I love a couple who buck wedding traditions all in the name of having a fun, memorable party. Helan and Scott started their wedding with a traditional church ceremony. But their wedding reception was anything but traditional …

"Till death do us part ..."

Who be you:

Mr. & Mrs. Scott A. Ziegler of Hellertown, Pennsylvania. Scott works for the borough of Hellertown and I am a stay at home mom. We both are Volunteer firefighters for Leithsville Volunteer Fire Company. That’s how we met.

Arriving in style - the bride and her attendants in the firestruck!

What made your day a “Skully Wedding”:

We decided to do a Halloween themed reception. Our wedding ceremony was a regular ceremony held in a church. My original plan for our picture site was a cornfield with a cemetery background, but it poured on the day so I had to find an alternative that morning. I remembered a “Haunted Bridge” that I used to go to when I was younger. So we went there instead.

Helen and Scott's "haunted tunnel" wedding photo shoot

Our reception was held at “The Leithsville”. We are members of the fire company, so it was perfect for us. We could take all the time we needed to decorate (which took us a week and we still didn’t have time to do everything). We decorated it like as though we were going to a Halloween party.

tables adorned with candles and skeletons. The favors were candied apples made by Helen and Scott

Tell us about your favorite wedding details:

Our invitations set the mood for our reception. The invitations for the reception were done just like a Halloween party.

The reception invitations - different from the traditional ceremony invites - set the mood for the whole evening

I gave all my girls Mardi Gras masks as their gifts for them to wear. My husband and I dressed up in costumes. He was the grim reaper and I was a demon bride. Our 2 year old daughter was a devil.

When you first entered the hall you walked into a foyer decorated like a dungeon, from there you entered a spider lair, equipped with spider eggs hanging from the ceiling and a 12 foot web. Greeting you through an archway was a decapitated bride and a creepy groom, both were animated. Our banquet table had skeleton tongs, bleeding tablecloth and mice in food cans.

The "Dungeon" front entrance with the skeletal-hand seating cards

The two animatronic 'greeters' at the entrance to the reception.

My brother gave us a beautiful ice sculpture of a black cat on a pumpkin as a wedding gift. Our cake was a 4 tier cake that I made myself. The top three layers were fake and the bottom was real so we would have something to cut into. Our topper was a skeleton bride & groom kissing with the saying ” Love never dies”.

What halloween wedding would be complete without a kick-ass ice sculpture?

Helen made this stunning wedding cake herself. The top three layers are styrofoam, and the bottom layer is edible.

For our guests that dressed in costumes we had an award ceremony and gave out plastic trophies. A little something for them to remember our wedding for years to come.

I think many of the wedding guests ALMOST outdid the couple with their amazing costumes

Tell us about the music at the wedding:

Our music for the night was a mixture of regular music and Halloween music. I had the D.J. play Halloween music for the cocktail hour and for dinner. Our wedding party entered the reception to “Don’t fear the reaper” and we walked in to the theme for the WWF Undertaker with the bells ringing and had a fog machine. I had him play the Adams family song during dinner and I had two guests who dressed up as Gomez and Morticia get up in the middle of dinner and dance to the song!

To see more pictures you can go to our Halloween Junkie MySpace page.

Most memorable moment:

The whole night was memorable, but there are two things that I’ll remember for ever. I would have to say that when we first walked and saw how many of our guests dressed up and to have them come up to us during the reception and tells us that this was the most unique and memorable wedding that they’ve been to and that they were having a blast.

Toasting glasses Helen made with dollar-store glasses and polymar clay

But the MOST MEMORABLE moment I think would have to have been when myself and my bridesmaids did the Thiller dance. Only about 4 people knew we were planning to do it. When we finally did the dance most of my bridesmaids were intoxicated ( they needed the beverages to give them the nerves to go through with it) which made the whole thing even more hilarious! I have it all on DVD!

Any advice for wedding skulls:

My advice for anyone planning a Halloween or any type of themed wedding is to have fun planning and go with what your heart and guts tell you. Don’t worry about what everyone else would do or think. This is your special day. Just do it! Just make sure you plan out what you want to do and have a budget, it can get expensive. I made most of my stuff and collected a lot over the years, but what I did buy added up pretty quickly. If you plan ahead you can get the stuff right after halloween or in the off season cheaper when it’s on sale. At a Halloween wedding, you can use the decorations ever year after and always remember your wedding! That’s the excuse I gave! How many other people can reuse what they bought for the wedding day?

Now THIS is wuv