The wedding cake – the centrepiece of the evening’s festivities. The sight the first greets your guests as they enter the reception hall. The towering effigy of fondant and buttercream. For the alternative bride, a wedding cake doesn’t have to be a tiered bundle of white and pink icing flowers – she can have skulls and bats and cobwebs and polka dots and crooked cakes and chainsaw massacres and anything she wants! Given these stunning beauties, it’s a wonder any couple choose to go with the old school white tower anymore.

I’ve been compiling a file of wedding cake inspirations, so you shall be seeing many more cake inspiration posts over the next year. I may even be taking a cake decorating course in August, so you might see some of my own lopsided creations making their way onto the blog.

If you’ve been hunting around the online gothic couture shops for any length of time, you’ve probably heard of Azrael’s Accomplice. Both Azrael’s Accomplice and AZAC Designs (a “less gothy” line of gowns and eveningwear) are the children of designer Tracy Robertson, often called by her nickname Batty. If you’re looking for that perfect gothic wedding dress, or even just a gothic gown to wear on an evening out, you might want to check out Azrael’s Accomplice.

Tracy has been creating stunning alternative clothing for over ten years, and her history as a costume designer shows through in her dramatic gowns and corsets.

The Azrael’s Accomplice line features Tracy’s high-end gothic couture gowns (stunning pieces) and corsets, as well as some ready-to-wear and club pieces. These are all designed for the gothic sensibility, but have a sensitivity about them, which makes them accessible to non-goths.

Tracy wanted to expand her clothing line, so designed the AZAC line to appeal to non-gothic types. The AZAC line features avant-garde coctail dresses, wedding gowns, and fashion corsetry.

All of Tracy’s designs tell a story and inspire a mood. The gowns in particular evoke fantasmagorical places, forgotten lands and magical women. They’re emotive pieces that set a tone for a wedding. An AZAC gown would suit the dramatic, avant-garde, ethereal and fantastical bride.

Tracy’s opened up an Etsy store with discounted gowns, corsets and other pieces. It’s well worth a look. I’ve even put that gothic pixie dress on my to-buy list.

It’s been a long time since I featured a steampunk business here on wedding skulls, but that time is at an end. Aerin of Royal Steamline contacted me months ago, but I’ve been horribly slack about putting this interview together. But finally, here it is. I know you’ll love Royal Steamline’s collection of vintage-inspired dark, macabre and steampunk wedding invitations.

Who is Royal Steamline and what do you do?

Royal Steamline is a husband-and-wife design team based in Portland, Oregon. We create wedding invitations that have a dark, clockwork or otherwise retro/vintage flavor. Through a subtle (and sometimes anachronistic) combination of shadows, textures and vintage illustrations, we aim to convey a sense of eras strange and forgotten. Sea monsters mingle next to robotic ravens, and gentlemen scientists have tea with rockabilly rebels.

What is steampunk to you?

We thought you might ask something like that! Well, it can be many things, but it often involves a reordered history, usually with a novel mixing of noteworthy technological concepts or historical figures. And, yes, it often evokes the people, manners, and building materials of the Victorian period. So you might have Sherlock Holmes working with William Fox Talbot to develop infrared photography as part of an effort to identify and apprehend the Ripper. But it goes way beyond this and the common penchant for corsets and goggles: it can involve elements of the Old West or totally fictitious times and places. It’s kind of like Justice Stewart’s famous quote, we’re not sure how to define steampunk, but we know it when we see it!

What drew you to the culture/style initially?

Hmm…a particular sense of adventure? Always asking “What if…?” The dusty, muted colors. The elegance of brass, glass, and the era of the gentleman scientist? Poe and the birth of the modern detective story? Sprawling fin de siècle country manors where strange dinner parties occur? Jim and Artemus foiling the mad diminutive doctor? The contradiction of it all. Plus, we adore Victorian wallpaper design!

How did you or will you incorporate gothic and steampunk features into your wedding?

