How can you include [enter geeky reference here] without ostracizing your guests?

Guest post by laterose
us blue eyes jc

About a year ago, I attended a friend's wedding. It was a perfect May day, the flowers were just so, and the bride herself was stunning. Even still, my fiancé and I got into his car at the end of the night, and spent the whole ride home wondering why the wedding had felt so… not them. It was as if we had walked into anyone's wedding, and aside from some very sweet vows, it felt like we were celebrating a watered-down version of the geeky, gamer couple that I knew and loved so much.

Since my fiancé proposed, this one experience has given us a mantra: that is not how we want our wedding to feel. We have decided to get married on the stage of an old theater (since we both majored in theater in college), followed by a reception at a planetarium, where we can dance under the stars as we celebrate our love of sci-fi and fantasy with little touches like a TARDIS and a Firefly suspended above the giant moon-bar in the lobby. We want to pull colors from Tom Baker's famous scarf, and name each table after one of the geeky things we love to do together. We want to dance to Weird Al and Jonathan Coulton, and quote every geeky thing we can think of. Needless to say, we've been really excited about it!

Enter an awkward conversation two weeks ago…

I was gushing about my ideas to my sister (one of my bridesmaids) over a birthday dinner when one of my mother's friends jumps in and asks if I am ready to have some of my guests not understand the references I'm making.

“It's not necessary,” I smile. “If even a few people get them, I'll be happy.”

She responded, “So, you want to invite people to your wedding, and then make them feel left out because they don't understand the reference you're making?”

I am thrown. I want to make this wedding about us, and these are the things that brought us together. The idea of a glossary has been discussed, but how could you make something that wasn't clunky? And it's not like I can give people homework in the invitation! (“Go and watch at least one season on Doctor Who, all of Firefly, and read the following Shakespearean sonnets before attending.”)

Basically, can we [enter geeky reference here] without ostracizing our guests?

Meet our fave wedding vendors