I found this beautiful casual renaissance / medieval wedding on flickr and HAD to show you. Lucky for you, Lauren, the bride and and woman in-charge of this gorgeous wedding, has sat down and answered some of my curious questions. Read on!

That is one gorgeous wedding party!

Who Be You?

Greg, IT fix-it man and Lauren, at-home mum and craft addict.

What made your day a Skully Wedding?

Neither of us thought we’d ever get married, both of us have a hard time doing things that society expects of us just because it’s the norm. We were both happy to live together in the knowledge that we loved each other and there was no-one else, but when I got pregnant and had Dylan I felt a little differently. I wanted to really unify our little family and even though having our union legally recognised shouldn’t make that much of a difference (I tend not to care what other people think, most of the time) I felt it was important to get married. Greg was happy to do whatever made me happy, and I think he enjoys calling me ‘wifey’ anyway!

Making it all legal

We’re pretty laid back as a couple, and while I’m ok with being the centre of attention in small doses, neither of us really like being the complete focus of anything. So, we wanted our wedding day to be fairly casual and definitely not have all the usual pomp and ceremony associated with weddings. We took it back to the bare bones of what a wedding is all about, what was actually needed for it to happen, then just added our own personal preferences to everything.

I did most of the planning, Greg is fairly agreeable and once I started to show him that weddings weren’t all white dresses and ribbons, he really got into the plans and wanted to know what I’d done and gave his 2 cents worth.

It was never going to be a white wedding in a church, while both of us were raised as Catholics we’re not practising, and our lifestyle is at odds with almost all their teachings – so anything other than a civil ceremony would be bold-faced hypocrisy! Our original idea was going to be an outdoor civil ceremony with a spit roast (ye olde medieval style) afterwards, but the practicality of it was difficult, the national park wouldn’t allow open fires and it was a November wedding, which is Spring here in Australia and we couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t a) rain or b) be too damn hot for roasted meats. Eventually we went with a community hall that had a courtyard out the back, so we could have the ceremony inside if it suddenly poured down. Plus, we wanted the wedding and reception to be at the same location, many guests were family from interstate so we didn’t want to drag them from place to place when they didn’t know where they were going.

aawwwwwwww

There was no ‘giving away the bride’, seemed a bit silly when we’d been living together for 6 years and had a 2 year old son. Besides, I have both a father and a step father and wouldn’t have been able to make a choice between them anyway. So we decided to walk down the red carpet as a family instead.

the whole family walking the red carpet together

Sticking with the informal feeling of the day, we didn’t have any speeches either, I’d been subjected to too many uncomfortable drunken ramblings at other weddings and didn’t want to suffer the same fate myself, or force the terrifying act of public speaking upon any of my loved ones. Besides, we’re all pretty upfront with our feelings and everyone knows where they stand with us!

We opted for cocktail style catering, so everyone was spared the drama of table placements and stood or sat wherever the mood took them.

We wanted a no-fuss kind of day, and the vibe was that of a family bbq (once the ceremony and photos were done with) so I think we got it right.

Tell us about your favourite wedding details?

Firstly, the dress – it was never, ever going to be an all-white affair reminiscent of a meringue. I spent days and days searching the Internet for designs I liked, and trawled ebay for second-hand medieval themed wedding dresses. Typing in ‘wedding’ instantly made the dresses monstrously more expensive than I’d imagined, even the second-hand ‘worn once only’ numbers (duh – it’s a wedding dress, where else would you wear it?). This was a lesson I learned early; never tell anyone what you’re looking for is for a wedding, otherwise the price will, at the very least, triple.

Lauren's beautiful ren faire wedding dress

Eventually I dropped the ‘wedding’ out of my eBay search and came up with lots of LARP and renaissance fair costumes, which was really more what I was looking for. After much searching, I got a gorgeous burgundy crushed panne velvet and white satin dress from larp-fashion.de ( http://www.larp-fashion.de ), and a hoop skirt from eBay as well, to really show off the fullness of the dress.

