The Long-Term Repercussions of Hinging Your Wedding on the Outcome of a Football Game
January 29 - February 9, 2026
We were supposed to get married in 2015 when the Seattle Seahawks beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl. Mazz had just accepted a job in Berlin and Kirb needed to be her legal partner to tag along. Many of our closest friends were coming to our apartment to watch the game, so we figured it was a perfect opportunity for a surprise wedding. Once the blue and green confetti rained down on the field, we would hijack the exaltation and inform the room that we were getting married, right then and there. Everyone from Seattle knows how that football game ended. With seconds remaining, the Seahawks threw an interception on the 1-yard line and lost the championship in the most devastating way imaginable. There would be no surprise wedding that night.
The next day, we informed our friend Maggie that we had planned on her officiating the Super Bowl Wedding That Wasn’t. She told us to come over to her place a few days later, Greg and Sarah would be our witnesses, and we’d sign the paperwork and then go get sushi. When we arrived, there were signs in the yard saying, “This way to the wedding,” and the front door was open, blasting “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith. The apartment was decorated with hearts and covered in rose petals and Maggie, Sarah, and Greg were all dressed up in suits (we were in jeans and sweatshirts). Our friends threw us an incredible surprise wedding, after the surprise wedding we tried to throw for ourselves failed in spectacular fashion.
That Seahawks Super Bowl loss destroyed a would-be sports dynasty and traumatized the city of Seattle for years. But everything comes back full circle eventually, and in the winter of 2026, we found ourselves in strangely familiar territory. This time, the wedding was for our beloved Uncle Sean and his fiancée Jennifer, who were slated to get hitched at the end of January. When we bought our flights, the Seahawks were on an impressive winning streak, and there was a good chance they could make a legitimate run for the title. The original plan was just to fly back to Seattle for a long weekend to attend the wedding: in on Thursday and out on Monday. But we made sure to buy changeable return flights, just in case Seattle somehow made it to the Super Bowl the following weekend.
And then, as if it were written in the stars, Seattle won the NFC Championship and punched a ticket to the big game against…none other than the New England Patriots. The team that ruined our perfect marriage. Pushing our return flights back a week only cost €100 a piece, so the decision was a no-brainer. Seattle sports championships are genuinely rare events in the life of a Northwesterner; if we were going to win it all - against the despicable Patriots no less - Kirb and Mazz were going to experience it firsthand in the Northwest, screaming at the TV with our best buds just like the good old days.
Since moving to Europe in 2015, we have made the trek back to Northwest many, many times. This trip home was without a doubt the worst of all of them. We left Vienna in the morning and flew to Frankfurt to connect to our long haul. At the gate, everyone was informed that the flight was canceled due to bad turbulence over Seattle. We were instructed to wait in the airport until receiving further instructions, and Condor put €30 in food and drink vouchers on our boarding passes, which we promptly spent on wine at the terminal bar. After several hours, we were informed that we had been rebooked on a new flight the following morning at 7am that would reroute us through Amsterdam, and were being put up for the night in an airport hotel. Neither of the flights the following day were with Condor, our original carrier, but we were ensured that our checked baggage would be sent through to Seattle without issue. We wanted our toiletries and a change of clothes, but they told us it would take several more hours in the Frankfurt airport to retrieve our suitcases, so we left them behind. The front desk at the airport hotel was nice enough to give us some toothbrushes.
You can probably guess what happened next. We made it to Seattle in one piece the following day, but our bags never left Amsterdam. At this point, we smelled every bit like we had been traveling in the same clothes for 48 hours, with no ones clothes to change into now that we had landed. We informed the woman at Delta Baggage Services that we had come to Seattle for a wedding, which was taking place the following day, and because our bags were lost, we now had quite literally nothing to wear for the occasion. She decided to take us on as a special case and became genuinely invested in locating our baggage, but there was nothing she could do to magically transport clean clothes from the Netherlands onto our bodies.
During the car ride back to Lacey, Kirb decided to hit up Cream to see if he had any wedding-appropriate attire to borrow. Kirb had decided to fly in comfort on this trip, so the only clothes in his possession were some blown-out track pants, a black t shirt, and a pair of Nikes. Kirb and Cream are both short kings, if you will, but that’s about the end of the similarities between their body types. Somehow, every item of clothing in Cream’s wardrobe is a crop top or baggy, drop-crotch pants that looks like something a hobbit wears while gardening. Kirb borrowed a pair of ill-fitting slacks as a last resort.
