Lilana & Eric's Doctor Who vegas elopement and victorian wedding • Offbeat Wed (was Offbeat Bride)

Up next for elopement week is Lilana & Eric. Eric surprised Lilana with a treasure hunt that led to a Doctor Who themed elopement in Las Vegas. You may remember Lilana from her super swanky hot pink sneakers! -Coco

The offbeat bride: Lilana, Artist/Interior Decorator

Her offbeat partner: Eric, Artist/Interior Decorator

Location & date of wedding: The Artisan Hotel, Las Vegas, NV and Cairnwood, Bryn Athyn, PA — February 14, 2009 and May 31, 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: A few days before Valentine's Day, Eric presented me with a series of treasure hunt clues. They led me all around the house, and finally to him, on one knee, proposing. However, he was not only proposing a marriage… but an elopement to Vegas in only a few days! (This was spectacularly unexpected, because I thought he was only going to maybe surprise me with Valentine's Day dinner reservations.) I said yes.

After scrounging up what wedding garments I could manage (including the edge of a crib's mosquito netting as a makeshift veil (don't ask)), we flew to Vegas for a Doctor Who-like adventure. We were going to see ‘Earth World' (as we like to think of Vegas) for the very first time. We got married on Valentine's Day in the Artisan Hotel (which couldn't have matched us better — baroque and FULL of artwork, including ‘paintbrush bouquets‘ on the tables!) We wore our matching Fourth Doctor and Romana scarves that I'd knitted the previous winter.

When we got home, people were pretty surprised to hear about our elopement (my parents especially), but everyone calmed down when we said we still wanted to have a big party. Of course, that only gave us three months to plan a huge wedding from scratch, but hey, it's better than a few days!

As for the big wedding, we wanted it in red, white, and black damask, with little throwbacks to our Vegas elopement thrown in here and there.

Tell us about the ceremony: The most important traditions to us were more directly referential than religious things. At the big wedding, in honor of our elopement, we gave little damask favor boxes to the bridal party containing Doctor Who buttons (for the Doctor Who scarves we wore when we got married), Vegas casino cards (for the locale of our elopement), and Groucho glasses (a reference to the treasure hunt clues that started it all). Also, during the reception, I wore pink Liberace sneakers, complete with candelabra charm, because Eric bought those for me the day we got married (when we finished getting married and having lunch, we went straight to the Liberace museum in Vegas). At the reception, the centerpieces all had paintbrushes as part of the bouquet (an homage to the paintbrush bouquets at the Artisan Hotel). This was all an effort to bring our elopement back to our friends and family.

We did do a few traditional things, like the cake cutting (yum!), the glass stomping (smash!), and the chair dancing (gah!), but only because we thought they'd be fun, not because we were obligated to. All of our parents are pretty secular, but mine still wanted at least a vaguely Jewish wedding and that was fine.

Our biggest challenge: There were some bridesmaid dress issues, and instead of them wearing red/white/black, they all wound up in black. Originally I didn't want this because typically everything's all black and goth with me, but fate is fate, and they looked beautiful!

Also, my parents were afraid we would turn the big wedding into a ‘clown show', which, apart from not making any sense based on our past track record of classy stuff, was pretty easy to avoid. Although I couldn't resist the photo with the Groucho glasses at the end!

The flowers that were supposed to go in the fountain didn't quite make it there. So one of my bridesmaids hauled up her skirt, waded in, and saved the day!

Oh, and the WORST thing was that both Eric and I were each sick TWICE in one month (horribly sick) bringing our wedding planning time down to only two months. It caused us to kill off all the caterers in Philly, since of course this happened when we needed to do all the tastings (while not being able to taste!)

My favorite moment: The Vegas Wedding: Just being with Eric, exploring a new city, standing in line to get our marriage license the day before the wedding, and realizing how in love we are.

The Cairnwood Wedding: Hearing my best friend's beautiful toast that made me cry; each member of our family contributing something (my mother: the placecards, my sister: the jewelry, my father: the toast, Eric's mother: helping us all get ready, Eric's father: making us one of his awesome steampunk machines as a gift); and my mother feeding me yogurt while my nails were drying that morning. It was like having a little window into what it must've been like being her baby, but with the ability to notice and remember her delighted face as she fed me.

My funniest moment: My father's toast was priceless, as are all his speeches. He declared that Eric is a man who has ‘a pirate head, a pirate heart…and a pirate outfit!'

My advice for offbeat brides: If you're going to print your own invites/programs, etc., make SURE they're on printable paper (the placecards weren't!) and don't do it at three in the morning!

Another important thing: if you're going to personally make an elaborate headdress veil that your fiance designed, try to finish it before five am the night before the wedding!