We both had our rings custom made, mine was based on the old Victorian style with gold filigree with rubies and black sapphires (red and black are my colours). I was so excited about it that I kept taking it out of the box to look at it! Greg got a very modern blue Titanium one online from Gillett’s Jewellers, (http://gilletts.com.au/custom_titanium_rings.htm) he spent many nights playing with their ‘design your own ring’ program before he actually chose one.

A lot of the wedding was DIY, it was the only way to get what we wanted and it really imprinted ‘us’ on the wedding. The invites and thank you’s were all handmade by me using a home printer and my scrapbooking supplies, I found these gorgeous tiny black and white rose cameos on Etsy that I put on the invite, and stuck some self-adhesive magnet squares on the back so that they could be stuck straight onto the fridge. I also made the tablecloths and runners, guestbook (scrapbook style), the bouquets, decorations, bonbonierre (2 flavours of fudge!), altered the bridesmaids dress myself, I even made vegan food for two of our friends since the caterers couldn’t guarantee their vegetarian options were 100% vegan. We had a lot of help from our friends too, 2 of my best friends and their husbands set up the hall in the morning, another friend made the wedding cheesecake tower and her husband DJ’d for us.

cheesecake tower! That does look delicious!

Our photos were taken by my friends mother, she did a stunning job and I then scrapbooked the photos myself, too. It was a lot of work but we were glad we did it our way, everything about the day was styled to our tastes, and everyone commented on how ‘us’ the whole day was.

Two of the most talked about things on the day (other than my dress) were the cheesecake tower and the drink machine filled with frozen Black Russian.

Most memorable moment?

Reaching the end of the red carpet, I noticed my friend of about 20 years had disappeared…it later turned out that he’d jumped in his car to find a store open late on a Sunday afternoon that sells some special type of speaker cable, because apparently the ones supplied with the hall weren’t working properly and were making funny noises. I didn’t notice, since I was trying not to fall off my heeled boots, but our DJ friend was about to have a panic attack and his wife held the cable in place so the sound wouldn’t drop out as we walked down the red carpet. When they told me all this afterwards I was so blown away that our day was that important to our friends that they’d go all out to help us.

Tell Us About the Music at your wedding?

It was varied, and it was probably the only part of our wedding day where we really factored in other people’s preferences! My tastes range from Marilyn Manson to Tori Amos, to 80′s electro and The Cure. Greg prefers Tool, but we both like dance music.

Eventually we sat down and discussed things that were definitely out (ok so that’s NO to Cradle of Filth due to the high Grandparent attendance rate) and wrote a list of things that were fine for everyone, like the 80′s stuff and limiting Tool to quieter tracks and the The Smiths to the more ‘upbeat’ songs (if there is such a thing). After discussing it with our DJ friend and getting all the tracks we wanted, he set it all up on his laptop, programmed into playlists appropriate to the different stages of the afternoon.

We walked down the red carpet to the orchestral version of Nothing Else Matters by Metallica, not only because it sounds pretty but the lyrics were really relevant. Throughout the signing of the registry and before the ceremony, we played quieter, more mellow songs like Newton Faulkner’s cover of Massive Attacks’ Teardrop, and the Smashing Pumpkins cover of Landslide.

After all the photos were done we took it up a step, making it a more party mood with the 80′s pop and tamer metal, then towards the end a few dance tracks ended up in there too. I chose a few songs that held special meanings for some people there on the day, private jokes and stuff like that, so even though not all my family and close friends had a special job for the wedding, they knew they were included too.

Any advice for Wedding Skulls?

Try not to take it too seriously, yes it’s a big important day but in the grand scheme of things, it’s just one day. Make it fun, make it about you and if people are going to get bent out of shape because your cake isn’t fruitcake covered in white marzipan, more fool them.

bride in boots! I love it!

Also, be flexible too, we had a big drama with a double-booked hall and an uncompromising bride which awoke the Bridezilla in me for about 10 minutes, but once I realised that the hall in question would soon be losing it’s beautiful mountain view to land development I thought, well that’s karma for you sweetcheeks, and arranged somewhere else.