We Got Married April Fool's

March 31st, 2026. That night, I finally got around to looking into all that remained in getting the old condo ready to be rented out. Jess was relaxing after a long day at work and setting fire to chemical storage facilities. Overwhelmed by all that I had to do, I went to talk to Jess about all that my research had yielded.

“Babe, we need to set up an LLC for the condo,” I said (or something along those lines—none of this is actually verbatim; my memory is not good enough to even remember my own name), sipping a gluten-free IPA. I listed off all the things my research had indicated was needed.

“Yeah, that’s a lot,” she said.

"What's my name again?" I asked. "Is it Kevin?"

We ended up discussing all that our future would entail—we were already engaged and there was much that needed doing. We had been planning to have a private signing ceremony at Window Coffee Bar on our second anniversary and also had a reception for our families that needed planning.

Realizing that we were only waiting to get married for a sentimental reason, I threw out a suggestion: “Maybe we should just get married tomorrow.”

“Don’t joke: I’d do it,” she said.

“I’m not joking.”

I had already been planning on wearing Jess’ favorite shirt of mine the very next day—the blue rubber-ducky-patterned shirt I wore on our first date. (She had seen it in my profile on Hinge and requested that I wear in on our first date.) I usually wear the rubber-ducky shirt each month for our monthly anniversary, so I knew that the very next day fell on the first of the next month.

I counted the months since we had known each other on my fingers out-loud like a toddler. I got a gold-star for not skipping any numbers this time.

“Wait—tomorrow will be our one-and-a-half year anniversary!” I said.

“Oh, that’s right: tomorrow is April 1st,” she said (approximately). But then, she had a realization: “Tomorrow is—If we got married tomorrow, we’d be getting married on April Fool’s Day.”

“Oh, that’s perfect! If we got married and told everyone, they’d think we’re kidding—but we actually got married. It’d be hilarious.”

“We have to do it!”

First, we had to make sure that it was possible—we had to figure out the logistics. April 1st fell on a Wednesday, and we needed two witnesses. While Jess texted her best friend, I texted my best friend, who had already agreed to be my best man at the originally-planned signing ceremony:

You’re not working tomorrow, by chance, are you?

It turned out that he was off that day. I told Jess, who told me that her best friend was also available.

When I told my best friend that we needed him the next day because we were getting married, he responded with, “Wait, what?”

After a lot of back-and-forth messaging, he still didn’t believe that we were getting married. I said he could talk to Jess for confirmation, but he said that she might be in on the joke, too. We called him and spoke to him on the phone, and he eventually agreed to be there, though he still expressed his disbelief.

The officiant we originally planned on was not available, but we knew we’d figure out a plan to make it happen. We scheduled an appointment at the courthouse to get our marriage license, and I found a same-day wedding company that was originally founded to help military folks do same-day weddings. The website said to call at 8:30AM.

I set an early alarm to get ready in the morning. We were getting married the next day.

I woke up at approximately 7:00AM on April 1st, showered, put on my rubber-ducky shirt, sent my manager a message that I needed the day off to get married—he congratulated me after making sure it wasn’t a prank—and waited until 8:30AM and called the same-day wedding company. They were able to find an officiant who would be available that day, but we had to pick a venue that was near where the officiant would be, because he had other weddings scheduled that day and couldn’t travel far enough for us to get married at our house. The vacant, old condo in downtown Phoenix turned out to be not too far away.

We went down to the courthouse, got the marriage license, went to Target to get a pen to sign the documents with and some Veuve Clicquot-Brut champagne to celebrate with later. We went home, and I finished writing my vows (I had originally started them the day after we got engaged, but combined them with some of the lines of since-discarded songs that I could never quite get right).

After we exchanged vows (we couldn’t wait), and after we both teared up, we headed out. We picked up Jess’ best friend and drove down to the condo, where my best friend met us. The officiant—a man very passionate about performing wedding ceremonies named Randy—met us shortly after, and we had a brief ceremony. We both used placeholder rings that didn’t fit either of us. It’s not about the rings; it’s about what they represent.

I’m still not sure that my best friend thinks we actually got married.