We often tend to prefer the subtle. So when it came to our wedding, we tried to incorporate a lot of small details and touches that suggested instead of overpowered. For instance, we created table “installations” that featured objects from our collection of curios: glass eyes, Victorian travelogues, antique stereoviews of seances, examples of 19th century quackery. Our guest book was a stack of antique postcards that people used to “send us” their best wishes. J. wore an antique silver brooch (reputedly haunted) as a tie bar, and I wore a unique shrug and veil that I had handmade for the wedding; I also wore long gloves and a ’30s-inspired gray dress. In our readings, we quoted everyone from Poe to Shelley to the Gothic Archies (again, it’s all about new combinations!).

Tell us a little about your design process – how do you choose materials/motifs/inspiration for your pieces?

Our designs start and end with a story, usually sparked from a book or artifact on our shelves. J’s been deep into Victorian pulps and I’ve been collecting mourning buttons and early 20th century advertising and science imagery. We’re inspired by the stories of retro technology, textures of old paper…the look of outdated fonts…some crazy ornate border flourish. The combo of the different worlds usually leads to some interesting aesthetics.

Why do you think Royal Steamline appeals to so many people?

It seems that more and more people are realizing that weddings can and should reflect themselves, their styles and tastes. And, for what seems like a growing number of people, this means choosing wedding invitations that evoke a dark, gothic or Victorian or misplaced-science-type feel. It’s created a whole new definition of what a wedding should be. We just want people to enjoy their wedding day — and if they’re into the idea of people landing on the Moon in 1901, then please come see us!

Name a couple of bands/songs that are on your stereo at the moment?

Music plays a huge role with regard to who we are and what we do (or, maybe, just how we do it). We actually met when we were both living in San Francisco and our first date was basically one big argument about music (but it was great!). We genuinely enjoy a huge range of music: I grew up loving bands like Bauhaus, Ministry, Joy Division, Clan of Xymox, and The Smiths while J listened to stuff like the Misfits, Neurosis, Hawkwind and Einstürzende Neubauten. These days, we’re still all over the place! Recently, shows we’ve seen include Earth, Stereolab, Vagabond Opera, the Horrors, Thrones, the Handsome Furs, the Ghastly Ones…We haven’t even mentioned J.’s love of early Americana (Harry Smith is a big influence) and my collection of hard bop and sad bastard vinyl.

What’s coming up for Royal Steamline?

More invitation designs, of course! Oh, and we recently released a line of what we’re calling “dress badges.” By combining vintage seam binding, buttons, military pins and insignia, we’ve created accessories appropriate for weddings, balls, cotillions, museum dedications or just everyday wear.

Any advice you could offer to Wedding Skulls?

We just hope brides and grooms go with their hearts. If you don’t want to wear a white dress then don’t! If you want to walk down the aisle to Ernest Tubb or At the Gates, then do it! Your wedding is about you and your partner — make it a day you both will love to plan and remember.

So Skully brides and grooms, if you fancy a little steampunk-inspired wonder to adorn your wedding invitations, I suggest you head over to Royal Steamline and check out all their designs. While you’re there, you should take some time to read the Royal Steamline blog, which is packed with great steampunk articles.

You might not know this, but my favorite part of wedding planning isn’t the dresses, or the invitations, or the photography – it’s the wedding cakes. And gothic / halloween wedding cakes absolutely WIN when it comes to unique, beautiful cake designs.

I share with you now a few pictures from my internet perusings. I don’t have sources for any of these pictures, so if you know from whence they came, please let me know so I can correctly attribute these talented cake designers.

Will you be having a gothic or halloween wedding cake? What have you chosen as an inspiration? Would you like to see MORE pictures of beautiful gothic wedding cakes? (I have more. So many more.)

What dark alternative wedding website would be complete without a little corset porn?

Nina, by Angels Carrying Savage Weapons

Angels Carry Savage Weapons is a UK-based corset company founded in 2005 by designers Lindsay and Lee Fidler. All the patterns are cut in their Nottinghamshire studio. Each corset is handmade to order and designed to minimize your waist between 2-4 inches. You won’t find any ill-fitting, plastic-boned, faux-corsetry here.

