportation, and that was it. So I also think it ended up being like a fun little guessing game for a lot of our guests because up until the last second, a lot of them were like, are we going here? Is it this barn we

just passed? Is it this? So it was kind of fun. And obviously for our circumstance, we just didn't want anything to get ruined, anyone to tell the wrong person. So it ended up working out for that too. But I do think it was just a fun little thing to do anyways. And because we did that, we only sent out save the dates for our wedding. We didn't send out actual invitations later. A lot of times people will do the save the date and then the invitation, but I feel like it ended up saving us time and money because we just did save the dates. And I actually thought what we did was kind of cool. We sent out kind of in advance, like a little bit early, we sent all of our guests a box. And inside the box was like a card with our wedding website on it. And then we had a candle that you, when you burned it, the top of it revealed little beads that had the date on it.

So it was kind of cool and fun, like a little activity for everybody to do. And then later when the wedding got closer instead of sending out invitations we just updated our wedding website which I do feel like a lot of people could do if they wanted to do because usually you do have a wedding website that collects all the RSVPs anyways so to save yourself some time and money if you didn't want to send out invitations I think sending save the dates is fine. And just write on there like, you know, updates on our wedding website to come. Something like that.

Something else a little bit different that we did was we didn't have a formal bridal party. So we didn't formally ask anybody to be in our bridal party or formally have any maid of honors or best men. I don't know if I'm saying that right. But we did ask some of our friends and family to get ready with us the morning of the wedding. We just felt like we didn't really need to give anybody any responsibilities. Like I said, we had a planner and we had everything kind of in place already and we didn't want anyone to feel like they were supposed to be doing anything except like having fun and being there with us. So we just had people get ready with us and we asked everybody to wear all black, which they could wear whatever they wanted, just black because our, what is it called?

The attire that we asked our guests to wear was formal black tie. So most guests did wear black anyways. We just didn't want, if we took a picture with everybody that was getting ready with us, for like somebody to randomly be wearing orange and everybody else was wearing black. So that's why we just specified for them. But other than that, we didn't really give them any duties or anything. So we were like, it's not really a formal bridal party. And I feel like a lot of people are starting to do this now, too. We knew we weren't

having anybody standing up with us during the ceremony. So it kind of just made sense to not make it an official thing. I did end up asking two friends, one was Brittany and then my other friend Tracy, to give a speech during the reception. And then Evan asked one of his friends to give a speech. We are not big public speakers, as I will get into later. So it kind of just made sense for us to have our friends do a little speech during the reception. And then we did have both of our parents, both me and Evan's parents and our both of our sisters walk down the aisle. So we did have family walk down the aisle. And then also Nate, my uncle Nate's kids were our ring bearers. So that was super cute and fun. And then Evan's niece was the flower girl. So we had family and stuff walk down the aisle, but no official like

bridal party, I guess. And then I did want to get into this topic a little bit because we did have a few kids there, but besides the kids in the actual wedding, we did not have kids there. But besides the kids in the actual wedding, we did not have kids there. And I know this is kind of a controversial topic on wedding planning. A lot of people are opting for no kids these days, but I feel like it used to not be acceptable and a lot of parents would get offended. We only had the kids that were obviously like in the wedding there. And then we actually did this. So maybe consider this if you have family that wants kids there. We had a babysitter on site.

So once the kids did their thing and right before the reception started, the babysitter took the kids and fed them dinner separately and played with them and hung out with them until the end of the wedding so that the parents could like enjoy the night and not be worried about what the kids were up to. I thought that was a cool thing to do. I don't know how other people would react, but my uncle and now sister-in-law appreciated it, I think. And then on the actual wedding day, one of the main things that we did that I think was so cool, I'm so glad we did it, and we got so many comments and compliments on it, was we pre-recorded our vows. So actually right here in the studio, I came in, hit record,

and recorded my vows. And then Evan did the same thing. I set him up, told him what to do, left. He recorded his. And then we gave the audio to the band and they set it up so that when he walked down the aisle, his vows played. And then when I walked down the aisle, mine played. And so you might be thinking like you didn't hear his because you didn't walk down yet. But we actually ended up reading our vows to each other the night before. And I think it was so special because it was still a really special moment for us. And then everybody got to hear us do it aloud like separately but they were really for us so we we did have that moment to like share them together but pre-recording them just took so

much pressure off of us the day of and I knew that if I had to read them or say them in person that I would just be solely focused on getting that right and not be in the moment. And I just really wanted to be in the moment. And I think it still gave our guests that look into our relationship. We got to profess our love for each other in front of everybody without actually doing it in person. So it was something that a lot of people liked and were like, can we steal that idea? Thankfully, we already had a podcast studio to do that in. So it was easy for us to do. But I definitely think if some way, somehow, maybe on your computer, like GarageBand, record them. I loved it. I was, I felt so relieved and it was, it was no pressure. So that was something that I love that we did. Also, we put no pressure on specific photos.

