Posted by
The Offbeat Bride: Brenda, Engineering CAD Technician
Her offbeat partner: Julio, HVAC Insulator
Date and location of wedding: Apulent Events and Catering – Shilshole Bay Beach Club, Seattle, WA — July 20, 2012
Our offbeat wedding at a glance: We are big video gamers and so we wanted the wedding to be about us and our love for video games, while keeping the wedding fun and elegant. It started out with the wedding colors: Sonic the Hedgehog blue and Yoshi green. We also had the wedding party wear video game characters on cufflinks and necklaces. We continued the video game theme by having our ceremony music based on various video games, including musical themes from Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy VII, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and even Super Mario World.
A close friend of ours did the video game art portraits for all of the wedding tables and we had matching escort cards based on various video game titles. We featured signature cocktails named “Electric Sonic and Yoshi-tini.” As for our wedding favors, they were an assortment of candy tins in the shape of video game characters, Nintendo controllers, and Zelda shields. Even our cake topper was video game-themed with Sonic the Hedgehog as the Groom and Amy the Hedgehog as the Bride.
Tell us about the ceremony: For our ceremony, we went with a sand ceremony where I had a glass vase of royal blue sand and Julio had a glass vase of emerald green sand and we each poured the colored sand to be combined in unity as one. As our pastor explained, “There are millions of pieces that make up who and what you are individually and who you both can be together. The beautiful thing about sand is that once it's mixed you can never separate the millions of small parts.”
Our biggest challenge: The biggest challenge was putting together the hand-made details. The hanging video game escort cards took a very long time to construct. Having a computer aided drafting background, I had to edit the video game images using computer drafting software, and then print out and cut each of the images with scrapbooking tools and accessories.
My favorite moment: There are so many memorable moments of our wedding. Our introductory song to our reception was ACDC's Thunderstruck. The bridal party speeches were very heartfelt tearjerkers and our first dance was also memorable as it was the very first time we had ever had a slow dance together. Also, during the reception we had a blast watching a few people have a break dance battle and seeing all the kids on the dance floor.
My funniest moment: I have two — getting cake frosting on Julio's face and also the first few failed attempts at tossing the garter. Julio couldn't launch it far enough the first time and then on the second try a few of the guys decided to dive for it.
Was there anything you were sure was going to be a total disaster that unexpectedly turned out great? The weather in Seattle was unpredictable that day. We had plans of having an outdoor ceremony and early in the morning it was thundering and raining but luckily by the end of the day it had dried up and the sun was able to make an appearance during our afternoon ceremony.
My advice for Offbeat Brides: A wedding can be video gamer geeky, and still feel elegant!
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
- Photographer: Amore Studios
- Officiant: Rev. Darrell Goodwin at Liberation Ministries
- Hair and Make-up: I Love Blush
- Wedding Cake/Cupcakes: Eriesistable Crieations
- Venue: Apulent Events and Catering
- Music/DJ: DA Productions
- Florist: Seattle Floral Design
- Invitations/Wedding Programs: UrbanBelleDesigns
- Wedding art portraits: Roland Sabalza
- Video game cufflinks, necklaces, boutonniere and feather hair pieces were found on Etsy.
Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!
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.
Congratulations! Your wedding looks amazing! it’s the perfect balance of elegant and geeky! <3
Too cute!! 🙂
So cute! Tastefully done! Like you said, “elegant.”
Awesome!!!! Very elegant & still staying true to yourselves 🙂
My fiance and I are trying for a similar theme but we’re havign trouble trying to think of ways to “class-up” the table themes. Some are easy like the Batman and Zelda but we’re still trying to think of more. I love your display for the escort cards, it definately gave me some inspiration for my own ^_^. How did you do the coin for on top of the card box? It looks 3D but I thought it might just be the artwork giving it that look of dept.
Hello Steph!
For the coin box we actually did cut-outs from foam presentation boards for the coin. One cut out was the coin shape itself, the 2nd cut-out was a “frame” for the coin so it would have that raised edge and the 3rd cut out was the center strip of the coin for the raised look as well. After doing the cut-outs, we layered the frame on top of the coin shape and just glued the strip on the center.
~Brenda
So cool! My wife and I are huge 80s fans and Sonic is one of my favorite games. We should have done something like this
I love that your colors are Sonic blue and Yoshi green! We did our blue and yellow off the comic-style Batman colors. Yes!
I just DIED from these photos! My partner and I met over Sonic the Hedgehog so I just had to show him this wedding! We’re were both completely gushing over it. Thanks for showing how fun Sonic looks wedding-style! 😀
I am happy to see that the had fun at your party.!
BRENDA KNOW, I LOVE YOU, for the simple fact of being the person who loves and my cousin HAPPY I love them both.
HAVE YOU AS MY ENGLISH!
I love this theme!! Zelda & Sonic bring me back to my childhood 🙂
Ahhh so amazing! As someone who is also working out how to fit in our geeky loves into our wedding whilst still keeping it elegant (and not totally confusing our less-geeky family members), your wedding is a brilliant example of how it can be done.
Amazing! Love it love it love it!!
K x
those clouds in the pictures are just breathtaking! Beautiful pictures. Happy marriage to you guys!