#ItMightMeanTooMuch: The story of the truck rooftop wedding at the LSU tailgate
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BATON ROUGE, La. – A top-10 matchup, an LSU tailgate and a wedding … what more could you want?
Heading into my first-ever trip to Baton Rouge, I knew those first two things were in the cards. Naturally, that had me fired up. Getting to see Joe Burrow and the LSU offense up close and in person against an elite defense had me counting down the days to that trip. And yeah, my mouth watered thinking about the food I’d eat during my three days in Louisiana.
But little did I know that in the midst of all the Baton Rouge excitement on a fine Saturday in late October, I was going to witness an #ItMightMeanTooMuch of epic proportions.
In between bites of grillades and grits, I turned around to see a massive crowd forming roughly 20 feet behind where I was standing at our tailgate outside of Tiger Stadium. On top of a purple truck from the “LSU Nation” tailgate (they have a Facebook group with more than 42,000 members), holy matrimony began to unfold.
No, technically it wasn’t “holy matrimony” because it wasn’t a religious wedding in a church. But as I quickly found out, college football is religion for this happy couple:
THEY JUST HAD A WEDDING Y’ALL. #ItMightMeanTooMuch pic.twitter.com/z6W2m1n8yg
— Connor O’Gara (@cjogara) October 26, 2019
“I now pronounce you Tiger and Badger, husband and wife. You may now kiss your Badger.”
What magical words from the guy who may or may not have been ordained. I did get confirmation that it was indeed a wedding ceremony. However, after I tracked down the newlyweds (Jennie and Dennis Jones), I learned that they already had the legalities taken care of three days earlier at a courthouse in Wisconsin.
Let me explain.
Jennie and Dennis live in Janesville, Wis., which is roughly 1,000 miles north of Baton Rouge. Jennie grew up in Lockport, La., but moved to Wisconsin 40 years ago when her dad married, as she put it, “a northerner.”
“She got him up there, and I got dragged along with him,” Jennie said.
Seven years ago, Jennie and Dennis started dating. Jennie (the LSU fan) and Dennis (the Wisconsin fan) shared many a college football Saturday together. They’ve got a pair of large TVs with a computer and a phone to watch as many games as possible when they’re at home. “I don’t care what we do the rest of the week. As long as I’ve got Saturday,” Jennie says.
They were at Lambeau Field when Wisconsin and LSU kicked off the 2016 season. And Dennis, rocking Badger red, said he was treated with nothing but respect by the LSU fans who surrounded him in their section.
Fast forward to the 2018 season, when LSU and Georgia faced off in Tiger Stadium. At the tailgate before the game, Dennis popped the question. Jennie said “yes,” and all that was left to decide was what LSU game they were going to get married at. The “where” was never the question.
“(LSU) is the best place on the planet,” Jennie said. “Disney World is the most magical place on earth? No. No. This is the most magical place on earth. Period.”
Just as they did for their engagement, Jennie wanted another headliner home matchup, so she picked the Auburn game. The plan was simple, but unconventional. Go to a courthouse in Wisconsin on Wednesday to make it official, drive the 1,000 miles down to Baton Rouge and let the LSU faithful share in their love on Saturday before the game.
They had custom jerseys with half Wisconsin colors and half LSU colors and the numbers “20” and “19” on them for the year (Dennis’ idea). They had the cake with the LSU colors ready at the tailgate for the post-wedding celebration.
Oh, and the rings! Of course Jennie had the LSU band (with the Tiger eye logo) and Dennis had the Wisconsin band. The stones in Jennie’s ring were a purple heart and a gold heart, because obviously:
Oh, you better believe it. pic.twitter.com/K52UVt0AN0
— Connor O’Gara (@cjogara) October 26, 2019
Now, we have seen college football weddings before. Last year in #ItMightMeanTooMuch, I wrote about a wedding at a Tennessee tailgate. There was also a wedding at halftime of a West Virginia-Texas Tech game last year. It has been done before and it’ll be done again.
But Jennie’s creativity went above and beyond on her special day. She had a fitting post on Facebook before her upcoming nuptials.
“Something old, something new, something Burrow-ed, something LSU.”
Duh.
The only thing that could’ve made their day better would’ve been if Wisconsin had knocked off Ohio State. That didn’t happen, but at least the ceremony took place while the Badgers were getting trucked in Madison so that Dennis’ mind could be elsewhere (he admittedly got pretty nervous as dozens of people surrounded the area).
But an LSU win over yet another top-10 team certainly put the exclamation point on what was already a day that Jennie and Dennis will never forget. There was only one question left to ask.
What’s the plan for the honeymoon?
“Every day is the honeymoon with him,” Jennie said. “And if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have done this.”
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
