Happy Anniversary to us – our hot air balloon wedding :)

Fourteen years ago today – 1998, LasVegas: Bob and I up at the ass crack of dawn to get hitched. Now everyone thinks of Vegas weddings as something cheesy, like the drive thru weddings, or Elvis but there is so much more on offer if you only look. Why were we up at an ungodly hour on a Tuesday morning? Because we chose one of the other, funner options to married: hot air balloon wedding!

Bob and I had been dating for around 7 years when we decided to get married. Neither of us is religious and so a church wedding was out of the equation. Neither of us wanted a registry office wedding either, we wanted something different 😉 Something to remember. We’d been to Vegas the year before on our first American vacation and figured why not? Bob did some research and after looking at all the options we decided on the hot air balloon as neither of us had done it (the ballooning, obviously we’d not been married before!), and as a back up (in case the weather wasn’t cooperating) we had night-time helicopter wedding.

This wasn’t rehearsed. The parking lot floor was wet and Bob carried me over a HUGE puddle/muddy section 😉

The photographer asked us to do it again so he could take a pic

So there we were crack of dawn on Sept 8th 1998, getting ready in our hotel room. A short drive to the agreed meeting spot and we were ready to do this! There were 6 of us in the balloon, yes it was a little crowded:

• Bob & I
• Pilot (also a Bob)
• Videographer
• Photographer (also a Bob)
• preacher

It was a squeeze and definitely as experience we’ll always remember. No family came with us, we incorporated the whole wedding into our vacation/honeymoon. This included stops at: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Vegas and back to Los Angeles. We wanted a small wedding as we just didn’t see the point in a huge affair, and we wanted to save money 😉 We’d rather spend money on the vacation than the wedding so we did just that! For us an experience is worth more than a piece of paper, we visited San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vegas that vacation. We did have a reception when we got home for family and friends so they got to have some of the fun 😉 Honestly the reception when we came back was more hassle to organize than the wedding and vacation put together!!! But we managed to keep our heads and had fun as usual…

Can I just say I LOVED these cross trainers! I used to LIVE in Nikes!

In hindsight if I could change ANYTHING about our wedding I’d change the preacher, it was a religious ceremony and we’d have preferred a more humanist/spiritual wedding without religious overtones. Our ceremony wasn’t too bad though all things considered. Even though the preacher was a little on the crazy side “barking” at dogs below us as we “flew” past 😉 I’d have remembered all the gubbins to put my hair up rather than have it down but I left all that at our friends in Thousand Oaks (doh!). Oh and we’d probably have gone more casual. I really am NOT the white dress type but when we were looking at dresses this one was cheap and fit beautifully, I liked it, so we bought it. Again remember, it’s not about the dress! A dress is just a dress, you wear it once, don’t break the bank on the dress. 14 years later you won’t care. It’ll be stuck in the back of your closet.

So happy anniversary Bob! Here’s to many more years together!!!

Note: The reason I’m side on is because I got chocolate cake over the front of my dress 😉 Yup I’m a klutz!

So what’s your wedding story?

Would you consider a hot air balloon wedding?