We did end up doing a first look and I know a lot of people don't want to do that. They want the first time the person sees them when they're walking down the aisle. But honestly, again, I just wanted to be in the moment for everything. And so doing the first look and getting those pictures with Evan and everybody like before the wedding started, just took the pressure off of feeling like I needed to go run around and do pictures after and try to rush everything. So we did that and I really liked it. And we also then were able to take that time. We did like a reveal of the reception area and we had like two little reception areas. So we got to do those reveals at that time after the ceremony and after the license signing so that was kind of nice I feel like a lot of people don't

get to do that either because they're rushing to take photos so getting to do that reveal privately with just me and Evan and see everything set up for the first time was really cool. Another thing that I did was I wore tennis shoes under my dress and then I changed when I changed for the reception. I actually changed into heels then, which I know that feels backwards, but I swear it made more sense and my feet were happy at the end of the night. So I knew that for like all the pictures and walking down the aisle and everything during the day, I needed to be in tennis shoes or I would get rude because when my feet start hurting, like I physically, I just, I don't do well. So I was like, okay, I'm going to wear tennis shoes because you can't see them anyways. So like why walk around and suffer if

you're not going to see them? It wasn't to like be cute or quirky. I just literally was like, there's no way no one can see them anyway. But then when I changed and you could see my shoes for dancing, I put on heels, which I feel like most people are going to be like that's super backwards, but it made more sense and it made my feet last all day so that was something I would definitely do again another thing that we did again or did differently is we did all the first dances and like father daughter dance mother dance, me and Evan's first dance before the reception. So we did ceremony, cocktail hour, first dances, changed into something more comfortable, and then went to the reception. I thought this was amazing because, again, it kind of like took off the pressure of once we got to

the reception, it really was just like, enjoy party time, have fun, no more responsibilities because we had done everything we needed to do already throughout the day. And so I liked that part of it. And then also I was able to like have my dress on for the first dances, change, be comfortable while I ate and sat and not sit in my dress for the reception and then just go straight into dancing. So I really loved that. I'm not sure if all venues kind of kind of accommodate that, but that made sense for our venue. So I really liked that. Some other random things I'm really glad we did. Since we were two and a half hours away, we had hotel accommodations for everybody. We actually did welcome drinks the night before.

And if you can do this, I highly, highly recommend because it took off the pressure to go around to everybody at your wedding and thank them for coming. Because we did that already the night before so we were literally able to say hi to everybody who came to town say hi to everybody that was just there for us that weekend and thank them for coming so then the day of the actual wedding there was just like no pressure to go around to everybody or like say hi to everybody because you already got that done with. And obviously it's two nights of fun then, but it was really just for that and to like thank everybody. And I thought it was perfect for that. Another thing we ended up doing, which we kind of planned this one last minute, but highly recommend everybody was in awe. We surprised the guests with a drone show at the end of the night. And it was honestly one of the coolest things I think I've ever seen at a wedding.

I know a lot of people will do like the sparkler send off or fireworks. But I just was like, why don't we do a little drone show, like a mini drone show? And it was literally so cool. So if you have that in your budget, I would look into that because it was one of the coolest things that we did, I think. And it was, everybody was like shocked. Nobody expected it. We didn't tell anybody ahead of time. So it was a good way to send everybody off and let them know like, okay, time to get going. Let's go see this, go outside. Okay. Now it's over. Um, and then one more thing we did that I'm really glad we did. We had live music throughout the day. We had violinists, um, when everybody arrived for down the aisle and for cocktail hour. And then

we switched to like a live band when we were all eating dinner. And then for the reception, like dancing part of everything, we switched to a DJ, which was actually Brittany's brother. Shout out DJ Etters. And it was actually so funny because I think we talked about this when Elena came on the podcast that Nate performed slide on over at her wedding and we make him perform at every event. So it was no different. Nate did in fact perform slide on over at the wedding. And I think me and Evan were kind of like on the side of the stage trying to be part of it and I remember at one point Evan was like what are we doing up here like this is Nate's moment and I'm like I think it's because it's our wedding

