This week’s skully wedding is truly awe-inspiring. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wedding venue as beautiful as this old theater. Rachel and Matt took this remarkble theatre theme and ran with it, combining moulin rouge and Tim Burton wackiness in this amazing wedding that manages to be both elegant and crazy fun!

The beautiful couple - Matt and Rachel

WHO BE YOU:

Rachel Roth and Matt Taylor. Rachel is a project manager at Apple, and Matt is an independent photo retoucher/digital artist

Being sassy on the theatre stage

WHAT MADE YOUR DAY A ‘SKULLY WEDDING’?

The theme was Moulin Rouge meets Tim Burton and there was pretty much nothing “normal” about this wedding.

Floating Charis - man, this looks like fun!

To set the stage, we made a “movie poster” as the invitation, which we mailed in red poster tubes. The venue was a very old theatre space turned event hall, and we asked our guests to wear red and black “festive” attire.

The guests got into the spirit of the day

We made all of our own centerpieces, each one different and inspired by a Tim Burton film or Moulin Rouge. We
designed icons that matched each centerpiece, and put them on the placecards. And the cake was a gravity-defying, delicious, topsy turvy affair that easily stole the show.

The EPIC burton-esque wedding cake

one of the table centrepieces

Icons for the placecards

My dress was made by a belly dance costumer, Black Lotus Clothing, and my groom work a custom pin stripe suit and shoes in red and black. And no silly veils – we both wore hats!

Married!

The flow of the ceremony was certainly unconventional – we started with guests gathered around us at a table, then moved to the formal Jewish ceremony under a chupah. From there, we went right into dancing to a Brass Menazeri – a local balkan brass band. After that it was cocktails,
followed by dinner.

The guests formed a circle around the couple as part of the Jewish ceremony

The jewish ceremony

Instead of a first dance, we had a bhangra troupe come perform. Then it was dancing until our feet couldn’t take any more!

Dancing troupe

MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT:

It was amazing to sit at the table and see my handsome groom across from me, surrounded by all of our gorgeous friends (who looked amazing in their red and black attire). I felt so happy and lucky to be surrounded by such love!

The beautiful theatre dinner hall

Though I also remember when I first saw the cake – it really was well beyond all of my (very high) expectations and I was just blown away. Plus it was delicious – I had 2 pieces! The cake was made by http://www.cakecoquette.com/

That delicious cake again.Look how massive it it!

TELL US ABOUT THE MUSIC AT YOUR WEDDING

We selected our own music for the ceremony, which was played by a DJ. Up the aisle was a downtempo, indian-fused song called Aja: Ode to Sunshine by TJ Rehmi. It just sounded floaty and happy.

Down the aisle was Donkey Ride by Mr Scruff – wacky and funky and fun – like us!

Then we had a blakan brass band for about 45 minutes right after the ceremony – everyone is so worked up from the emotion of everything, we thought it best to put that energy into some good dancing right away.

Live music really added something, and it was like a gypsy dance-a-thon.

Everyone loves the dancing

Later in the night, we had a fantastic DJ, DJ Betsy, who specializes in weddings. She did a great job at getting the crowd worked up and keeping them on the dancefloor. It was a mix of 80s, new wave, and classic party songs that everyone loves, as well as some bits from the Moulin Rouge
soundtrack (of course!). She interviewed us beforehand to make sure she had a feel for what us and our guests would like. Then finally, the last hour was a friend of mine who put together a booty-shakin, bass-pumpin set of techno, breaks, IDM and drum n bass, just for our friends. It was a
great way to end the night!

I don't quite know WHAT was going on here

ANY ADVICE FOR WEDDING SKULLS?

Weddings are lot of work but its all worth it in the end, I promise! There’s loads of inspiration out on the internet – avoid those predictable wedding magazines (I didn’t open a single one!) and check out other offbeat bride sites. I also found movies to be good inspiration (obviously). And make
sure to enjoy every moment – it goes by quickly!

I just cannot get enough of that awesome cake