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The Offbeat Bride: Jen
Her offbeat partner: Nick
Date and location of wedding: Stonehurst Manor, North Conway, NH — September 28, 2013
Our offbeat wedding at a glance: Nick and I didn't meet on the online game World of Warcraft, but we certainly built our relationship through playing the game together. He lived in New Hampshire at the time, and I was in Massachusetts, but we could talk through the game and grow together. So the game became part of the wedding theme, since it was so integral to our relationship. We wanted to be able to share our interests at the wedding without overwhelming our guests since I knew that very few would actually get it. We aimed for a balance between nerd and tradition.
About two months before the wedding, on Nick's urging, we began creating our favorite weapons from World of Warcraft. We did this together and learned a lot. We only managed to make 10 out of the 12 we needed, but it was definitely a high point of the wedding.
Our tables were named after raid bosses from the game. We had pumpkins and flowers that matched the color scheme. I made silhouettes of the bosses with white table numbers and little info flags about why we chose each boss. The placecards were also WoW-themed.
We had a sweetheart table, but called it the “loot table.” Nick made a replica treasure chest from the game and filled it with jewels and coins. Nick had custom coins made, too!
My maid of honor made our invitations and created a crest for us that we used throughout the entire wedding.
For favors we gave away little LEGO pumpkins that our guests had to build. Nick is a huge LEGO fan so this was where we added his favorite thing to the wedding. It was not easy! I bought a boatload of the little canvas baggies from Michael's and made my own stamp for the bag.
Tell us about the ceremony:
We had a Justice of the Peace since the ceremony was on the grounds at Stonehurst, and we weren't about to go to a church! He did a wonderful job and had no problem with our little off-the-wall requests. We changed any mention of god to “Science.”
Our vows were great. Mine were strangely more nerdy than Nick's but I still almost cried twice. I was certain I was going to, but managed to keep it together. Deep breath, take a second, and I was good. We both laughed. We did a version of a wine box ceremony, but substituted a bottle of wine for our favorite bottle of beer.
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My processional music was the Game of Thrones theme. I had shortened it, since two minutes is a little long. Turns out I shortened it too much and it was too short! Oh well. Nick and the wedding party came down to “Terra's Theme” from Final Fantasy.
When we were presented with the rings, the “Get Item” jingle from Legend of Zelda played. Sadly, I didn't hear it, but the guests did!
The officiant ended the ceremony with, “And boldly go where no man has gone before,” and we played the main theme from Star Trek: The Next Generation as we left the altar.
In World of Warcraft, there are two sides or factions: the Horde and Alliance. My mom made us the flags from the game to have at the altar. And instead of bride and groom sides, we had Horde and Alliance sides. We had the guests choose a side in their RSVP!
My favorite moment:
The dances were great. My parents are experienced dancers, and I wanted to be able to do a nice dance at our wedding. My parents taught Nick and I a Cha Cha and my dad and I learned a waltz. Nick and I danced to a mash-up of “Home” by Edwarde Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, “Do You Wanna Date my Avatar” by The Guild (feat. Felicia Day), and “Gentlemen” by Psy.
Nick and I did our World of Warcraft character dances during the Avatar song and we had our wedding party join in for the Psy song. The best part was that we only practiced the Psy dance twice the night before and they actually did it perfectly!
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
- Photography: Mark Bolton and his wife from Stephanie Wales Photography
- Bride's dress: Platinum Bridal Boutique. The women at Platinum were excellent to work with and their location is beautiful.
- DJ: Edward Whitehouse with A Good Time DJs did a fantastic job.
- Bridesmaid dresses: David's Bridal
- Cake: Sugarmaker Bakery
- Flowers: Sunnyside Gardens. They went all out and it was absolutely beautiful with the flowers and pumpkins. Absolutely recommend.
- Venue: Stonehurst Manor did an incredible job as well. Heidi knows her stuff like the back of her hand. The staff was awesome. You couldn't ask for a better location.
- Hair: The Cut Off Salon
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Brilliant geekery integration achieved!!! Also, I love your purple flowers and dresses and everything.
OMG – LOVE IT!
The bride was gorgeous!!
Such a fun day!!
Southern Tier Pumpking is one of my favorite beers! I find it to be the champagne of the pumpkin beer world, and I have tried a lot of pumpkin beers. 🙂
I recognised this from the thumbnail FOR THE ALLIANCE!! Love the banners 😛
You guys did a great job seamlessly integrating all the nerdy elements! Love it, the end result looks fantastic!
Did you create the Home/DYWTDMA/Gentleman mashup yourselves, or did you find the track somewhere?
We’re getting married very nearby, in Fryeburg, ME, so I’m definitely going to check out your vendors!
I made myself. 🙂 It took a bit of time bit it was worth it!
Thank you everyone!
Best. Wedding. Ever. I LOVE the alter. It’s my favorite part besides the kick ass weapons ^_^
I can totally tell you play a female draenei just from that one picture of you dancing 🙂 Looks like a fun, authentic wedding. I definitely got all excited noticing all the details. The Ravenlord mount! The Warglaive! That purple one-handed mace model!
Yes I do! He plays a human so you can imagine how silly/awesome that looked.
It was an incredible day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0xneU1FPXE Here’s the video!
Happened upon your site from a news article. LOVED this! Big WoW fans so this is such a cool idea!! The dress was gorgeous and everything looked like so much fun!! Very great memories! Kudos for a killer wedding!
HOLY POOP, one of the coolest WoW weddings I’ve seen. I love the loot table!!
This wedding looked like so much fun! I love the idea of a themed wedding and you two pulled it off beautifully.
