Getting married is a beautiful thing. It's the happiest day of your life, you're in the honeymoon stage for quite some time and then the holidays roll around...and it just goes downhill from there.

Just kidding.

But seriously, deciding what holiday traditions the two of you will go with moving forward isn't the easiest, especially when you're families live across the state from each other.

I grew up in Northern California and all of my family still lives there and Frank grew up in Southern California and all of his family lives down here (or most, at least). We ended up deciding on having Thanksgiving with his family (which just happens to be in Sacramento, per his family tradition) and Christmas with my family in Northern California. And then for Easter, we switch off every year.

But of course we needed a day to exchange Christmas gifts with his family so our first year of marriage we started the tradition:

Fake Christmas

And it has stuck ever since. Basically, we all get together on "Fake Christmas Eve" and have a big, fancy dinner just as we would on "real" Christmas Eve. We watch Christmas movies (well, I fall asleep on the couch when everyone else watches them), we decorate cookies for Santa (and ourselves) and play Christmas music.

We all spend the night at one house and Santa comes to fill our stockings. Yes, he knows about fake Christmas too! We wake up all giddy on Fake Christmas Day and open our stockings and exchange gifts and have a big yummy breakfast together. And it's a big Fake Christmas celebration, exactly the same as it would be if we were with his family for real Christmas.

And it just so happens that TODAY is fake Christmas Eve!

So that means we get Fake Christmas Eve today, Fake Christmas tomorrow, real Christmas Eve the next day and real Christmas the following day. Yes, four days of Christmas in a row -- It doesn't get much better than that!

This year we are hosting the 4th annual Fake Christmas celebration for the first time and since we are heading out of town the following day, I decided to go with disposable plates so there are no dishes to do. Yes, every place setting is from Dollar Tree. Crazy, huh? Who knew you could have a beautiful Christmas table setting for a dollar?? Well, at least I think it's pretty :)

Scroll down to see our inexpensive holiday table settings this year and maybe you'll get some last minute ideas for your own Christmas Eve dinner decor!

Merry Fake Christmas Eve everyone!