An elegant Hallowedding on Friday the 13th with a love potion ceremony & a flower ghoul

Offbeat partner: Christie, Realtor

Offbeat partner: Kurtis, Electrician

Date and location of wedding: Embers, an awesome 100+ year old building in Rensselaer, IN — October 13, 2017

Our offbeat wedding at a glance:

We had a Halloween theme and got married on Friday the 13th. We did our engagement photos at Niles Scream Park in Niles, Michigan. We encouraged our guests to come in costume and even had a costume contest during the reception. We wanted to have a wedding that was memorable, fun, and distinctly us.

Tell us about the ceremony:

We walked down a black and white striped aisle runner where our very close friend Jonny married us, and wrote a hilarious and touching ceremony where we read our own vows, and instead of a unity candle or sand ceremony we did a cocktail ceremony pouring red and blue booze from potion bottles over dry ice in a skull glass that we called a love potion. My friend Mike was our flower ghoul.

Tell us about your reception:

The venue was very cool and unique building over 100 years old. They surprised us by wearing old marching band uniforms and zombie makeup! I baked and decorated the favors with my bridesmaids, voodoo doll sugar cookies. We spent months collecting unique decorative skulls so that each table would have a different skull as the centerpiece.

We also had a coffin photo booth, and an absolutely beautiful cake from Designer Desserts. Most of our guests came in costume and we had a costume contest during the reception. My bridesmaids re-wrote the Monster Mash to be about our relationship and sang it as a toast for us. Our guest book is a photo album of our engagement photos from a local huge haunted house park.

What was your most important lesson learned?

Finding a dress was really very difficult,. I didn't want to wear a traditional dress since we were having such a nontraditional wedding, so I tried to have one made but it was really unflattering and I wound up getting my dress off the rack at the mall, had it altered, and am so happy with it! My wedding advice is to be open about what you want and ready to compromise if you need to, Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a long time making it. If you want to do something out of the ordinary, just go for it — you might be surprised by how much support you'll receive.