Posted by
Offbeat partners: Cristina & Raymond
Date and location: 10/07/2023, The Zenith Room, Portland, OR
Our dark gothic wedding at a glance:
We met on a dating app like so many do. We matched and started chatting, but between work obligations and a snowstorm, it took forever to finally meet. Finally, in February of 2017, we met up at a bar. The date wasn't very long, but it left an impression. A couple days later, we went on another date, and soon after, we were in love.
On a trip to San Francisco in September of 2022, Ray asked me to marry him, and I said “yes”. It was an adorable engagement at The Exploratorium, that was both very private and very public, all at the same time.
Before we even selected a theme or vibe for the wedding, we looked at venues. We wanted it to be indoors and really loved the look of exposed beams and a little bit of a more industrial feel. We wanted a place that we could use for both our ceremony and reception.
We looked at a few places but really fell in love with The Zenith Room, a space sitting above a brewery turned food hall. We liked the urban setting and liked that it had some of the elements we were looking for in a venue, but had some other features we loved like a gorgeous chandelier and dark walls. I enjoy a darker aesthetic but was afraid Ray wouldn't go for it, but he was on board!
We wanted to make sure it ended up being elegant and wanted to steer clear of anything too Halloween-like. We stuck to a color theme of black, gold, and purple and refused to have literally any white whatsoever in our wedding (aside from dinner plates because white was just so much cheaper).
Tell us about the dark gothic ceremony:
We decorated our altar with a triangle arbor with a purple “til death” sign on it. Much like with the rest of our wedding, we added as many black candles in gold candle holders as we could, and had two big vase floral arrangements at the foot of the aisle in front of us.
We hired a string quartet for our ceremony. As Ray and the wedding party entered, they played “All I Ask of You” from the Phantom of the Opera. For my entrance, they played “Always” by Erasure, which is our song. For our recessional, we had the DJ take over, and he played “Then We Kiss” by Icona Pop.
I grew up in the Romanian Orthodox church, and although Ray and I are not part of that religion, we thought it would be special to incorporate a wedding custom from my culture in our ceremony, so we incorporated a custom where the officiant places crowns on our heads and we drank from the same cup. It was a challenge finding a way to make it non-religious, but we did it, and my family was thrilled!
Our vows were so special, and there were a lot of tears – both from us and our guests. (Stay tuned for Cristina and Ray's vows in a future post!)
Tell us about the dark gothic reception:
I was obsessed with getting the décor just right, particularly when it came to our sweetheart table. We put it right under the arbor and put a lot of our cemetery décor around it. The centerpieces on the guest tables were also well thought out. Each table had a vase shaped like a coffin (I'm a funeral director) and a microscope painted gold (he's a cytotechnologist).
I cross-stitched our table numbers in gold thread on black fabric, framed each one with a tiny gold frame, and placed it in a cloche with purple fairy lights inside. Throughout, we had more black candles in gold candelabras all over, along with more tea lights and some small gold vases with flowers.
We rented a photo booth setup from a vendor not mentioned below, but their equipment didn't work and I was devastated. However, our photographer saved the day by lending us a light source and with the backdrop and the props available, our guests still ended up having a blast taking photos with their phones!
Since a lot of our guests weren't vegan like us, we really wanted to impress them with the food we served. We had a cheese table during cocktail hour and then a southern style buffet for dinner, and everything was delicious. Instead of cake, we had donuts – and we're still hearing about how great the donuts were!
Our DJ did a great job keeping people dancing and having a great time. Our friends and family were dancing and mingling with each other all night and everyone had the greatest time.
What was the most important lesson you learned from your dark gothic wedding?
There were a few hiccups along the way, mostly having to do with my dress and with the photo booth, but overall, those things weren't important in the end. The one big issue we had though was with having a child-free wedding.
There are children in our lives that we love, but children at a wedding change the feel, and we wanted something different. We decided this early on, and at first we got positive comments about it, but as the big day got closer, a person we really wanted at the wedding revealed that this was an issue. We couldn't make an exception because we didn't feel it would be fair to our friends and family that couldn't bring their kids, and we certainly didn't want there to suddenly be a ton of children there. A compromise we came up with was to ask our photographer to hold a photo session at our rehearsal dinner. We were able to get some photographs with the important kids in our lives without compromising our decision to have an adults only wedding. That person did not attend our wedding, but at least we got to spend some time with everyone the night before.
I had family that did not understand the need to have a black wedding dress or a moody wedding vibe, but in the end, they thought everything was just perfect. My advice to readers is to get past the pressure of doing things a certain way. When people see every aspect of your wedding reflecting you and your partner, they are very likely to get it in the end. Ultimately, they just want to see you happy.
Dark gothic wedding vendors:
- Photography: Mel White Photography IG: @melwhite_portraits
- Venue: The Zenith Room IG: @thezenithroompdx
- Dress: David’s Bridal davidsbridal.com @davidsbridal
- Dress Dyeing: Regegade Dye Lab renegadebridal.com @renegadedyelab
- Donuts: Doe Donuts doedonuts.com @doedonuts
- Bartending: Zoiglhaus Brewing Company zoiglhaus.com @zoiglhausbrewing
- Catering: The (Vegan) Caterer thevegancaterer.com @thevegancaterer
- Flowers: Party Poppy PDX @partypoppypdx (no website)
- Hair: Kelly Wishart (no IG or website)
- Makeup: Delanie Wishart @delaniewishartmua (no website)
- String Quartet: Columbia River Strings columbiariverstrings.com @columbiariverstrings
- DJ: DJ Skrubb djskrubb.com @dj.skrubb
- Invites: The Knot theknot.com @theknot
- Rentals: Century Rentals by Century Decor Studio centurydecorstudio.com @centuryrentals
- Wedding Planner: Century Events centurydecorstudio.com @centurydecorstudio
- Videography: WeddingMix by StoryMix www.storymixmedia.com/weddingmix @weddingmix
- Rings: Hutcherson Goldsmithing hutchersmithgoldsmithing.com @hutchersongoldsmithing
Dark gothic wedding gallery:
About the Author: Offbeat Weditors
Working tirelessly to bring you stimulating content day after day, the Offbeat Wed editors will not sleep until you've gotten your offbeat fix.
I love that you didn’t have white anywhere, everything looks so rich and bold! And the food sounds AMAZING! A vegan cheese table and southern-style buffet, yummy! I can relate to the child-free wedding choices. We were quite keen to have an adults-only wedding, but ultimately decided if the choice was between several of our friends being able to come and there being a handful of children around versus no children but some of our friends not being able to come, we’d allow children and make it clear they would be their parents’ responsibility. It turned out fine, there was plenty of room and large grounds at the venue so it wasn’t overwhelmed with excited children running around and screaming! We had a small wedding (around 55 people) so it might have been different if there had been a vast number of children present, and cost would have been a bigger factor too.