I don’t know if I could choose which side to sit on; horde or alliance… 🙂
Beautiful… Everything! The venue (well, cha! Anything outdoors in the Granite State is beautiful!), the bride’s dress … The Bride!!, the decorations, the flowers…
Can you post how you integrated Science into your vows? My guy and I are getting married by a JP outdoors (MA… Not as good as NH, ask Nick!) and neither of us are religious. I would love to keep God out of my ceremony as much as I can. We asked our JP to quote Thoreau and Frost about nature…. Still working on that part.
Again, everything posted looks amazing!!!
Hi Mary,
I can send you through email the ceremony our JP used, if you’d like. You can get in touch with me personally through my website or post it here. (click on my name to bring you to my site)
But otherwise, we really just replaced any mention of “God” with Science or Truth. Think of what you believe or what you feel strongly about and replace the religious words with that. Never forget that it’s YOUR (and your husbands) day. Do what you want! Using the poetry is a great idea. We had a poem read at our ceremony, too. Find the one you both love the best and tell your JP you’d like it read. 🙂
I failed to mention my JPs name and hopefully I can get the post edited. If Michael King goes to MA, I would request him. He loved our ceremony and did a fantastic job.
And thank you so much!
Best of luck
-Jen
Really made my day. I have a big goofy smile on my face. So For The Horde and Gratz from Battlemaster Mommymaker of Zul’jin.
OMGLOVE. Nerdiness unite.
Few questions for you, love: how did your mom make the stands? I’m working on faction banners for my girls to handle/plant at the ceremony site and can’t find bannerstands. Did she do wizardry with PVC pipe?? Must know!
Also. Did you have any trouble easing people into an idea of a nerdy reception? I’m contemplating including LEGO/papercraft/Nerf into mine and can’t quite decide how to do so. Ugh, traditional people are so boring!
The stands were actually borrowed from my husband’s work (retail). They are signage stands. The banners are really one long runner folded in half to go over the stand, then velcro ‘d in the middle. You might be able to PVC pipe something together. Internet knows all. Or maybe like one of those tall plant things? For vines?
As for the reception, we didn’t want to overwhelm the guests and found the good balance of our touches with the traditional. Like doing your own thing with the centerpieces, favors and table names. Balance is key. We knew maybe a handful at best would ‘get’ it.
One Offbeat Bride gave me the best advice: you don’t want your guests to feel like they are on the outside of an inside joke.
You know your guests, you know the vibe of how they are. Are they fairly lsid back? Or would they criticize you for being outside the box? Do what you want without giving an ‘eff you’ to your guests. You want them to have fun too! Balance. Pinterest has a lot of good ideas too.
And I think our guests had a pretty good idea with the way our invites were worded. “Be you Horde or Human, sheath your swords of slaying and staves of sorcery for one day to revel in the luminosity of two souls burning brightest side by side.” 🙂
(My husband wrote that!)
Hope this helps.
Best of luck,
Jen
wow so cool i live in new Hampshire and you guys got married on my birthday so awesome gratz
For anyone who is interested, this the video of our dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0xneU1FPXE
I really didn’t have any real inspiration before now for my eventual wedding (except knowing we’ll have a nerdy theme, WoW included), but this is so amazing! My fiance and I bonded over the fact that we both play WoW and LoL, and I could see us doing character dances for part of our dance! Likely we’d play “Tunak Tunak Tun” and both do the male Draenei dance xD, though our mains are my female troll hunter/female orc shaman and his female orc warlock/male orc DK (he would kill me if I tried to make him do Gangnam Style though xD). One of our first ideas for our wedding was cosplaying as Queen Ashe/King Tryndamere from LoL, though we may save that for the reception/afterparty and be more traditional for the ceremony itself. I love the Alliance/Horde sides for the ceremony and boss table centerpieces/placement cards!
Is there a chance you could post a picture of one of your invitations? Or a link to where you had them done? My fiance and I are trying to get WoW invitations made but having a difficult time finding a good place.
Hi Amber,
http://www.flickerfire.com/flickersfancies/?p=2154 – this is the front of our invitations. (I’ve blanked our last names for privacy). The crest was on the back. Nick did the wording. My MoH designed them. http://www.juliesnee.com
I had them printed through VistaPrint.
Best,
Jen
Hi There,
You guys had a great wedding. Congratutaltions.
Is there a chance to get the plans for the chest, you had on the loot table.
I would like to build it myself.
Thank you
Hi Termalon,
Sorry it’s been a few days. We’ve been pretty busy!
We madethe chest from a papercraft and Nick scaled it up from a tiny version to the large one you see here. It was all made out of cardboard.
This is where I got the papercraft model: http://wowpapercraft.blogspot.com/2008/05/updated-treasure-chest.html
You’ll need to also download the Pepakura viewer (it’s free): http://www.tamasoft.co.jp/pepakura-en/download/viewer.html
You’ll be able to view the papercraft model in the viewer and print it out from there. If haven’t done a papercraft before, I would suggest starting with something simple before attempting this.
Hope this helps!
-Jen
I LOVE those weapons! I also love the one group pic where everyone is brandishing weapons except the gentleman on the far right who is holding up the bouquet. Its like “MWAHAHA! I KILL YOU WITH FLOWERS!”
Love everything about this wedding, and its given me some ideas for our WOW inspired wedding in August 2016 🙂 wishing the couple lots of luck and best wishes x
I’d love to see pictures from your wedding! When I was looking for inspiration, there really weren’t that many WoW weddings out there. Congratulations and good luck!