Sabina & Mattias’ “far longer than forever” gothic wedding

The Offbeat Bride: Sabina, kitchen assistant

Her offbeat partner: Mattias, studying robotics engineering

Date and location of wedding: Baggbro school, Skinnskatteberg, Sweden — December 13, 2013

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: We had always wanted a gothic-themed wedding. And we also knew that we wanted to get married on Friday the 13th. December 13th was the perfect date for us because that was the day before our ninth anniversary.

Red and black were our chosen colors for a gothic, but also Christmas-y, feel since it was so close. We didn't have a very large budget, so we self-catered a traditional Swedish Christmas table.

Since the phrase “Far longer than forever” became our main theme, skeletons were something that became a huge part of the theme. The invitations had a skeleton couple so we had a skeleton prop as doorman, skeleton cake toppers, and our shoes had skeleton prints. Everyone might not have understood why we wanted skeletons at our wedding, but for us it symbolizes forever. Even after death we will be together.

Since neither of us drink alcohol and never have, our wedding was completely dry. Many people were worried that the wedding would be boring because of that, but it was a lot of fun!

Tell us about the ceremony:
A little surprisingly with our theme, we got married in the beautiful church of Skinnskatteberg. It's such an amazing church and there was no doubt that we wanted to have the ceremony there.

We walked in to the church to “Here Comes the Bride,” which we joked about that being the only traditional part of the wedding. It felt right to us, and we wanted to feel that, YES, we are getting married now!

The song “Far Longer Than Forever” from the animated movie The Swan Princess was played in the church.

For the recessional, we walked out of the church to the organ version of the Final Fantasy song “Melodies of Life” played by our dear friend Toril Briese. Walking out of the church with that feeling of total happiness was such a great moment.

Our biggest challenge:
Our biggest challenge was the stress. We took on lots of DIY projects and should have asked for more help during the planning. Luckily, we had amazing friends who started to help with everything on the wedding day so we could finally just sit back and enjoy it.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

• Photography: Andrea Karlsson
• Rings: Rolf Guldsmed (designed by us with inspiration from the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan)
• Groom's blazer: Shango
• Skeleton shoes: eBay
• Cake toppers: painted by the bride
• Cake: Coop Extra

Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!