Next, strung-out on time zones, we used the little human energy we still retained to drive to Ross and Target to buy whatever basics we could find for the least amount of money possible, unsure if the airline would actually reimburse us for anything. When we woke up bright and early the following morning, Mazz found a coffee shop in Olympia called Ember Goods that had a small clothing section as well, and somehow managed to find a surprisingly excellent wedding outfit while we sipped tall drip coffees. When we left for Snoqualmie Falls for the wedding later that afternoon, our luggage was still nowhere to be found. Thankfully, we’d been able to piece together ensembles that were not entirely inappropriate for a formal occasion, though far from ideal.
Uncle Sean decided to have a fancy wedding at the Salish Lodge, the hotel perched directly above Snoqualmie Falls. Non-Northwesterners may recognize this hotel as the Great Northern Lodge from the TV show Twin Peaks. We’d never stayed at the Salish before, so this was a fun treat for us - especially since Sean and Jennifer offered to pay for our swanky room as we were flying halfway around the world for the event. This was the first wedding of a friend or family member in some time that Kirb had not been asked to officiate, and he appreciated just being able to sit there and enjoy this one as a spectator. Kim, Sean and Jennifer’s friend that officiated the wedding, did a lovely job and kept things short and sweet. The food was delicious and it was great seeing dear old friends and meeting those closest to Jennifer. Unsurprisingly, we had lots in common with her crew.
Weirdly, when dinner ended and it was time to leave our private area, the hotel bar was already closed at 9:30 pm on a Saturday. Professor Fartpants was adamant that everyone go into nearby North Bend and sing Karaoke, and somehow, that’s exactly what two cars full of folks agreed to do. There was enough time left in the evening for all of us who wanted to sing to do one song each, and the locals were enthused by our choices and seemed to appreciate the energy we were bringing to the bar. Then, before we knew it, the whole place was filled with what seemed be children, hard-drinking children, and we were tired and old and so we left to go sleep in our fancy hotel beds. In the morning we got room service and luxuriated in the giant shower and bath robes and felt like real fancy folks. After a rough trip in, it was a welcome treat. Thanks, Sean and Jen!
Despite the overly-long football/wedding introduction to this blog post, watching the Super Bowl was only part of the reason we decided to stick around in America for an extra week. The other part was that Momzzio was super sick over Christmas and we hadn’t been able to see her, so this added time stateside was also a perfect opportunity for a make-up visit. Momzzio had already been planning to drive out to see seester Becky, so we decided to all meet up in Northern California for a few days. We’d just get some cheap flights from Seattle down to Sacramento on Monday after Uncle Sean’s wedding. Those flights are always cheap, because nobody wants to go to Sacramento. No problem. Right? Right?
Turns out, lots of other people from the Northwest wanted to get down to California that week, too. We conveniently forgot the Super Bowl was in the Bay Area the following weekend and that Seattle was in the big game so therefore everyone in Seattle was trying to fly down to California. Our surefire, no-problem cheap round-trip flights cost $1400 that week (more than our booked and subsequently-amended flights from Europe). Thankfully, instead of having to drop $1400, Kirb’s parents came to the rescue and agreed to let us put 1400 miles on their Nissan instead. Road trip!
Mary and Rocco were nice enough to let us use their place in Portland as a departure point, cutting a few hours off the very long drive by starting the night before. With our jetlagged brains naturally waking us up in the wee hours of the morning, we were driving south through Oregon with the sunrise. One highlight of the trip was Kirb thinking about how good a donut would be with his morning coffee, and then realizing he was in America where there are great donuts. With a little sleuthing, he found a donut shop in Springfield, Oregon called Master Donut that looked like it was the real deal (and was also inexplicably a Thai restaurant). My friends, it was the real deal. That apple fritter was a 10/10.
When it was time to stretch our legs, we found a little trail in Dunsmuir, California called Hedge Creek Falls that was a perfect pitstop. We pulled off the highway and parked immediately at the trailhead, then walked into gorgeous woods with Mount Shasta in the background, down to a scenic waterfall where you could go all the way behind. In less than 30 minutes, we were back on the road, rejuvenated from fresh air and beautiful scenery.
Ten hours is certainly a long time to spend in the car, but when you get to stop for donuts and tacos and gorgeous walks it’s really not so bad. When our ten-hour drive was done, we got to hang out with our family and for some reason it was already 70 degrees and sunny in California even though it was only the beginning of February. There was another reason why it was advantageous to have a car for this journey as well: Momzzio had been wanting to clear out unwanted stuff from her house and give us kitchen gear for years now. On our arrival, we were elated to receive an absolute haul of Le Creuset gear from the trunk of her car. Somehow, someday, we will figure out a way to get all that heavy ass cast iron to Austria.
