When Daleks and the Sith sabotaged a wedding: Lore & Martin’s theatrical wedding

May the fourth be with you during one of our favorite times of the year: Star Wars week! Get ready for Star Wars-themed weddings and a few other geeky tidbits all week long.

The Offbeat Bride: Lore, Actor (and Offbeat Bride Tribe member)

Her offbeat partner: Martin, Teacher

Date and location of wedding: Tatra Receptions in the forest, Olinda, Victoria, Australia — March 19, 2015

Our offbeat wedding at a glance:

Our theme was a mixture of geeky things that mean a lot to us, in this case Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Back to the Future.

Since I'm an actor and my husband is a writer/cartoonist, we decided to write a script and turn our wedding ceremony into an edge-of-the-seat action piece. We enlisted a bunch of our theatre and film friends and dreamed up a story: the Daleks were after our wedding rings, but the real architects of this plot were the Sith, lead by Darth Nihilus, who wanted to stop us from getting married and therefore defeating them as a couple in the future.

I wanted a bad-ass entrance with a sword, so our dear friend, who just happened to own a Dalek, chased me and my bridesmaids down the aisle to begin the festivities. We equipped all of the bridal party with geeky weapons, such as a Star Trek phaser or the gun from the Portal games and everyone, including a few planted audience members, had lines to learn. Apart from the Dalek, which the audience defeated with their phones by taking photos, the biggest highlight was without a doubt the Sith fight scene. We had many rehearsals with a fight choreographer to create a realistic lightsaber battle between the bridal party and the Sith, culminating in Martin and I facing off against big boss Darth Nihilus. I even arranged “Duel of the Fates” for string quartet with the help of a fellow composer! I also arranged two Doctor Who pieces for before the ceremony and the Back to the Future theme for our exit.

Tell us about the ceremony:

We played with tradition right from the start with me entering before the bridesmaids in a bright blue leather jacket and leggings, wielding a real katana. I also wanted both parents to escort me up the aisle as opposed to the one-sided acknowledgement of the father alone. Then the narrative began.

Once we'd safely made it to the altar, we revealed that the Daleks had in fact managed to steal our wedding rings and sent two of the groomsmen out of the chapel to retrieve them. Following that, we went into a relatively traditional ceremony to give everyone a chance to breathe… before the celebrant was interrupted by a cry from the audience that our two heroic groomsmen were in trouble! Martin and I both whipped out Sonic Screwdrivers to play a transmission, wherein our groomsmen told us that there was someone else working with the Daleks to stop us from getting married and we needed to start our vows now.

Then back to the ceremony for some original vows. The two groomsmen returned (one impaled with a pole) with the rings, and just when we'd kissed and everything was looking good, the Sith entered.

We'd decided to spice up the signing of the registry by distracting everyone with a massive fight scene. Then, after a reading and blessing, the final nerdy reference in the form of a Back to the Future scene (since my husband is a “Marty”) with the best man dressed up as the Doc.

Tell us about your reception:

Since we spent all of our energy on the ceremony, we left the reception fairly traditional. The venue set up tables with name cards and TARDIS blue ribbons, and my brother was the MC/DJ for the night. We did have a very special wedding cake, however, made by my maid of honour. It was a TARDIS wedding cake! Or, a Tardis crashing into a wedding cake. We used the katana from the ceremony to cut the cake, which was a lot of fun.

For food, we had gnocchi or salmon as the entree, barramundi or chicken parmigiana as the main, and lemon meringue pie or sticky toffee pudding as the dessert. It was all delicious. The rest of the night included speeches, dancing, and chatting. To end the evening, since quite a few people had already left, we decided to forgo the original plan of a farewell arch and were chased out of the reception by the Dalek instead.

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

Our biggest challenge was organising so many people and theatrical elements to come together — it was a lot of work! We made sure that we constantly communicated to each other as to how we were feeling, whether things looked like they were going to get done in time and so forth, and we outsourced tasks to as many friends as we could, because our friends are awesome.

There were a few moments were one of us freaked out over something not working or feeling overwhelmed, and the best thing to do in that inevitable situation as to just be honest and figure out what's going to help you. Do you just need a hug? Do you need advice? Someone to bounce ideas off of? To vent?

One other thing that we found absolutely invaluable was to do a pre-marriage course beforehand. We spent one day every week/fortnight, depending on our time, with the celebrant who conducted our wedding. We worked through a video course with a booklet designed specifically to get you to think about all the different important areas of marriage such as existing traditions, expectations, resolving conflict, keeping the love alive and so forth. Everyone should do it!

Vendors

• Venue: Tatra
• Photography: friend of a friend, Rosie Tyrrell
• Cake: maid of honour
• Bouquet: grandmother
• Dress: Hayley K Designs
• Videography: friends