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The Offbeat Bride: Nuri, PhD Student
Her offbeat partner: Victor, Translator
Date and location of our Lovecraft wedding: The Ethnographic Museum of Paphos and Paradisos Hills Hotel, Lysos, Cyprus — April 24, 2015
Our Lovecraft wedding at a glance:
I called our wedding theme “Falling in Lovecraft.” I’m a big Lovecraft fan and wanted that to influence my aesthetic without being too obvious.
I like the idea that everything looks like a normal wedding on the surface until you looked a little deeper and realized it was a Lovecraft wedding — like my tentacle gold bracelet, the Cthulhu-headed cufflinks and paisley tie, and even the use of moss and willow for the centerpieces were inspired by the creatures of Lovecraft.
When it came to the sweets table however, I told our baker, “The hell with subtle… go nuts!” and I couldn’t have been happier.
Along with that, we were having a destination wedding in Cyprus, with guests coming from Israel, Poland, Equatorial Guinea, and Switzerland. My husband and I both live in Israel but were both born in other countries, so we needed to embrace the global nature of our family and friends. One way we did this while staying in our theme was by framing it as a Miskatonic University Expedition to Cyprus in our weekend itinerary and welcome bags.
Tell us about the Lovecraft wedding ceremony:
We had our ceremony at the Cyprus Ethnographical Museum in Paphos. It’s this great little eccentric museum run by two charming women. We got married by the ancient tomb in the courtyard because I loved the idea of layers of history all existing together in one space. The men of the bridal party wore kilts, and we had an amazing piper play us in. I originally planned to have this grand solo entrance down the stairs in my big gray dress, but eight months before the wedding I was injured in an accident and had to have surgery on my leg. As a result, my husband had to walk with me to steady me on the stairs.
We had a fairly quick civil ceremony. We planned on having our own vows in addition, but it just felt too personal to say in front of everyone so we chickened out. We did tell each other our vows in private later and both bawled like babies. I believe my first words as a married woman were, “Right — let’s all get pissed!”
After the ceremony, we had a Quaich cup ceremony. A quaich is a Scotch-Irish ceremonial drinking cup that is often used in weddings to symbolize the sharing of your life together or to celebrate your first drink as a married couple. My Man of Honor, Doron, gave us a lovely blessing during the ceremony and even read his notes out of a Necronomicon he brought with him. My favorite moment of the time in the museum was how Victor kept whispering silly things and I'm cracking up in most of the photos.
Please show us the lovecraft wedding desserts!
Tell us about your Lovecraft wedding reception:
We had a very chill reception. There were cocktails, canapés, and cigars on the deck of the hotel overlooking the hills and the sea. Dinner was seven courses because I feel you cannot go to the wedding of a chubby lady and not eat well. Our hosts prepared all of my favorite dishes including octopus in red wine, rabbit, and pickled quail eggs.
I feel you cannot go to the wedding of a chubby lady and not eat well. -Nuri
I have two favorite moments of the reception. The first was the Best Man Arthur’s really lovely and touching toast which ended with a big smooch on Vic’s check. Second was when Vic’s mom got up and had him translate her explanation of a Russian wedding custom similar to glass tapping, but instead the guests shout “Gorko” (bitterness), meaning the couple needs to sweeten life with a kiss. It was a happy organic moment. There was also dancing for those so inclined.
The upside of recovering from broken legs is that you are exempt from dancing, which isn’t my jam. There were lots of Lovecraft-themed board games on hand, as well as Cads About Matrimony. I might have overstuffed the guests because once cake cutting time came around — their faces were a mix of lust and grim determination. The Shoggoth chocolate pudding, Elder Ones lemon tarts, and edible googly eye cookies were more amazing than I could have imagined. What we didn’t eat that night we snacked on over the weekend. In total, we had a pretty long wedding (nine hours) but kept the party going the next day with a private sail around the island and a trip to the spa the day after.
What was your most important lesson learned?
If you are hosting a wedding weekend, my advice would be to set up photography for the whole weekend, whether it’s professional or friends. My one regret is that I didn’t arrange pictures for the remaining two days. We had a blast on the boat (I wore my Offbeat Bride Bridethulu t-shirt and everything!), but there are maybe four pictures of the 48 hours after.
At a certain point you need to stop wedding planning and start wedding doing. Research is great. Planning will help you have a smoother day. At some point, however, you have just got to step away and let it be. A few weeks before the wedding, I made a point to avoid wedding media because it wasn’t doing me any good to compare myself to others. On the day of, I had to have faith in my vendors, family, and friends to come through. Whatever happened, happened.
Lovecraft wedding vendors
An octopus headpiece for the bride of Cthulhu
When it comes to octopodes and tentacles, we know Offbeat Bride readers have strong feels. And we're right there with you -- give us ALL... Read more
- Ceremony Venue: The Ethnographical Museum of Paphos
- Reception Venue: Paradisos Hills Hotel and Retreat
- Photographer: Georgiadis Photography
- Florist: Jayne Pugh
- Cake and Sweets Baker: Love Island Cakes
- Wedding dress, veil, bolero: Wedding Dress Fantasy
- Reception Dress: Modcloth
- Kilt Rental and Bagpipes: McDonalds Kilts of Cyprus
- Tentacle Bracelet: Perry Gargano
- Tentacle Candlestick holder: Closed Casket Creation
- Printable Name Cards and Menu: e.m. papers
- Shoes: Steam Hatters
- Guest Book: The Little Chickadee
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Nuri you are a classic beauty. Beautiful! Love to you both.