Angels Carrying Savage Weapons’ corset designs give a beautiful silhouette. The elegant, unique designs hint at the erotic.

Ava, by Angels Carrying Savage Weapons

Their bridalwear collection contains several stunning emsembles, like the Siren and Nina pictured here. As each piece is made to order, you can essentially mix and match your own design, adding or subtracting materials, trims and adornments.

Seeing these amazing corsets makes me wish I could have a whole wardrobe full of beautiful gowns. Le Sigh.

To garter or not to garter? It’s a bit of an odd question, really. The whole garter-tossing ceremony seems rather strange and outdated to me – which is why we didn’t partake of it. I wasn’t going to wear a garter, but my dress lady sent me one as a free gift – a gorgeous red and black lace garter with skull beads on it. So awesome.

ALMOST as awesome as the amazing punk rock garters from Peterene Designs, makers of vintage and theme wedding garters and accessories.

I’m truly honoured to welcome a rad lady to Wedding Skulls today. Elizabeth Fournier is visiting us as part of a blog tour to promote her new book ‘All Men are Cremated Equal’, which I recommend you all go and pick up as it looks tremendously funny.

After fleeing the not-quite-man-of-her-dreams at the age of 35, Elizabeth embarked upon a unique experiment, attending and rating 77 blind dates over the course of 12 months, in her search for Mr. Right. Her unusual job as a mortician makes for some awkward and humorous moments.

I especially love this quote from her FAQ page:

Did you always want to be a mortician?

After I got over my dream of being a Solid Gold Dancer, I promptly headed into my local funeral home and asked for a job, any job. I became the live-in night keeper. I resided in a trailer in the far reaches of a large, hilly cemetery and slept with a shotgun near my bed. It was the scariest summer of my life.

Tomorrow Elizabeth will be posting over on the Divine Miss Mommy blog. You can find out more about the her other tour dates, and purchase All Men Are Cremated Equal. In the meantime, I’ll hand you over to Elizabeth:

***

When I worked at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Los Altos, California, USA, many newlyweds would opt for a wedding day portrait on the stunning bridge cresting the duck pond. A white limo would occasionally roll in around closing on Saturdays and a blissful couple would spill out for photos. We would stare out the office windows in awe of their random, but breathtakingly beautiful choice.

Marriage is exciting. It’s a new beginning, and for that alone I love weddings. I’m particularly intrigued by couples who pledge their undying love among the dearly departed. A cemetery is a fantastic choice for the joining of two hearts. I was married in a colossal palace in New Jersey, and we did it again in a cathedral downtown Portland, Oregon, but I am a true fan, nonetheless.

I witnessed an amazing wedding a few years back. The bride walked down a rose-strewn path to Trans Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards in Winter” played on the viola. She met her groom who was waiting by the graves of her parents and little sister. She wanted to make the wedding a family affair. I respected and adored her sentimentality.

The bride stood near a huge bush of bubblegum pink hybrid tea roses and wore an off-white silk gown, complete with flowing train. A funky gargoyle loomed nearby. It was all so charming and was indeed a simple wedding at a historical romantic place, as the bride wanted. The ambience was solemn, but the mood was festive. They exchanged vows in
the aptly named Garden of Hope.

Numerous couples love the graveyard idea due to the variety of breathtaking canvases for wedding day photography. Older burial yards offer majestic crypt building, centuries-old headstones, and even some gorgeous stained glass. Many contain a wide variety of trees, natural vegetation, as well as other colorful and cool flowers. Lots of cemeteries have chapels, and a memorial chapel is the perfect size for
a smallish wedding.

I walked up the aisle to Alison Brown’s haunting banjo solo “Saint Genevieve”. So many times I thought about how incredibly perfect it would have been as its luscious melody filled the air of a cemetery.

