beanie baby love.

I have no clue how we came up with this idea, but somewhere along the line in our childhood world of wonder, Janine and I decided that some of our collectible Beanie Babies that grandma had bought us had fallen in love, and of course, needed to get married. All we needed to do was set the stage and get everyone ready.If my memory serves me right, the first two to marry were two koala Beanie Babies. The female’s name was Mel. I can’t remember the boy koala’s name. We decided to dress up the wedding party and all of the other guests (stuffed animals and other Beanie Babies) with the finest clothes that toilet paper could be crafted into. We made tables and baskets out of printer paper. We used tissue paper to make flowers for the flower girl to drop as she went down the aisle. I managed to pull and transfer the traditional Bridal Chorus off of our cousin Paula’s VHS wedding video to a cassette tape.We ran the toilet paper aisle down the living room carpet, seated our guests, and I hit play on the tape. That day, Mel and her what’s-his-face koala man of her dreams got married that day and paved the way for many many other Beanie Baby and stuffed animal weddings to happen in that same venue.For one of my birthday parties, Janine and I invited our friends over and we married my first puppet - Johnny Deere, and Janine’s favorite stuffed animal, Lammy. We did this for quite a few years, finding, fostering, and uniting love-struck inanimate animals in bonds of forever companionship. Whether they’re together in the same storage bin or bag now is another story that is yet to be discovered at a later time with adorable small children around to retell the tales to.