Clara & Justin's massive mix of geekery and love wedding • Offbeat Wed (was Offbeat Bride)

We teased this contender for most geeky references ever in a wedding a couple of weeks ago, and now you'll get the whole story AND all the fandom references we know you want!

The Offbeat Bride: Clara, Physician

Her offbeat partner: Justin, Network Administrator

Date and location of wedding: Stonehurst, The Robert Treat Paine Estate in Waltham, MA — June 1, 2013

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: We wanted our wedding to be as personal as we could make it. We tossed out anything we didn't feel connected to, like the garter toss, the first dance, and clinking glasses. Instead we looked at each facet and tried to figure out how to make it represent one of our geeky interests. Our save-the-date started it off with a postcard showing off over 30 different references to TV shows, movies, and video games that both of us enjoy (see the key here!). It was made by our friend, Violet Hope. We made our wedding invitation based off the Doctor Who blue invitation from The Impossible Astronaut, with vintage stamps bought off Etsy.

We made our wedding rings through A Wedding Ring Experience a couple months before the wedding. It was really fun to smelt the metal, file, roll, solder, hammer, and more to make them ourselves. The jeweler, Ann Cahoon, was awesome. It's definitely more expensive than just buying your wedding bands, but it made the process much more meaningful and cool.

We chose musicians (cello, harp, and flute) who played music from Zelda, Myst, Kenshin (an anime), The Princess Bride, and Castlevania. Our processional was a song from Kenshin (“Na Go Mi”), and our recessional was “Once Upon a Time” from The Princess Bride. We had a DJ who played songs from Diablo, The Shining, Twin Peaks, and Myst during dinner. I also got him to play a mix of “Single Ladies” with a World of Warcraft parody song called “Ninja Raiders.” Subtle but great nod to WoW. Our flower girl's basket was a Mario question mark box, and the flowers were fire flowers, also from Mario.

The groom's outfit is a cosplay of the Eighth Doctor of Doctor Who, whose waistcoat was custom made by Harper Della-Piana of Seams Couture. My dress came from Etsy with modifications of the appliques by myself. It was very low priced ($170) but did take some effort to make it look the way I wanted. I changed into another dress (from White House Black Market) after the dinner which was great because it was a terribly hot day.

The centerpieces were plushies referencing movies and video games: Portal Turret, Adipose, Enterprise, AT-AT, Bilbo and Gandalf, Link, Protoss Probe, Bacon (because… bacon!), and a Chain Chomp. We gave them away with a raffle in which the guests submitted their name cards for the centerpiece they wanted.

Our cakes were AMAZING, and were made by Cakes by Erin. One was a Portal-themed cake, which showed a completed level that I custom wrote with some friends. There were internal lights so that the portal effect could be seen. It was done with two brides and two grooms set up with two interior rooms made to look like the other sides. The other cake was Doctor Who-themed as the Eighth Doctor's console. It's incredible the amount of detail they put in.

We also had a TARDIS photo booth! The groom's best friend worked eight months to make a full sized TARDIS from scratch. A month before the wedding, we drove out to his place six hours away and rented a U-Haul to bring it back. We kept it a secret from most of our wedding guests. Everyone loved taking photos in front of it, and the event security police officer even took a photo! We brought some props for our guests to use, incorporating even more references (Sherlock's deerstalker, a Doctor Who scarf, and the mask from The Princess Bride to name a few). The TARDIS now resides in a tidy corner of our living room until our next adventure. The thread about the build is located here.

Our seating chart was made as a Starcraft theme as if you were about to start a game. Each “team” became a table. I made it using GIMP a couple weeks before the wedding and had it printed poster-sized.

Our wedding programs had a map of the venue done in Harry Potter style. Our table cards (numbers also listed in Riven numbering system) listed the food on one side, and a “can you spot the reference” quiz on the right side.

Our wedding favor was a custom absinthe spoon with a Doctor Who symbol (Seal of Rassilon) made by Artifacture Studios.

Our wedding guest book was actually individual sheets of custom Doctor Who-themed pages with a request for people to write stories of how they met us or future adventures with us. We left them on the dinner tables with pens so people could write in them during dinner. The envelope box was painted by me to look like the Horadric Cube from Diablo.

Tell us about the ceremony:
Our officiant, Kezia, worked with us to craft our own ceremony text. We chose from her samples on the asking and the vows, but there was a whole storyline about how we met and our relationship. Justin wanted to include a reading from a Rush song, so I helped by looking through some possible choices and we decided on “Ghost of a Chance.” Another fun part is that we had plenty of outtakes on our ceremony text where we thought up hilarious alternate versions. We placed some of the outtakes in the wedding program for people to read while they waited for the ceremony.

My favorite moment:
The first look was a beautiful and happy moment for us to see each other completely made up. Later on, even though we didn't have a first dance, Justin and I danced several songs together. This was amazing because Justin generally refuses to dance. But he put that aside and we shared many lovely moments being together on the dance floor. Also, the sudden realization that all the people we loved from all the pages of our lives were all in one place at the same time, all enjoying each others company for one night, was simply marvelous.

My funniest moment:
I heard about this afterwards, but my nephew, the ring-bearer, started picking up the flowers after his older sister dropped them down the aisle. His mom had to gently coax him away from cleaning up after his sister. Then when I walked down the aisle, my train picked up all the flowers and dragged them down the aisle to end up in a nice little pile when I reached the rug.