Check the purple wedding dress at this intimate nerdy New Zealand handfasting

• Offbeat partners: Tamara (she/they) & Ryan (he/him)
• Date and location: Our backyard, Wellington, New Zealand — 10/05/2024

Our Intimate, celestial, fae, nerdy handfasting wedding at a glance:

Nearly 6 years ago I signed up for Tinder so see what everyone was on about. I went on a single date, and now here we are. Ryan can be a bit clueless so I had to make all the first moves, including proposing, if you can call it that. The conversation was literally ‘Right. We turned 30, we bought a house, we bought a dog, so next thing on the list is marriage.'

It made sense to save the money and hassle and have the wedding in the backyard. We had enough space and a nice enough garden. The date was picked around the school holidays as both our mum's are teachers, and so that we could have an American Halloween honeymoon.

Sometimes I struggle to hand over control, so I did basically everything myself. (The Offbeat Wed Planner was a massive help!)

I started making my dress almost immediately. I always knew I wasn't getting married in white, but hadn't figured out what colour I was going to wear. I had been hyper-focusing on iridescent colours when I stumbled across the most gorgeous dark mauve fabric on clearance and settled on that and grey. The rest of the wedding scheme grew from there. I DIY' d all the invites, the bouquets, handfasting cord, and built a giant d20 and a bunch of crystal decor. My sister helped me build a giant moon seat as the backdrop.

Tell us about the handfasting ceremony:

I tried really hard to include Ryan and his interests in all of the planning. Most of it came through in our nerdy ceremony. I had told him right when we started dating, I was going to walk down the aisle to ‘The Wedding Song’ from The Corpse Bride, and in high-heeled Docs, and if he had an issue with that then we had an issue. And I did just that. During the ceremony, music from My Time in Portia played, as we had played that together; and after we kissed the Final Fantasy Victory Fanfare played.

We rolled a giant d20 to see who read their vows first, Ryan rolled an 18, I rolled 17.

Celebrant: I think it is too late to use dispel magic, as I think they have both rolled a Nat20 when casting charm person on each other, so now we will roll a D20 again, this time not to cast a spell over each other, not to assess damage, but just to see who gets the first initiative.

We pledged our love, our sword and our service to each other with a sword exchange, because swords are cool. My dad gifted Ryan Frostmourne (the Lich Kings sword from World of Warcraft) and me Ashoka’s (Star Wars) dual light sabers.

I grew up Pagan so it was important to me to include a handfasting. We said our vows with our hands bound, then tied the knot before exchanging rings.

We wrote our own vows. I’m not much of a writer so I borrowed lyrics for mine, and included a Rick Roll because I thought it was hilarious. Ryan has a very dad joke sense of humour, and I’m the one who just groans at his puns. I knew I had written mine before he had, so when he came and asked me if I would be upset if he included a dad joke, I knew I couldn’t exactly say no.

Ryan’s vows

Tamara, words can not express how much you mean to me…
(allow awkward silence about my dad joke)
But let me try anyway. You may not be the reason I get up in the morning (because, puppy), but you are the reason I am continuing to better myself and become the man I want to be for you and pups. I vow to always support you and try motivate you (out of bed)
To endeavour my hardest to put away the spray and wipe after using it. And to love and care for you as long as my body holds together. You are my player 2 and I wouldn’t want anyone else in that spot.
I truly love you from the bottom of my heart and this ring is proof of that commitment.

Tamara’s vows

My dearest friend, if you don't mind, I'd like to join you by your side.
Where we could gaze into the stars, and sit together, now and forever.
It's not fair, 'cause you make me laugh when I'm actually really fucking cross at you for something
And every word I say I truly mean, Dear darling
I hope I'm being clear 'cause there's no one like you, on Earth, that can be my universe
How unreasonably in love I am with everything you do
I'll spend my days so close to you, 'cause if I'm standing here, maybe everyone will think I'm cool.
Never opened myself this way. Life is ours; we live it our way
All these words, I don't just say. And nothing else matters
Trust, I seek, and I find in you. Every day for us something new
A full commitment's what I'm thinking of.
I just wanna tell you how I'm feeling. Gotta make you understand
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you
Never gonna make you cry
Never gonna say goodbye
Never gonna tell a lie and hurt you

We had a very small wedding, only 30 people, but we also streamed the ceremony for our online World of Warcraft guilds in NZ/Aus, and America. It was really great to be able to watch the ceremony back and take it all in properly, and to see our friends live chat commentary as it happened.

We chose a new surname as Ryan doesn’t have a good relationship with his dad, and mine was a bit boring. We wanted something that was a bit fantasy, without being in your face, but which we still felt some connection to. We struggled for a while before I stumbled across his mum’s maiden name, which fit the bill! While Ryan changed his name by deed poll before the wedding, as it was easier legally, he wasn’t using it yet. We were officially introduced to everyone as Mr and Mrs new-name at the end of the ceremony.

During planning I came across an tradition from the American South: burying a bottle of bourbon near the ceremony to ensure good weather on the day. As Wellington weather is unpredictable at the best of times, let alone early spring, we figured it couldn’t hurt to try. And I swear it worked! It didn’t rain until as we dug it up after the ceremony, despite the forecast claiming otherwise.

Tell us about the reception:

We didn't want anything too formal or intense for the ‘reception', it was really just a hang out with friends and family at that point. We didn’t do a lot of the traditional things. No flowers, no cocktail hour, no sit-down dinner, no first dance, and almost no cake.

Instead of cocktail hour while we took photos, we focused on just getting the group photos and did a formal portrait shoot the next weekend, which meant we had more freedom on locations, more flexibility with time, and the weather was nicer! And we got to spend more time with our loved ones on the day.

We were incredibly lucky my brother is a chef and offered to cater for us, and took care of all the planning for that, which took it off our plate (ha!). Ryans family are hunter/fishers, so we were able to save money on fish and the spit roast. We weren’t going to have a cake, but it was important to my mum to get to make it, and we had Ryan’s family’s cake knife (before cutting it again with Frostmourne)

Ryan is adamantly not a dancer, and I didn’t really vibe with what would be a performative first dance. On the RSVPs we asked everyone for a song recommendation, and for a song which should NOT be played at a wedding. We then built a playlist around the NOT songs, things like ‘Every Breath You Take’, ‘Blurred Lines’, and ‘Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad’

We spent most of the night chatting and playing boardgames.

What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding?

Most of my challenges came with planning. Getting Ryan to have any input of opinion was like pulling teeth:

“What do you think of this?”
“Anything that makes you happy, dude!”

Combined with too many, sometimes clashing, ideas, I found it really useful to write a list of what exactly was important to us to keep referring back to.

Because the wedding planning basically became my hyper-focus for the 18 months, it was really hard to share my baby with anyone, but once I got over feeling like a burden to my friends and asked for help, so many people were more than willing to jump in and help, with big things like helping finish a small renovation on the house (a risk of having a home wedding, you want the house to feel up to scratch as well), to the small things like helping weed and vacuum the day before.

Vendors

• My rings: Wedding Ring Store on Etsy
• Photographer: Keane Chan and @keanechanphotos
• Celebrant: Scott Phillips, Married with Metal

Nerdy New Zealand Handfasting Gallery

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