A comic book wedding with Spiderman, pizza, and a Rickroll processional

Offbeat partners: Molly & Dan

Date and location: 4/15/2023, South Shore Pavilion, Lake Michigan, Milwaukee, WI

Our comic book wedding at a glance:

We met on the internet, and on our first date we bonded over our shared love of all things nerdy, Marvel, Disney, and theme parks. February of 2022, Dan proposed to Molly (that's me) in front of the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland!

We initially wanted a fall wedding, but the timing worked out better for Spring of 2023. South Shore Pavilion, the venue we picked, was 10 mins from our house and is a beautiful vintage building that has large windows that overlook Lake Michigan. It's part of the city’s park system, so you can bring in your own food and drinks which was a big selling point for us.

As for theming, we always wanted to make the wedding uniquely ours. Nerdy but classy. Once we settled on the superhero theme, we decided to make our “Save The Date” cards accordingly: Molly's Matron of Honor drew superhero versions of us in outfits that matched the colors of the Milwaukee flag and even included our dog in the drawing!

Both of us were involved in the planning process. An unexpected challenge was keeping our spending low. We had very specific ideas of what we wanted, but we got hit with rising costs of pretty much everything. My mom made all the dresses – for me, herself, the bridesmaids, the flower girl!

Tell us about the ceremony:

We had the dinner tables set up for the ceremony where our guests would sit, with a short isle in the middle of the venue. Dan walked his grandma down the aisle while my mom was escorted by her older brother. We had an uneven wedding party, so we decided to have 2 groomsmen for each bridesmaid, and had the best man and the matron of honor walk the aisle. During this procession we had a piano version of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” playing. Yes, we Rick Rolled our guests.

Our flower girl threw paper hearts cut from old comic book pages, wearing a Captain America -themed dress with a red cape. I walked down the aisle with my older brother to the “Jurassic Park” theme.

The ceremony was officiated by the my stepdad in front of an arch decorated with paper flowers and more of the comic book page hearts. Dan and I had written the majority of the ceremony script based on Offbeat Wed inspirations!

We wanted a unique unity ceremony, and came up with the idea of a wedding snack mix – all our faves mixed together for our guests to witness and then eat afterwards!

Here's a snippet of their amazing vows – we'll be featuring the full, super version next week!

Officiant:
As the character Chidi from the The Good Place, a TV show about the afterlife once said: “If soulmates do exist, they’re not found. They’re made. People meet, they get a good feeling, and then they get to work building a relationship.”

With that in mind I ask you,
Do you Dan take Molly as your beloved Wife?
Will you protect her from the threat of the Dark Side and from being frozen in carbonite throughout the far reaches of the galaxy?
Will you protect her from the threat of evil doers or Super Villains?
Will you love her more than Michelangelo loves pizza?

Tell us about the reception:

We hired someone to come by in a Spider-Man costume and take pictures with us and our guests!

The tables were decorated with Marvel comic book fabric as table runners and superhero action figures in the flower centerpieces. The table numbers were postcards from factious places from pop culture. We decided on pizza for our main meal as this is our favorite meal and a Friday night staple. We went with Ian’s Pizza, a local classic in Milwaukee and are known for their unique toppings and giant slices. Pizza, breadsticks and salad made for a perfect meal.

For dessert we went with a variety of pies and a small cake for cutting for just us. We also got small cookies from Crumbl as a wedding favor. The flavors were “Dole Whip” and “Churro,” a nod to our theme park obsessions.

The cake table was decorated with action figures that we made of ourselves dressed as Ghostbusters. The cake itself was topped with Mario and Peach in their wedding outfits. We designed can koozies as a wedding favor.

04152023MollyDan 475 — *Marvelous centerpiece.*

Our favorite part of the night was a t-shirt toss instead of a bouquet. The shirts said “I danced my pants off at Dan and Molly’s wedding” in the Dirty Dancing font. People went crazy trying to catch them and we had so much fun tossing them!

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

We had a lot of ups and downs in our planning process. Both of us can be very indecisive so we had to be flexible if our minds changed and know it was all coming from a place of great care. Sometimes we’d make decisions and then change them or we’d have to adjust expectations when something wasn’t going to be possible.

We were paying for everything other than the clothes that my mom created, and had to delicately work towards getting what we wanted and not spending too much, only settling on what was really important to us. Photography was a big expense, but very important to us. We had so many helpers that we couldn’t have pulled off the day without them!

Our best piece of advice: it’s OK to ask for help. They will either say yes, and are usually happy to help, or they say no, and then you know. No one we asked said no, we were very lucky!

Also I highly suggest getting a wedding planner for either the month- or day-of. We got the month-of package with an amazing coordinator – she helped with so many things leading up to the wedding, one of the best being a timeline. Our day-of coordinator was spectacular and went above and beyond to help us out and have a seamless day and night!