but like we were just awkwardly in the corner um performing with him but that was super fun too and of course we had to do that. I would say the only thing we probably wouldn't do again, which this is so niche and nobody's going to have this issue unless you specifically seek this issue out. We played, we tried to play a game at the end of the reception, like the end of dinner before we went into dancing where at each table we had taped one like little shooter under one person's seat at each table and it was supposed to be like announced like everyone check under your seats and then one person at each table kind of got like I don't know like iced but with a shooter and it was supposed to be like funny everybody at the table like oh you got it you know to like iced, but with a shooter. And it was supposed to be like funny. Everybody at the table like, oh, you got it, you know, to the one person. But the way that the band announced

it, it made those people like think that the people who got selected for the shot were supposed to come take it with us and were kind of like singled out in a way. And so like it just didn't come across as the game that it was supposed to come across as. And then I think a lot of people were confused of like why they didn't get one kind of thing. So definitely probably wouldn't do that again. But in theory, it was supposed to be like a fun game, like one person at each table got iced kind of thing, but it didn't play out that way. So I'm not sure we would do that again. But to circle back, so we didn't have a wedding party, but we did have a bachelorette bachelor party. So how did we go about this? You might ask because since we didn't have a bridal party.

So we actually ended up doing a combined bachelor bachelorette in Tampa, Florida. And so we basically just asked the friends of the like who we asked to get ready with us. We just brought our friends to the trip. We couldn't bring everybody that we asked to get ready with us because obviously we were going traveling. And we ended up staying at Airbnbs that were right next to each other. So that was cool. Like the guys had one house, the girls had one house, but we were neighbors. I don't even know how that ended up working out so perfectly, but it did. And I was really happy. I had brought

friends that I've been friends with for like 20 years and everybody knows each other. So there was no like awkwardness or weirdness, which I was really glad because I know a lot of bachelorettes, you're kind of like bringing in friends from like all different parts of your life, your life. And sometimes it can be like a little bit weird if not everyone's been friends, but everybody has literally been friends for like 20 years that came. So that part of it just made it so fun. And it felt like we were living the sleepovers that we used to have as kids, but like as an adult, and it was just so much fun. So for the girls, we ended up doing a cocktail class, a cocktail making class at the Airbnb for the first night, which again, highly recommend. I know a lot of people

are like when they go out of town on a bachelorette, they are like, why wouldn't we leave the house? But when you're settling in and decorating the place and hanging out anyways, sometimes it's kind of a lot after you travel to then go back out. And so we just were like, why don't we just hang out at the house and do like an activity so the cocktail making class ended up being so fun and so worth it and we obviously all just immediately got drunk because we had a cocktail class and then we played like games and hung out and then the following day we did a boat day and dinner and went out, which was fun. The guys went on one boat and we went on another boat at the same time. So that was cool. And then the following day we went to one of those

pool parties, which was a lot of fun and entertaining to say the least. And then we just all went back to the Airbnbs and hung out at the pool together. And honestly, I was so glad we ended up doing the combined bachelor bachelorette because we did a lot of activities separately still. Like the first day, the guys went and did their own thing. Second day, the guys went to dinner and like went out by themselves, too. And then we met up like way later in the night um but it was just fun for us because since so many of our friends and like there's so much overlap of the friends in our friend group of everybody getting married and stuff we knew that like a lot of the guys would do something like golf or you know something similar and same with the girls like we just

knew that we wanted it to be like a little bit different and bring everybody together. And a lot of my friends are his friends and vice versa. So everybody knew each other still when we did combine it. So I was glad we did that in the end. And it just added like a little bit more fun to it and like getting to meet up later in the night. One thing we also did for the bachelorette for the girls that was really funny I think is pre-planned our drunk food using Easy Cater and this is obviously not sponsored but we literally so the first day we had Chipotle catering planned and because we knew we were going to do the cocktail class, then we would want to eat. So we had that planned.

And then fun fact, though, are the driver, whoever it was, it was not associated with Easy Cater. I think they like third party, the driver ended up taking our catering. So when we landed, we had to call and get them to remake the Chipotle catering, which God bless this Chipotle because normally, you know, catering you have to do like 24 to 48 hours in advance. They remade us our whole order and had it re-dropped off, thankfully. And then we also easy catered Jets pizza for Saturday after the pool party because we knew we would all be drunk and not want to order it then. So we had like a crap ton of Jets pizza, which I didn't even know they had Jets in Tampa. But we got that catered so that when we were drunk, we could go back and eat that.