Dear Wedding Skulls

Help! We’re planning an awesomely dark, fun gothic wedding. We’re super excited about it. But my grandmother (who’s born-again Christian uber religious) . She has a problem with the venue (our favourite club downtown), the ceremony, the dress (red corset and black skirt), the music, the invitation, EVERYTHING. She thinks we’re mocking the whole institution of marriage because our cake topper has two skeletons on it, for Cthulhu’s sake! She’s getting to my mother, who wants us to ‘tone down’ all our awesome plans! What can I do?

***

Eeek. What CAN you do? It’s nice to think your relatives will be there to love and support you. But I know, just like everyone else who’s ever tried to do something remotely unusal knows, families don’t always show their support in the kindest way.

The first thing to assess when dealing with a situation like this, is to ask yourself if you’re guilty of being insensitive. Please don’t hurt me! I’m not saying you ARE being insensitive.

What I mean is – we forget about the ‘normals’. I’m so guilty of this. I live in a Manowar world; ‘Heavy Metal, or not Metal at All’. I eat, sleep, live, dance, pray, love and breathe heavy metal. I talk to my relatives about the concerts we see and the cool things we buy for our home and they just stare with this blank look of confusion. My parents understand it’s who I am, but they don’t always ‘get it’.

Sometimes we forget – because we live in our own insular world of metal – that to everyone else, WE’RE TOTALLY BONKERS. We’re the kind of people Dr. Phil should be chastising on his show, we’re the kinds of folks who only appear in mainstream media when a school gets shot up or a kid hangs himself.

That’s what your grandmother is exposed to, and she’s probably too old and too stubborn to change. My mother (a very wise woman and a huge LORDI fan, so she totally knows what she’s talking about) always says ‘you can’t force a person to change their actions. You can only change your reactions.’

We’re all guilty of bad-mouthing and picking fights with the devoutly religious and dogmatically charged, becuase many of us (CDH included) find this amusing. But this makes the situation worse – it really does. You’re not going to talk someone out of their beliefs, and you shouldn’t try. People don’t react well this this attitude – they feel attacked. And the result MIGHT be similiar to what you’re going through.

So the next time she brings up her feelings on the wedding, say something like this: “If your God exists, he’s a pretty loving, kind and fun-filled guy. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have created this amazing world just for us, and given us the capacity to love, to enjoy and to celebrate. He also wouldn’t have made us all different, so we could love, enjoy and celebrate different things.”

You could add to this statement by saying “we know we don’t see eye to eye with you on a lot of the wedding plans, grandma, but we’re really excited about our wedding plans and won’t be changing them. Please understand that we want the wedding to be a celebration of our love, and we think God will be happy with that, because he led us to each other and gave us our likes and dislikes for a reason. We’re not doing any of this stuff to deliberately get to you or mock your faith. We love you and we want you to feel comfortable at our wedding, but not at the expense of having the wedding WE want. We understand if you don’t want to come.”

Say this once, and never speak of the matter again. If she brings up the wedding again, say ‘grandma, we talked about this, remember? If any of the wedding plans bother you, we understand if you don’t want to come.” She either wants to feel okey about refusing to go because your wedding makes her uncomfortable (which is a perfectly legitimate reason) or she wants to preach – ie, the attention. Let her know the first option is open to her, but the second option is not.

Can any of my readers weigh in with their thoughts? The issue of religion and weddings and relatives is a thorny one, not easily negotiated. I’m sure our reader appreciates any further insight!

Yaaarrrrr!

I might have mentioned this before, but I thought I’d better do a whole post on the topic. Just in time for Etsy Day, Wedding Skulls now has an Etsy shop! You can buy both wedding planner ebooks there – as well as my writing ebooks, and copywriting / marketing writing packages for Etsy shops.

But that’s not the best part. A good friend of mine – Amy Beales – has come on board as well. She’s selling her beautiful line of gothic clothing and accessories, including wedding garters, favor bags, rosaries, coats, corsets, bags and more. Every one of her creations is custom made to your exact measurements, so you can change the colours/fabrics if you desire. Her pride and joy is the Nevermore coat – a stunning red floor-length gothic coat with handmade fastenings.

