Wedding Bingo

What you say?  What is wedding bingo?  Are you telling me you don't know about this great thing.  We'll of course you don't know about it.  Unless you were at my wedding, that is.  Because we made it up. 

When planning my wedding we had 1 big problem; well bigger than big, one huge ginormous crazy large issue to tackle.  We had everything finally planned and in process.  The caterers were sorted, the bridesmaids dresses on order, the flower arrangements settled on, the place mats arrived, the napkin rings done, all the big details that had to be addressed further than 2 days before the wedding. done.  All these things were happily organized.  But, what are we forgetting.  We picked a venue, "yes," The Leaping Lizard Lodge; thanks mom and dad.  I picked a groom, "yep"  I had that sorted, lol. I had my ceremony music picked out, every song to be exact; with instructions for the DJ to alter at will in order to please the guests and atmosphere. What could we be leaving to the end.  What could be so hard to figure out.  Someone to marry us, An Officiant!  We couldn't find anyone that was willing to do a secular, non-church wedding in Southeastern Oklahoma.  Not a judge nor a random citizen.  We asked photographers, and DJs and wedding planners; all the local wedding talent.  No one, I mean absolutely no one knew someone who could marry us.  It sounds crazy, ok, yes.  But, it is the Southern US, what can I say.

We researched the requirements to be legally able to preside over a wedding ceremony.  We discussed friends and relatives.  Discussed writing the ceremony for them, and them just reading what I wanted to make it easy on our lucky friend of choice.  But, we couldn't decide on someone, and no one was really jumping up and down volunteering.  So after a long exhausting day of shopping in Northwest Arkansas, my mom and I were driving home.  We must have been delirious.  She wanted to have door prices for the wedding,  what you say, door prices?  Yah, give away some centerpieces, some bottles of wine.  Spice up a boring wedding moment with door prices.  Ok, a bit loopy.  So we discussed giving everyone a number so they could be called on. I had seen a great Guest Labeling system on Etsy, I wanted to try out.  So I was working with mom on this one.  Then we started joking around.  We could door price off who has to be the officiant.  Yah, we could call there name and they get the honor of marrying us. It would be torture for the random people called!  lol.

Next day,  "mom maybe we could actually door price off who has to speak."  Mom, "ummm, i don't know."  So we told dad our grand plan, and what did dad say, "ummm.... maybe."  Upon further discussion this is how it turned out.

My dad volunteered to get the legal papers so he could legally marry us!  Someone had to be legal.  We decided to use a bingo wheel to call the winners, and we would rig it.  We talked endlessly about what would happen if the wrong person got called and froze in the spotlight.  We decided it would be better to rig the speakers so we picked people close to us, and those we knew would get excited about speaking,  i.e. not run away into the woods to never be seen again.

I bought an awesome vintage Bingo wheel from Etsy.

These are the victims:

Hannah, my outgoing American cousin, started us off with an intro and reading.

My hubby's sister, a talkative Aussie, recited a reading.

Our mutual friend and coworker, a not so shy Canadian, took us through the handwritten vows.

Lastly, my dad, added some Dr. Suess and pronounced us man and wife.

I was able to incorporate the awesome guest labeling system.  It was such an easy DIY project.  I used actual bingo number to label the guest and correspond with the bingo wheel.  We went ahead and did some door prices during dinner, wine and such. It turned out ok, to break up the monotany of eating, but I think was confusing for everyone.  We'll you never know unless you try.  The door prices were random the ceremony participates were not.

I hope you like our wedding bingo idea.  It shocked all the guests and participants, and made for a really spontaneous and fun filled evening.  After the ceremony everyone was pretty excited and taken aback from the unusual nature of what could have been a typical ceremony.  I was very very pleased with how it all turned out.


I'll blog about the actual ceremony wording another time.  That's way alot for one post already...

Goodday, Tif

Official Wedding Photography by Mandy Ballard