Jennifer & Brian’s vintage Halloween-infused October wedding

The Offbeat Bride: Jennifer, Crisis Clinician

Her offbeat partner: Brian, Tattoo Artist

Date and location of wedding: Primavera Restaurant, Millis, Massachusetts — October 19, 2011

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: Brian and I are artistic and we decided we wanted to DIY as much as we could for our wedding. We also love fall, Halloween, and all things horror-related, so we chose a date in October so that we could easily incorporate these aspects into our wedding decor.

We asked each member of the wedding party what their favorite horror-related story or poem was, and we used pages from their choices as the paper for the flowers. My bouquet was made out of pages from Stephen King's Pet Sematary. Gage is the name of our son, which we stole from the book. Edgar Allan Poe was featured in one of my bridesmaid's bouquets as well as the story of Little Red Riding Hood in another's.

We used a blank version of The Handbook For The Recently Deceased (from the movie Beetlejuice) as our guestbook, genuine toe tags as our place cards, and chalkboard painted gravestones that we made ourselves as our table numbers.

Our cake toppers were hand-painted by Brian, and were zombie versions of him, me, and our son. Our favors were little jars of candy fastened with vintage-like tags that were also designed by Brian (werewolf claws, frog's breath, demon's ashes, and crow's bones). We supplied wine on all of the guest tables, which was lucky since they closed the bar down during a power outage at the venue! We relabeled them as embalming juice, spider venom, etc. We also hired a zombie caricature artist to draw our guests during the reception.

Tell us about the ceremony:
It rained that day, so we had to bring our ceremony inside. But it was okay since we collected rainwater and plan on using it to make a memory snow globe! The wedding party walked down the aisle (in our case it was a huge winding staircase) to Sigur Ros' “Untitled 3” and I walked down to an instrumental version of Sigur Ros' “Hoppipolla,” which timed just right and made for a dramatic entrance.

Our ceremony was performed by a family friend who is a former priest and Justice of the Peace. We had asked that he change the traditional vows of “'til death do you part” to “even after death,” which he so kindly did. After some debate, we settled on Nine Inch Nails' “We're In This Together” as our processional song because the lyrics were meaningful to us:

you and me
we're in this together now
none of them can stop us now
we will make it through somehow
you and me
if the world should break in two
until the very end of me
until the very end of you.

My favorite moment:
The most meaningful moment for us was during the ceremony when our little boy, Gage, came over to us and held our hands during part of the ceremony. It felt so good that all three of us were there together, because he is the most important thing in our lives.

My funniest moment:
I didn't think it was funny at the time, but as our wedding party was all lined up and waiting to be introduced to the ballroom, the power suddenly went out. It had gone out for 30 seconds or so a few minutes earlier so we were assuming it would pass quickly. One full hour later the power came on and we were able to be (properly) introduced to our guests.

Our guests actually thought it was a planned part of the wedding and were waiting for some sort of grand-zombie-esque entrance! Our guests carried on in the dark as if nothing happened and even broke out into a capella renditions of some of our favorite songs. And my mother-in-law held a flashlight to illuminate the maid of honor and best man so they could give their speeches!

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

• Photography: Matthew Modoono
• Photo location: Tangerini Farm
• Makeup: Jeannie Vincent
• Hair: Meghan Federico of Pandolfino's
• Cake: Jessica Crazycakes
• Dress: Augusta Jones from Allegria Bridal
• DJ: Seth Isaacs
• Venue: Primavera
• Officiant: Bill Murphy
• Zombie portrait artist: Scott Monteiro
• Honeymoon location: Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast
• Bride's clutch: Burlap Heartstrings
• Bridal jewelry: Element 4 You and Arks Endeavors
• Flask garter belt: Moonsine Belle
• Flask bridesmaids gifts: Kryan2 Designs
• Personalized cake forks: You Name it Jewelry
• Guestbook: N3do

Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!

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