Trips to visit family are nice because the whole purpose is to spend time with one another, so the activities can be enjoyably low-stakes. We went shopping in Nevada City. We played with dogs. We spent the week eating really good food, in particular dinner at Restaurant Josephine, which was a James Beard semifinalist for Best Chef: California in 2026. One afternoon, we didn’t have anything in particular that we wanted to do, so we drove an hour to Yuba City to eat tacos at Antonio’s. On a scenic detour heading home, we stopped randomly at a farm that pressed and sold olive oil and had an enjoyable tasting with the proprietor, who gave us complementary soap to take back with us to Vienna. It was a lovely visit with Momzzio, Ron, and Becky and Brian, and we are thankful the opportunity presented itself for impromptu family time, even if it meant driving up and down the majority of the West Coast.
The weekend of the Super Bowl, Cream and Peebs had already planned a cabin getaway at the base of Mount Rainier with the Professor, Sarah, and Suki. While there wasn’t enough room for us to crash in their cabin, the offer was extended for us to join if we wanted to rent a tiny studio cabin for ourselves in the same compound. There is usually nothing more we want out of this life than to go hang out with our friends in a cabin in the woods with a hot tub. Unfortunately, there was a nasty bug making its way through the friend group, which was complicating matters. Endless Mike had brought a hacking cough as his +1 to Uncle Sean’s wedding, and everyone who sat next him at dinner had gotten sick shortly thereafter. Cream had taken two days off and beaten the sickness by cabin time, but Sarah was still feeling mighty cruddy on Friday and decided to stay behind. Suki and the Professor still made the trip, and we had a lovely first night together eating tons of frozen pizza and hot-tubbing in the rainforest by the river. Then Suki woke up in the middle of the night barfing and crying and covered in snot and the Professor had no choice but to pack up and whisk the child back home.
In typical Northwest fashion, it poured rain the entire day on Saturday, but we didn’t particularly care. The Winter Olympics were on, we had books to read, and tons of good food to cook and eat. In the afternoon, when the rain subsided a bit, we headed into the nearby town of Morton to go thrift shopping and look for treats. The locals certainly gave us city slickers some looks. For being a good sport while the adults milled aimlessly around junk shops, Emmett (now blessedly known as Grud) was rewarded with his choice of Pokémon cards from a game shop in town. He got some professionally graded Japanese cards, and while he was excited to have some new valuable additions to his collection, he was a bit miffed that the thick plastic slabs encasing the cards prevented him from physically touching his new treasure. Professor Fartpants rang and let us know that he was abandoning his sick child with his sick wife and would be returning later on in the evening. We made sure that this time he remembered to bring Catan, which had inexplicably been forgotten by all parties in the original packing.
Mike’s Endless Cough, it turns out, metastasized into pneumonia, and on the morning of the big game he informed us he would no longer be hosting the Super Bowl at his mid-century party palace in Tacoma. Uncle Sean also bowed out, afraid of catching any number of the various illnesses spreading within his friend group. Thankfully, Cream and Peebs agreed to host the now-pared-down gathering in their Hobbit Hole. We had lots of leftover grub from the cabin, and Schork and Kellen and pals brought plenty more when they arrived. Before we knew it, we had a whole table full of Super Bowl snacks and a cozy home full of people screaming for the Seahawks.
From the beginning, the outcome of the game was never seriously in question. The vaunted Seahawks defense, self-dubbed “the Dark Side,” completely shut down the Patriots offense in a comprehensive defensive clinic. Some found this game “boring;” these chads also likely derived no pleasure from Bad Bunny’s iconic, love-fueled halftime extravaganza. Despite his team being in control from start to finish, Cream became increasingly agitated at the television as the game progressed, threatening to slide into a peculiar temperament his friends and family call “Twerp Mode,” generally induced by a combination of whiskey and overexcitement. While it is natural to hate the New England Patriots and to want to release streams of cuss words at the television whenever Robert Kraft is pictured on screen, we reminded our wound-up friend that this was a time for celebration, not anger. The great monkey had been lifted from Seattle’s collective back. Our beloved Seahawks had exorcised their demons and once again taken their place at the top of professional football.
As the clock hit zero, everyone in the Hobbit Hole hugged and jumped and hurrahed in exaltation. Kirb and Mazz beamed at one another, knowing that after more than a decade of living in sin and disgrace, the Seattle Seahawks finally beat the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl, and with it, we were finally, actually married.
As if on cue, Peebs broke out the fireworks.
Go Hawks.