Marriage Wows

Like many brides-to-be, Jenna Arseneau, now Jenna Rease, watched many of the wedding-themed shows as she daydreamed and planned for her own big day.

“I love all wedding shows, especially ‘Four Weddings,’” said Rease, originally of Manteno. “I was watching a marathon (of the show) one day and decided to look online to see if they were looking for brides in Chicago.”

It turns out TLC’s “Four Weddings” was looking for Chicago brides and she heard back from the show pretty quickly. They sent a very lengthy application that asked specific questions, like your biggest pet-peeves at weddings and what is unique about your wedding. She later was asked to do an interview on Skype, but then heard nothing for months.

It wasn’t until July when she found out her Sept. 3, 2011 wedding would be featured on the show. She attended her first wedding for it a week later, and the last wedding was in October.

The finale wasn’t recorded until November, which is the day she found out her wedding to Doug Rease at The Country Mansion in Dwight won the “Four Weddings” contest.

“We were there all day and didn’t find out anything til like 5 p.m.,” she said. “We had no idea until my husband stepped out of the limo. It was the first we all knew of it so my reaction was real.”

The episode featuring the Rease wedding and their big win aired Jan. 20 on TLC. The show takes four brides and sends them to each other’s weddings to rate each one. At the end, the bride with the most total points wins a honeymoon.

Rease won with a score of 94 points of 120. That was nine points more than the second-place winner. Each bride rates the venue, dress, food and overall experience of each of their competitor’s weddings. Each category is rated one through 10 giving each category a possible total of 30 after adding all the brides’ ratings.

“I was super excited to see we got 94 points. That’s relatively high for the show. The most I’ve seen is in the 80s so I was like wow. It was fantastic,” said Rease.

Rease’s venue, The Country Mansion in Dwight, received the highest score it could get.

“When I saw the last (wedding on the show) I was like there’s no way,” said Ashley Hall, banquet coordinator for The Country Mansion.

The last wedding featured was Holly’s, who Rease felt was her biggest competition. The venue was in a rustic location in Lake County. It featured fire places, handmade centerpieces featuring cut trees and homegrown flowers.

But in the end the mansion received the only perfect venue score. The reception was held in the Garden Room where lanterns hung from the ceiling, centerpieces featured branches with hanging candles, and table numbers were painted on wooden airplanes in honor of the groom being a pilot. The show also highlighted The Country Mansion’s windmill.

"I tried to find an imperfection, but I couldn't and I looked very, very hard," said Lucy, one of the competing brides, during the show.

Wedding party

Although the Reases now live in New York, the newlyweds flew back home to watch the episode with family and friends at her parents’ house, Kelli and Larry Arseneau, in Manteno.

About 200 people were invited to the viewing party, said Kelli Arseneau, but due to the snow storm that day, only about 75 were able to make it. They rented a big-screen TV for the event and had champagne for all to celebrate their daughter and son-in-law’s win.

“Everybody was just screaming and excited, it was fun,” said Arseneau.

Rease’s mother had not seen the show until she told her about it, and when her daughter applied, she was nervous.

“I didn’t want it to take away from the wedding. I didn’t want it to out stage her actual ceremony and reception, and it didn’t. You did not even notice, it was unbelievable,” she said.

Rease had to wait about two months before she could tell all the people she loved of their big win, which was the hardest part, she said.

But from the beginning, she knew they had the best wedding.

“I was pretty confident I was going to win,” she said. “One of the weddings was pretty similar to mine, but I felt we should win.”

The only slight disappointment was Rease said she hoped the show would have shown more of the details of her wedding, but she knew going into it that they can only show about 10 minutes of each wedding.

The couple won a honeymoon to La Paz, Mexico, which they plan to take as a one-year anniversary trip. The couple took a honeymoon right after their wedding to Aruba.

Rease and the three other brides still keep in touch over email. Although they had to judge each other’s big days, they all got along really well. The producers even commented the ladies had great chemistry, she said.

“If I didn’t win I still would’ve been happy that I did it all,” said Rease. “We have a part of our wedding that will always be there too.”