It turns out the awkward photo Hogan style wasn’t the only thing that went a little wrong at our wonderful wedding. I just got an email from a lovely viewer asking how long Josh and I had been married. Such a simple question (one would think) but as you’ll read below, for us nothing is very simple.The best way to explain our marriage is to cut and paste an old email I sent out to friends when we arrived back from the big day. Check out the email below.

FYI – the whole part about being married AGAIN is because we had already eloped in a tiny little town called Asotin, Washington (with none of our family there just two women who we paid to be our witnesses in bowling shirts, yes they were on their way to bowl when we offered them $20 each to help us make it official). We made it up to our parents though by having a wedding a year later in Australia to complete the circle of love on both continents.

March 2007:

We’re back and we’re married…. again!!!

The destination wedding back to my old home town of Adelaide was wonderul…  minus a ton of rain, a funeral, a chipped tooth, setting off the fire alarm in the hotel, and our hotel reservations getting messed up leaving 3 groomsmen sleeping in one bed.

Apart from the above incidents the day was aboslutely a dream come true and I am so happy to have completed my circle of love marrying the man of my dreams.

A few tips for people planning a destination wedding:

Tip 1) Organize for transportation from the airport to the hotel before you land:  20 jet lagged grumpy people arriving after a 17 hour flight don’t think too clearly. This left us loading, unloading, and then loading, unloading  luggage to try and fit 20 people plus bags into 2 cars (we thought we had 3). Finally our non-existent braincells managed to catch cabs after about 2 hours of the above silly loading and unloading nonsense.

Tip 2) Call your hotel before you get there to confirm reservations: Once we arrived at the hotel, our 8 ocean view rooms had been changed to 6 park view rooms. I don’t know if I was more upset about Josh and I not waking up to the ocean view every morning (now we were looking into another apartment) or the fact that 3 groomsmen had to sleep in one bed. We did get it fixed in the end (after about 4 hours of sitting in the lobby and tons of phone calls). Josh and I were moved to another hotel that was fantastic. The groomsmen ended up sharing 2 rooms so one slept on the couch. Oh not to mention we got quite a few aplogy notes including champagne and flowers from our travel agent

Tip 3) When crying over your grandma passing away, try not to set off the fire alarm: We received the sad news at our wedding rehearsal dinner that my lovely grandma had passed away. I immediately went to the hotel and cried like I have never cried before… while showering. After 3 hours, I was a ball in the bath with the shower still going. Finally I opened the bathroom door and the steam caused the fire alarm to go off in the entire hotel (at 1am in the morning before our wedding). Oh did I mention I was naked???

Tip 4) Get your teeth fixed before you travel overseas: Josh cracked his tooth on a mint (sorry that part isn’t very exciting), maybe I should say he cracked his tooth wrestling a croc (although not true, much more exciting). We rushed him to the dentist where he tried for 1 hour to extricate his tooth. After lots of swearing and lots of blood, the dentist said it was the only tooth in 10 years he couldn’t get out fully. This left Josh with a swollen bloody mouth, an order to go to an oral surgeon when he gets back to the US, a big dental bill, a half extracated tooth, and some very heavy pain meds for the plane ride home.

Tip 5) When planning a destination wedding check the weather forecast: Adelaide had been in a drought for 4 months before our wedding day and was due a huge downpour. Guess when the rain arrived? One hour before our ceremony. Guess when it lasted to? One hour after our ceremony. Has it rained since in Adelaide? NO!!!! Aparently rain is good luck, so our future looks golden WAHOO!

Thanks to all of you who could come and share this amazing experience with us. For those of you who couldn’t make it, you were in our thoughts and in my heart the whole time.

Hugs and kisses,

Mrs Jenni Hogan

UPDATE: One thing I forgot back then was tip #6) When asking the Australian DJ to play 50 cent’s “In da club” make sure he gets the edited version when he downloads a song he doesn’t know from the US. Yes our DJ had never heard of the song before and downloaded the un-edited version (a sure fire way to clear the dance floor and get a lot of funny looks. Let’s just say there were quite a few naughty words in the one he downloaded).

**It’s the things that don’t go quite right that you’ll always remember and cherish. We couldn’t have wished for a better wedding.**