Nuri, so great to see your wedding after hearing about your plans on the Offbeat Tribe! Super inspirational and so beautiful!
Amazing. The couple may be happy to know there’s a cthulhu gloom now too. 😉
thanks 🙂 ya I knew there was a Cthulhu Gloom and even an expansion set too if I remember right. I wanted it but we already had the regular gloom . My husband was like “no one needs two sets of gloom cards and an expansion set.” My best efforts to convince him otherwise didn’t work. I wouldn’t mind a copy though as a wedding gift should any friends or family stumble upon this….hint hint 🙂
The stars were right for this wedding- absolutely beautiful! I loooove the shoggoth puddings (but where are the penguins?) and am happy that Azathoth didn’t show up to crash the party. I hear that dude’s a real pill. P.S. The tote bags are awesome and I would love to see the Miskatonic welcome packages! Our date is 08/20/2016, HPL’s birthday (we had to push it back a year, because we are attending NecronomiCon in Providence again this year!) and I’ve been considering how to add a subtle Eldritch flair to our affair. Well done on a beautiful wedding!!
Cool 🙂 your wedding is going to be rad. So I made the wedding itinerary look like a project manifest for a Miskatonic Univeristy Cypress Expedition with the help of PicMonkey and using the Artic Expedition logo on Propnomicon as a reference. I am in love with PicMonkey and if you are like me and can’t be bothered to learn Photoshop it is a great light version. Because we got married in a museum, I’m academic and my husband is a translator, I pinned notes to the manifest saying “Dr. McBride and her loyal translator Mr. Flickstien where last seen examining peculiar artifacts at the Ethnographic Museum in Paphos. We hope to recover the artifacts and discover the fate of our colleagues”. The back of each of the bags had a Miskatonic University Cypress Expedition logo that for some reason never got photographed at the wedding. On it had each crew member/ guests name under the logo is a spraypaint stencil font. I also added a Miskatonic University degree from Propnomicon. I wanted to make little expedition notebooks with the logo I made, but I ended up cutting them because they inked through covers of the books I made and didn’t look great. If I had more time I would have done them again. It would have been a nice practical favor. I added a Lovecraft Coloring book I bought on Etsy that was printable and it worked out fine and was cute. I had lab sample labels (also from Propnomicon) that I used to label the smaller goodies in the bag. I also had a couple of bars of handmade soap in the guest bags and I wrapped them in aged book pages with hand drawn sigils on them and little scribbles of notes as if I was studying these strange markings. I’m pretty sure no one noticed that and it took me about three days to do but I had a lot of fun on the art projects. I can’t add photos here but if you look me up on the Tribe there are some examples and I can email you some pictures and pdf if you want to help get some inspiration.
Excellent, thank you for such a detailed post, Nuri! I’ll send you a message. Thanks again! 🙂
Very pretty and lovely brides! This plus size fits her perfectly, and i love it so much. A right wedding dress will flatter our bride as well as the groom. Very sweet. congratulations and have a good time.
I don’t know which I love more: the ruffly dress (RUFFLES!) or the Shoggoth pudding! This wedding looks like a very charming, fun party. Love it!
I love absolutely everything but I’m especially pleased to see the cake! My partner and I are big fans of Lovecraft too and really wanted a tentacle themed cake in our wedding colours. Finding a baker to make it has been the hardest part of wedding planning so far but seeing yours has made me realise it’s totally worth it! I just hope mine looks half as good as yours!
I’m sure your cake will be awesome. In the end, ours was actually a pretty easy design. Our design was an ombre purple on the cake (the hardest bit) and then just cut out fondant purple tentacles with white fondant suckers. It really wasn’t that complicated so if your cake is in a similar vain it should be able to find a baker. I’ve seen cakes with realistic squids crawling up the sides or monsters bursting out of a traditional cake so I’m you sure there is some way to work out a design. 🙂 I wanted tentacles busting out the top of mine but hubby nixed that idea.
Thanks, that’s what I’m hoping! It’s a simple design but so dramatic looking. Our original plan was to get a white cake with tentacles bursting out of it actually- there is an awesome one here made by Conjurer’s Kitchen:
http://www.amazingguy.com/conjurers_kitchen/gallery/miscellaneous-creations.html#
Unfortunately we’re getting married too far away to have a cake from Conjurer’s Kitchen, but we’ve since found a local baker who’s really enthusiastic so with any luck it’ll still look distinctly tentacley 🙂
This all looks amazing and is full of marvellous meaningful moments. Congratulations!
I also love your hair – did you do it yourself or have it done? Any tips? 🙂
I had it done. It was worth it just for how fast he did it and he was great. My advice would be, make sure you have packs and packs of pins. I do victory rolls with maybe 4 pins each, but my stylist had about 20 in the front to make sure nothing moved. I fell asleep with it in and it was in place the next morning.
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Oh man… sad! Nuri, are you out there? Did you take your photos off Flickr intentionally, or accidentally?
Hi, I changed a setting on my account a few weeks ago and it caused it to bounce the pictures off somehow. I set everything back and even emailed OBB about it, but I never got a response. I hoped it would just take a day or two and they would come back. If you click the grey box it takes you to flicker and shows the picture. Everything is open and searchable. If there is anything I can do to get them reconnected let me know.