Kellie Pickler and Kyle Jacobs were planning to have a big wedding, figuring the more the merrier to watch them tie the knot.

But before the invitations went out, the Nashville-based couple of two years realized something.

“Every time we got to the guest list, it was like, ‘Oh my God, I hate half these people.’ Nothing personal,” Pickler said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show a month after she and Jacobs eloped to Antigua. They swapped vows on the beach Jan. 1, 2011, which she called “the most incredible day of my life.”

She had “1-1-11” engraved on her husband’s wedding band on one side—and “Put it back on!” engraved on the other, so he’d know exactly what to do if he ever took it off.

There was no instruction manual to follow after Jacobs died by suicide on Feb. 17, 2023. And Pickler didn’t pretend otherwise.

“One of the most beautiful lessons my husband taught me was in a moment of a crisis, if you don’t know what to do, ‘do nothing, just be still,'” she told People in August 2023, making her first comment in the wake of Jacobs’ death. “I have chosen to heed his advice.”