Friday, November 26, 2010

Amelia and Josh's Wedding

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to try to catch up on some real weddings that I've been meaning to share with you.  This was originally meant to cover my hiatus period while we were trying to cinch the deal on our venue, you know, in October.  Yeah, woops.  Moving on...

We're going to start with Amelia and Josh.  Now, despite my resistance to having a themed wedding, even to the point of thinking a color palette was too limiting, I LOVE looking at other people's themed weddings.  OffBeatBride.com and I are best pals.  So when my friend showed me a few pictures from her friend's STAR WARS THEMED WEDDING, I simply couldn't resist asking her if I could post about it.

I'm sure most of you do not have as many geeky tendencies as I do,  so let's start with the obvious questions:  what is a Star Wars themed wedding and how do you put one on?  I'm going to assume you have all seen Star Wars at least because if you haven't, you should go watch the original trilogy and then come back and read this post.

So, what made this a Star Wars wedding?  Well, this might give you an idea:

*I don't know who took any of these pictures, so let's give credit to Amelia and Josh

Groom is dressed as a Jedi (or Sith? not really sure) and friends are wearing Star Wars t-shirts.  And this was exactly how the bride and groom wanted it.  The Star Wars elements of the wedding included the bridal party's clothing, the (brave) guests' attire, invitations, favors, decorations, and even some of the music.  Here is one of the more enthusiastic guests:


Yeah, you get the idea.  But with an all-out awesomely themed wedding, there is often resistance from the parental/family side, and Amelia and Josh were no exception:

"My parents thought it was silly to have a Star Wars wedding, but they were ok with it since I said it was what I wanted. I think they knew our minds were made up to have it this crazy, unique way. A lot of my family and friends kind of looked down on it, 'What's with the dorky wedding? You should have a traditional wedding!' and seemed a bit snobby about it. My advice would be to just make sure that whatever non-traditional theme you want, it's what will make you and your fiance happy. Everyone else, unless they are totally footing the bill, can deal with whatever you choose. And if they are footing the bill, some compromises should be made - but it is still YOUR day." - Amelia

Despite the lack of support from friends and family, they were able to make their day one guests will never forget.  Amelia says that one of her favorite elements of the wedding was "... how much fun everyone was having. People are still talking about it, and it's been nearly 4 months. Also, it's a great conversation piece!"

At the end of the day, no one cares whether the wedding was traditional as long as they had a good time.  Good thing for me to keep in mind.

But not everything about their wedding bucked tradition.  Like many of us, Amelia's favorite moment was when they said their vows, "The ceremony was amazing. I remember all I could see was Josh....I remember thinking there were stars in both of our eyes - I don't think either of us have ever felt as joyful as we did then. We had Josh's grandparents marry us and that was exactly the right choice - it made everything even more special. We had pretty basic vows but even so, they were just what we wanted." 

And as with all weddings, not everything worked out as planned:  "A lot happened that wasn't planned! My husband's dad was in charge of the music... so we had a couple of false starts for the ceremony (the wrong music was played). The theme my dad and I walked out to was only 30 seconds, so not only did we speed walk for half of it, we walked the last half in silence! My hair that I was promised would last all night (curls) fell out of its updo about an hour before the wedding, so Heather frantically tried to fix it. The officiant forgot the last part of the 'history of us' speech we had prepared. During the vows, the music was accidentally turned on just after my husband said 'I do.' The music got stuck on repeat instead of shuffle, so the ceremony music played over and over and over all through dinner. We dealt with it by just laughing it off - we knew things wouldn't go perfectly and the important things were all there - good food, good cake, us, and our family and friends."

In the end, Amelia was very happy with the way things turned out.  As she said, "that's definitely what sticks out the most, the absolute joy of the day."

What really impresses me about their wedding is not the amazing decorations or clothing (though the cake was pretty spectacular), but the fact that they were able to pull off a completely unique wedding that everyone enjoyed without freaking out about it.  I know I can learn a lot from their go with the flow attitude and their conviction to make their day the one they wanted.

But the reason I decided to write about them was their cake which was fucking awesome!  Observe:


Cute, traditional cake on top tier, DEATH STAR CAKE on middle tier, and Endor cake on bottom tier.  As in the Death Star is orbiting the Endor moon on their cake.  Yes, they did that on purpose because they are just that awesome!
I would love to post more pictures of their super amazing Star Wars decor if Amelia wants to send them to me (hint hint, nudge nudge).  But for now, I leave you with the most important part of their day:

The Bride and Groom Together

If you were going to go all out for a themed wedding, what would you do?

3 comments:

  1. I'll go first!

    Contrary to popular belief, if I was going to have a themed wedding, I wouldn't go for a Harry Potter or Disney wedding. I love me some Medieval weddings! Amazing old anachronistic princess dresses (complete with corset), old-fashioned goblets made out of dragons, amazing manly man tunics, handfasting ceremonies, lanterns...I loves it all! I have so many pictures of these that it's hard to narrow it down, but these guys did a particularly awesome job: http://offbeatbride.com/2010/02/pagan-druid-wedding#more-4310

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  2. Oh my gosh, their wedding was so awesome! I'm not intensely into anything to have a theme wedding (although I love Star Wars), but Dave is really, really into collecting Transformers action figures. I kept telling him that if he wanted include Transformers here and there (like the cake) we could, but I think the British in him wanted a very traditional wedding. Big props to these guys for doing what they wanted despite what people think! And thanks for sharing!

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  3. Haha, Daniel is a big fan too. I must say though, after Transformers 3 blocking my way to work every weekend for months in Chicago, Transformers and I are not getting on so well...it did look really cool though.

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