Posted byWhat better way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Spaceballs than with a wedding…
The offbeat groom: Nate, electrical engineer
His offbeat partner: Goldie, medical physicist
Date and location of wedding: Celine & Company “On Broadway” in Asheville, NC — May 19, 2017
Our offbeat wedding at a glance:
We had a Spaceballs-themed costume wedding complete with Barf the best mog, Dot Matrix the droid of honor, and a space-pope officiant. The rest of the guests could wear whatever costumes they wanted, so we got married surrounded by a dragon, a mod gorilla, David Bowie(s), Link, Harry Potter, and more.
Walking around downtown Asheville in costume for photos was a blast. We had all sorts of Spaceballs quotes shouted to us, random people stopped to take pictures, and we photo-bombed some kids on their way to prom (who are way too young to know what Spaceballs is, but whatever).
We included some of our favorite things in the decorations like a plush pangolin (Goldie’s engagement ring was a pangolin) and a Cyanide & Happiness plushy from our obscene plushy collection. We sent our guests home with metal pint cups etched with an xkcd comic strip (one of our favorite web comics).
We’re both into science, so our rings are stripes of dinosaur fossil and meteorite.
Tell us about the ceremony:
As guests were starting to be ushered to their seats, we had the DJ play “Rains of Castamere” (The Red Wedding song from Game of Thrones). Then the wedding party entered to an orchestral rendition of The Legend of Zelda.
We worked with the officiant to write his speech laden with references to many of our favorite things such as Stephen King books, Futurama, Radiohead lyrics, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, other Mel Brooks movies, etc. We also snuck in occasional sarcastic jabs at ourselves such as picking on Goldie’s bad cooking and lines like, “it is our obligation to take the joy, happiness, humor, and general inappropriateness that will characterize today, that radiates from them both, and spread it out into the world. Like a virus.”
The officiant cut his speech up so that he could read it out of a book — a hardcover copy of Religion: Ruining Everything Since 4004 BC by Zack Weinersmith, another of our favorite webcomic authors.
After some high quality public making out… er… The Kiss, we marched out to the credits/victory music to Mass Effect 3.
Tell us about your reception:
We decorated the tables with orange and blue flowers (birds of paradise, pin cushion, and delphiniums), orange and blue portals from the video game Portal, and planetary glasses with LED lights in them on top of black tablecloths.
Salads were served to everybody to get people over to the tables, then the rest of the meal was buffet-style with BBQ brisket, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans, and vegetables. We were going for a very North Carolina-style meal.
Between dinner and dessert there were a few speeches. The two best were the story of Nate repeatedly throwing his shoe at a very deserving other student in college, and a Dot Matrix rendition of the Princess Bride “Mawwiage” speech.
The rest of the night was devoted to dancing. And possibly the only traditional part of the wedding: Nate’s large Jewish family whipped out a violin to play Hava Nagila and lifted us up in chairs while everybody danced in circles around us. Without missing a beat, the DJ pulled out a trumpet and started playing along.
What was your most important lesson learned?
Have fun with it. If you aren’t a particularly serious kind of person, then why should your wedding be all formal and rigid? The costume theme for our wedding started out as a joke, then after a little while it sunk in that a costume wedding would be AWESOME. And it was.
Use spreadsheets. A lot of spreadsheets. You need them for everything… who to invite, venues you’re looking at, vendors you’re considering, budgeting, who you pay and when, etc.
If you realize that you forgot something or something isn’t exactly how you expected it to be at the last second, it doesn’t matter. Nobody else knows how it was supposed to be, so just roll with it.
Vendors
- Costumes: Heidi Ha (local seamstress and all-around awesome lady)
- Etched Pint Cups: Carolina Custom Metal Works
- Cake: Cakes by Gray
- Venue/Food: Celine & Co. “On Broadway”
- Flowers: Flora
- Table decor: Portals (from Portal the video game) made by my mom and Planetary glass set
- DJ: Patrick Lopez “DJ P-Lo”
- Photographer: Ryan Bumgarner and Sarah Whitmeyer
- Rings: Jewelry by Johan
Gallery
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This is amazing and so, so fun!!!
Spaceballs was one of my favorite movies growing up and these costumes are best!
This is so awesome! A couple after my own heart! I especially loved the advice about not taking it too seriously and spreadsheets. Spreadsheets were such a life saver and our guest list one came in very handy recently when doing invites for our housewarming!