View gallery
Kelly Ripa, 51, opened up about the cost and easiness of her 1996 wedding to Mark Consuelos, 51, on the latest episode of Live With Kelly and Ryan. The talk show host, who met her hubby on the set of All My Children, first said there wasn’t an Elvis Presley impersonator at the ceremony before she further explained how “normal” everything was. “We just had a very normal, very regular wedding,” Kelly said on the Aug. 16 episode, according to People. “It really is such an efficient way to get married. And it was fun. We were like, ‘Now, this is gambling! Woohoo!’”
Kelly then shared that if she and Mark “had to endure a large wedding, the planning and the seating charts and the venue — we would not have made it.” She added, “I don’t think we would have made it to the wedding. There would have been had feelings and blame all over the place. And I can honestly say, we do not feel less married. As a matter of fact, we feel more married than those people, because we’re still married.”
Despite just going through one of the most important days of their lives, Kelly and Mark only “had two days off of work” after they eloped, and the then bride remembered how that “miserable” winter was what inspired them to exchange vows in Vegas. “Two consecutive days off from work, both on the same day. And it was like, ‘Let’s go to Vegas and get married and it’ll be fun,’” she said. “It was ’96 guys, remember the winter of ’96? The winter of ’96 is in the record books as the most miserable, it was an endless winter, and it was a snowstorm when we left.”
“And we looked at the weather because we thought about going to City Hall but that was still cold and miserable, whereas Las Vegas, it was 85 degrees and sunny,” she went on. “‘Let’s do that!’ And so that’s what we did.”
To top everything off, the wedding ended up costing Kelly and Mark just $179. “$179 for a wedding, including airfare, cause we had miles and we had a canceled trip or something. But $179 in total — total with everything,” she confirmed.
Kelly and Mark were married in May 1996 and now share three children, including Michael, 25, Lola, 21, and Joaquin, 19. The former soap opera stars often share pics and videos of their family on social media, especially for occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. The lovebirds celebrated 26 years of marriage this year.