And highly, highly recommend doing that for a bachelorette. And then we did do like at home bachelor bachelorette for like family and like friends who couldn't come out of town, which ended up also being super fun. And we did that like a couple of weeks before the wedding. And for the girls, we just went to dinner and then we actually did duck pin bowling, which I just recently kind of found out about. It kind of feels like skeeball, but it's bowling pins and like mini bowling balls. I don't know. Highly recommend, though. It was fun. And then last but not least, to finish off all the wedding details and fun, hopefully

I didn't miss anything um but was the honeymoon and so this was actually kind of funny because going into our wedding we did not have one planned and we weren't really sure what we should do we kept going back and forth like if we should go right away because you you know, we should go enjoy it. But we didn't want to be too stressed out that like now we need to plan this honeymoon and be ready for that at the same time as the wedding. And then we also didn't want to wait too long because we're like, it's not going to feel like a honeymoon. It's going to feel like a winter vacation or whatever if we decided to do it, you know, that far in advance. So basically the wedding happened. And then on Monday,

I was just like, we should go on our honeymoon now. And Evan was like, what do you mean now? And I was like this week. And he was like, um, okay. So we literally ended up planning the trip like Monday and Tuesday and then we left Thursday so basically five days after the wedding we ended up going on our honeymoon which we went to the Bahamar area of the Bahamas and we had never been to the Bahamas so that's why we decided to do that and it's not that far I think think it's like, what was it like four and a half hour plane ride. And it ended up being very cool, but like different than I had imagined it. It almost felt like this, the area that we were at was basically this big strip of hotels that were all connected through like a casino and a bunch of restaurants.

So there's like a bunch of hotels that were all connected through this big area. It almost felt like a cruise ship, but on land, which I don't even know if that's true because I've never been on a cruise ship, but in my head it was like an adult Disneyland cruise ship situation, except it also did. It was surprising to me that there was a lot of families there, which again, I had no idea because we had never been to the Bahamas. They did have like adult only pools and stuff, but it was just surprising to me like how many families were there. But we wanted to go because we'd never been. The water, insanely clear. You can see right through it. Crystal clear blue. So pretty. And then we wanted to do like something that we couldn't do anywhere else, which in my head was the pig excursion, you know, like the pigs that swim in the water. So we did end up doing all that. We did, we golfed, we did a boat day, we did the

pig excursion. We were at the adults only pool. We ate a bunch of food. It was really, really nice. I will say the pig excursion we did, I don't think was the legit like one you see all over Instagram. It was more so like this little tiny space where like a bunch of guys had a couple pigs that they put the pigs there like they were not wild pigs. You know what I mean? Like in my head, these were wild pigs that were like swimming with people, whatever. No, like these pigs were put on this little island. So I don't know if we just didn't go to like the main part. And I'm not going to lie, that part, I'm glad we did it. But was low key, like a little bit sketchy. These pigs wanted the food from you. So they would like jump up at you to get the food you were feeding them. And Evan was just like, are we going to get the swine flu and I'm like dude I don't know

can you so we were a little bit um freaked out about that part but overall we had an amazing time and I'm glad we did it when we did because we ended up being so busy the whole summer we're about to be so busy this fall with all the weddings we have. So I'm just glad we did it when we did. And I think one of the best parts was the Bahamas actually has U.S. customs there. So like on most places when you go and you travel, you like when you come back, you have to go through customs once you land here. And sometimes once you land here, you have to go through customs, recheck your bags, do all that, and then get on a connecting flight. And so there, you go through the customs there, and you don't have to do it once you're here. So we did have a connecting flight, but we were able

to just spend that time just relaxing in the airport, get to our next flight. Bags were automatically transferred to the next flight. And so that part I had no idea about and would specifically go back just for that because a lot of times like when we've gone to Mexico, if you have a layover, but you have to go through US customs, you'll have to like literally take your bags, go through customs, then get back to your plane, recheck the bag. And it's just like a big hassle. And sometimes your connection's only an hour. You only have an hour to do all that. You're running to your flight here. You didn't have to do that. So that part was super nice. Overall, that is, I think I covered everything. Hopefully I covered everything. That's all the wedding details.

And yeah, let me know if I missed anything. Hopefully I didn't. But if I missed like one or two details that you wanted to know about, comment them. We'll address them at some point in the next episode maybe. And yeah, if you want to see a regular episode for this week, just talk about catch up on all the shadiness going on. Make sure you join the Patreon. And if not, I will see you guys in the next one bye everyone