This was my joking response the first time my fiance asked me to marry him. Of course, the way that he asked was “Are you taking my last name when we get married?” I didn’t mean it (I’m totally taking his last name), but he did. After being together for almost three years, we’ve decided that it’s the right time to make ourselves crazy for the next 14 months and get married on Halloween 2015. When it all comes down to it, I really am the luckiest girl in the world and I’m happy that, through whatever happenstance, our lives pushed us back together. (Our “first date” never actually happened and we were briefly split up last year through no one’s fault but ultimately determined that wasn’t going to work.) He and his whole family feels the same way about Halloween that I do and with it falling on a Saturday next year, the date seemed a perfect fit. He works full time and I’m a full time student with a few other things on my part time plate, so we decided that it wasn’t too soon to start planning, and we’ve also got a move on our plate between now and the ringing of wedding bells. If you want to tag along as my journey continues, I’ll leave a link to my currently empty wedding board on Pinterest at the end of the post. But for now…

Come along, step right up, and see the beautiful disaster that is balancing our lives, geek interests, having a Halloween wedding and not being so tacky as to upset even ourselves. (j/k, we’ll probably wind up with some tackiness no matter what we do.)

The Stationary Situation

This, is probably one of the easiest ones for us. My fiance suggested that I take a look at Royal Steamline when it came time to order invitations and save the dates. The biggest problem that I have now is that I love way too many of the styles that they offer. We ordered a dozen samples and were only able to cross one of from our list. If you’re looking to add a touch of Steampunk flair or a hint of Gothic elegance to your invitations, Royal Steamline has you covered. (These aren’t the only styles they excel at, but they did constitute a lot of the ones we picked out.) Some of the designs invoke Edward Gorey, others call directly upon the lure of Lovecraftian horror and others still are even delicate. We’re actually just waiting to determine the venue and get a handle on our guest-list to order Save The Dates from them.

Looking for something a little more illustrated? Check out artist Ellen Forney’s wedding invitation commissions. They’re cool, and will be every bit unique to you.

The Venue

There’s one mother between us and she’s a terrifying force to be reckoned with, sweeping in just as we found out that our first choice of a wedding venue is being sold as of May. We’re not willing to risk losing out on our date, so that ruled it out for us and we’re still reeling a little from thinking we had the perfect venue, located exactly where we wanted it, and haunted, only to lose it. Right now we have a few other contenders in the running, but we haven’t fallen in love with any of them the way we did the one that got away. (There’s an irony there that I am well, well aware of.)

The Dress

I’m studying fashion design, and that makes the prospect of finding a wedding dress terrifying. If I sit down, I could draw my dream dress and give myself unrealistic expectations for a mythical dress that I will never find, and more than that, that I don’t want to take on the added stress of making for myself. Given our plan for a masquerade themed reception, it’s also looking likely that I’ll be wearing two dresses, something more traditional to walk down the aisle in, and a separate dress for the reception. While I’m not decided any way just yet, I’ve taken a look at Whirling Turban and I have to admit that they have at least two styles that I’m seriously lusting after.

 

 

The Reception
Since we’re kind of asking a lot of our friends by asking them to give up their Halloween, we’re hoping to make sure it doesn’t actually feel like they’re giving anything up. I want to have it all, without blowing our budget, and I don’t want it to feel tacky or overdone. I’m real hoping that in the end we can pull of what we’re trying to. I’m forgoing superheroes, because we can think of anything that really pairs with Red Hood (his favorite), and Harley and Joker seem like.. Well.. Not the strongest foundation for starting out our marriage. I’m shooting for something that can capture the feeling of a haunted forest while working with the masquerade aesthetic we’re thinking for the reception attire. Of course, if I’d found a way to make it tasteful, we would have been throwing a super hero filled affair to rival Green Arrow and Black Canary’s wedding. (Which is an idea that has given me a lot of ideas that I don’t need to be having about how to still wind up having a super hero wedding, because they did it and it was still a nice thing. Would help if my dude didn’t think Green Arrow was not at all up to snuff. But God help me if I don’t really want to do it.) I looked at a venue recently just because there was an opportunity for wedding photos with dinosaurs and I think that even our guests would get behind the idea of getting to steal a photo with the dinos.

I’m opting against a big bridal party, which has sadly meant that I’ve also been left ruling out some of the other whimsical ideas I tossed around, like the bridal party coming to the reception as classic monsters and the groom and I as either Dracula and Mina or Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride. ( Also out the window with that one? Coordinated thriller dance at the reception, but I think we have something else cool in the pipeline.) I haven’t started to put together a wedding playlist yet, but something tells me that he has, so I can’t say we haven’t been thinking about that yet because I know he’s been on the hunt for the perfect song for our first dance.  I suggested a 30 Seconds to Mars song with a waltz tempo, but currently I think I’m losing. I’m hoping we do include The Monster Mash, Thriller, and Moondance (My mom and adoptive father used this when they got married,) though. Which, brings me to suggest that we’re likely to go DJ, and we’re hoping to go open bar, but that also depends on that whole… Venue thing.

The Cake

Aside from squabbling over flavors, which I’m pretty resigned to doing unless we can agree on something in a red velvet or vanilla with strawberry/cherry/raspberry/red fruit flavored filling/pink ganache/pink mousse/etc, we haven’t really settled on a color palette yet and I don’t know if I want to go for something like Day of the Dead skulls on the cake, or The Nightmare Before Christmas, or The Corpse Bride.. But, here’s a few of the things I’ve seen so far that I’ve had a hard time resisting when it comes to decoration.

 

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, and Other Traditions

When it comes to my something old, I think I’m planning to wear a piece of my mother’s jewelry to have a piece of her with me. It’s going to be over five years since she passed when I get married. This isn’t so much fun, and it leaves me scrambling for something appropriate to borrow from someone close to me, but! When it comes to my something new, I can share that I’m probably planning to opt for a Batman Garter if I can find one that I really like, unless I cave and go for something with a TARDIS on it to also encapsulate my something blue, though I have something in mind for that which I can’t share here because I don’t want my fiance catching wind of it all this long out before the date.

 

I’m sure there are a ton of fun things I’m leaving out, so hop on Pinterest and shiver with antici——————————-pation for me to update my wedding board. It’s been fun!