Dream Wedding

fall of 2009 found me and my then-fiancee, Megan, trying to plan wedding. And we were unemployed, we came from humble beginnings, and no matter how much we tried to crunch numbers or plan most banal, menial wedding possible, it was just not going to happen.
And we were little upset, you know, because we were in love and we were ready to start our life together. And things were complicated because I had just gotten (brought) her to L.A. We had done long-distance relationship across to Michigan, and I had to leave her behind – she had to stay and run our apartment complex – that was my normal job. And I had to book out to Sacramento to work as actor in professional theater where, ironically, we had met before. I was going to be gone for long time.
And right before I left, she said, you know, I think I found way for us to have wedding. And I said, what? And she goes, well, I found this online contest. It’s called Southern California $100,000 Dream Wedding Giveaway. I found it on website called Broke-Ass Bride.

And I said, listen, and skeptic, realist, you know, came out in me and I said, listen, fine print, you’re going to read it. You’re going to find out it’s not really doing what it’s going to do. And even if we entered it, we’re going to lose to someone with terminal illness or Iraqi war vet. (veteran)
It’s just going to happen. So I blew it off. I went up North. I started doing my thing. She came up and visited me couple of times. And after holidays, she came and visited me again. She was only there until Friday.
And on Friday, she said, you know, today’s last day to turn in form for Southern California Dream Wedding Giveaway. Please. And she coerced me into it. And I said, fine. I started filling out form. And perfectionist in me took over.
And I kind of started getting into it, these cute questions and how you met and what’s your song and all kinds of stuff. And we filled it out. And, like, hour before it was due, we turned it in online with over 600 other couples. And I went, done. And she went back to Los Angeles.

About two days later, we got phone call. Megan called me to tell me we made top ten finalists. I found out right before I was going on stage in dressing room. And I flipped. Because all my worry and my fear up to that point kind of dissipated because this was confirmation that there was chance.
There was chance. And there were two more rounds of competition left to go. We had voting round.
And then there was big party at end that all vendors and sponsors would go to. So we started massive campaign. It was internet voting. And it was kind of tricky because it was only one vote per IP address. So, basically, in layman’s terms, it’s one vote per computer. You couldn’t hammer vote button hundred times. So you had to reach out to everybody. So we got Facebook fan page. And we were calling, doing bulk e-mails, getting hold of teachers and relatives we hadn’t talked to in years, didn’t want to talk to for years, just begging anyone to vote.

I was driving around with my laptop in my passenger seat of my car, pulling over in front of restaurants that had Wi-Fi and linking in and voting. I was doing show – at end scene I had tuxedo. So I came out in my tuxedo to lobby and met every patron and handed them flyer to please vote for us.

And Megan was doing her best down in L.A. But no matter how many votes we get, we couldn’t top Amber and Tyler. And Amber and Tyler were this couple that just kept pulling ahead. And they were every fear I had personified. Tyler was firefighter battling testicular cancer. Impossible! 

So we had to, you know, dig deep. So I got my buddy Jacob, who’s friends with Panic! at Disco, which was this huge band. And we got them to put on Twitter to tweet our link to vote. And it went out to 90,000 people. Bam! Overnight.
Overnight. We went from hundreds of votes down to hundreds of votes ahead. And they responded. Tyler’s mom contacted Livestrong Network (a cancer charity). And thousands of cancer votes just started piling in. There’s nothing we can do about it. We went underneath.

But you know what? It wasn’t over yet. There was one level left. party. And even though we got second place in votes, it all came down to decision at party. And problem was I couldn’t go. I was in Sacramento. And Megan was in Los Angeles. And I couldn’t make it.
I didn’t have understudy. There was no one to cover me. And my sister’s putting fear of God in me, going, you’ve got to get down there. Showing up is 90% of it. You’re going to lose. And there was nothing we could do. So Megan, brilliant, cuts out huge cutouts of my face and puts them on Popsicle sticks.
And hands them out to four of our friends that went to party. So even though I wasn’t there in body, in every photograph, I’m there in 2D. And they bring all couples up on stage for one final kind of dating show game Q&A. And they asked my wife, you know, what do you think about Peter? What makes you think about him? And she talked about kiss and how it felt like home. And it was beautiful. It melted people’s hearts.

And they went to Amber. And Tyler wasn’t there because he was recovering from surgery. And they asked Amber, what’s funny about banking? Because apparently she was in banking. She goes, what’s funny about banking?
He goes, yeah, tell us something funny about banking. She goes, I don’t think there’s anything funny about banking. And she looks at her sister. Her sister freezes. Her sister looks at emcee and goes, can we have another question? She tanked. And everyone that went to party that night said that when they went up to her, she was cold fish.
And I just closed my eyes in hope. We went to bed that night. Megan went to bed, I went to friend’s house who had been with us whole way. And he said, dude, just enjoy journey. You lost it. They can’t not give it to them. public backlash from, you know, not having cancer winner, it’s just enjoy journey.
So I went to bed. Two days later, 9:30 in morning on Valentine’s Day, we got call, and we won. We won whole thing, and fine print was true. We got ice sculpture and cigar bar and photo booth and free dress and tuxes and hotel rooms.
And it was unbelievable. And for two kids on unemployment, it was dream wedding. And three weeks today, we celebrate our one-year anniversary.