For those of you who have NO IDEA what I’m rambling on about, Etsy is a network for people to buy and sell handcrafted goods. You can sign up for a free account and browse away till your eyes are sore. So many talented, wonderful people sell and shop on Etsy, and Wedding Skulls is honoured to now be counted amongst them.

Wedding Skulls are also proud members of Etsy Dark Side street team. You can find us on their website, forum and blog. If you search ‘etsydarkteam’ in tags, you’ll find all the delightful gothicky items.

We’re adding new items every day, and we’ve got TONS to add. So keep checking back. We have a special section just for – well – specials, and we’re active in the Etsy forums.

Also, don’t forget that you have only FIVE MORE DAYS of the Wedding Planner Promotion – %50 off both wedding planners when you enter the discount code mmmdonuts or buy through the Etsy shop. Get yours today!

I’m extremely humbled to present today’s Skully Wedding. When I first began dreaming and planning our wedding, I scoured the internet for other gothic weddings with which to draw inspiration. I found very few. One of these was Sandra and Shane’s beautiful gothic wedding. Married in 2000 and still blissfully happy, you can tell from their writings and their wedding website that these two are inspiring people who were destined to be together.

Cemetary kiss

Dear Wedding Skulls

I have a question. We want to do something fun at our reception that doesn’t involve dancing. We don’t dance and neither do our friends. Do you have any ideas for a gothic/steampunk wedding that doesn’t have dancing?

I sure do! You shouldn’t be surprised to know this is a common question. For every person who loves tapping their feet, there’s at least two who find it abhorrent. Non-dancers are rife in our gothic/heavy metal subculture because we tend to be the socially-awkward, ambivilent individuals.

Without knowing too much about your wedding I can’t offer any specific ideas, but here are five suggestions for dancing-free entertainment at a gothic/steampunk wedding.

1. Computer Games.

For the geek couple! Set up a massive Dance Dance Revolution station or a singstar / rock band stage. Watching your grandma trying to strum along to ‘Through the Fire and Flames’ on guitar hero will totally make your whole wedding, I guarantee!

2. Parlour games

Parlour games are perfect for the indoor steampunk wedding. I’ve found a great website of parlour games for all you Victorian lovlies.

3. Exhibit / Attractions

At our wedding, we paid for our guests to travel through four haunted attractions. The actors picked on us – especially me. I got chased by two chainsaw-weilding maniacs through the haunted forest. It was awesome.

If your wedding is at a theme park, guests can go on rides or just walk around and enjoy the evening. You could also have a museum/gallery wedding – always something to look at in a museum!

I’ve seen photos from one couple who had their wedding in a zoo, and another who were wed under an aquarium dome. Their guests loved exploring the animals after hours.

I also heard of a steampunk couple who married on a historic train which took all their guests on a four-hour train trip with delicious food and music. How rad is that?

4. Other Entertainers

Have a look at Rachel and Matt’s Moulin Rouge meets Tim Burton wedding – they had dancers and entertainment all night! What about belly-dancers, modern dancers, trapeize artists, clowns, magicians or comedians? I’m sure if you ask around you’ll find some talented friends willing to step up!

5. Outdoor Games

Your gothic cemetery picnic needs a few black-ribboned hula-hoops, a black frisbee and a lawn-bowls set, and your guests won’t miss the awkward dancing.

Since I’ve recently become addicted to Etsy, I thought I’d have a go at doing a few product features (as opposed to the shop features I normally do). I’ve been finding lots of beautiful and unique items which will complete any wedding outfit, or are perfect as a pick-me-up treat for yourself (you hard-working goth, you ) or a gift for a friend.

This is a bit of an experiment, so please tell me if you like seeing a range of items or you’d rather me continue featuring individual sellers, or you want a mix of both, or none at all.

Gothic Black Lace Earrings, $19, 20% OFF, from peling