KELLY Ripa has revealed she married Mark Consuelos in a quickie $179 wedding in Las Vegas.
The presenter, 51, dished the details of her thrifty nuptials to her husband in 1996, which included last-minute flights and a $199 dress.
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Kelly – who celebrated 26 years of marriage with Mark, 51, this year – reflected on their Vegas elopement on Tuesday’s episode of Live! with Kelly and Ryan.
“We just had a very normal, very regular wedding,” she told co-host Ryan Seacrest.
“It really is such an efficient way to get married. And it was fun. We were like, ‘Now, this is gambling! Woohoo!'”
The couple – who met in 1995 on the soap opera All My Children – were both based in New York City.
Kelly admitted the decision to elope was inspired by the fact that both of them happened to have two days off of work.
“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 recalled.
“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.
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“‘Let’s do that!’ And so that’s what we did.”
Despite their last-minute decision, the mother-of-three revealed the ceremony was still very cheap.
Kelly said: “$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 added that they may not have lasted if they had planned a large, extravagant wedding.
WEDDING PRESSURE
“[If we] had to endure a large wedding, the planning and the seating charts and the venue — we would not have made it,” the host admitted.
“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.”
They didn’t have a wedding ring – but Mark did get her a stunning diamond ring 10 years after the big day.
As for her wedding dress, Kelly revealed she bought it for $199 in clearance at a Barney’s warehouse sale.
BARGAIN DRESS
“I just bought it because it was really pretty, and I wanted to buy something from the Barney’s warehouse sale,” she recalled in 2016.
“I was working on the soap [All My Children] and I didn’t make a lot of money. It was $199 on final clearance sale, and I was like, ‘Do I eat this week or do I get this dress?'”
Kelly wore the dress once again in 2016 while celebrating her 20th wedding anniversary to Mark with a trip to Turks and Caicos.
“It’s a beach cover-up now. I wear it all the time. It was the best $199 I ever spent in my life,” she said at the time.
Kelly and Mark have three children together – daughter Lola, 21, and sons Michael, 25, and Joaquin, 19.
They celebrated their 26th wedding anniversary on May 1.
Kelly paid tribute to the day with a photo of the couple cuddling and called Mark the “love of my life”.
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