Dear Wedding Skulls

I LOVE Christmas – it’s such a magical time of the year. Every Christmas I feel like there’s the surreal faery dust in the air. It’s just amazing.

I want to get married at Christmas, preferably on Christmas eve but at the very least two or three days before Christmas. My husband thinks it’s kind of silly, but he’s happy to go along with it.

When we told my parents, they had a COW! They couldn’t believe we’d want to get married the week of Christmas. “Everyone will have to travel during the Christmas rush to get to your wedding!” They said, “The holidays are stressful enough without having a wedding too!” “If you have it on Christmas Eve, no one will come.”

No matter how much I assure them that I’ll do all the work and it won’t be stressful at all, they’re still insisting we change the date to something way back in November! What do you think? Should we had a magical Christmas Eve wedding or do something else?

First of all, have you seen Sassy and Ian’s beautiful Gothed-Up Christmas Wedding? If not, go and have a look and read what she says about planning a Christmas wedding?

I can understand totally why you want a Christmas wedding. You’re thinking of how beautiful it will be:

• everything covered in snow
• towering Christmas trees covered in sparkling lights
• rich, delicious food
• everyone gathered together to celebrate
• Christmas carols (mine would be heavy metal Christmas carols, but each to their own)
• Winter colors, wonder and magic

However, for many people, Christmas means something totally different:

• bankrupting themselves paying for obligatory presents
• Travelling long distances on crowded roads, airlines, buses and trains.
• Shopping till all hours
• Extra hours at work to pay for all the Christmas cheer
• Dieting in preparation for the gluttony to follow
• MASSIVE food bills and lots of cooking that needs to be done
• Cleaning the house for guests
• Sharing their house with many guests, some of whom have Children. Loud Children.
• Stress induced by all of the above

Your parents have a legitimate concern. Asking a family member to squeeze a wedding – especially a wedding they’d have to travel for – during this hectic schedule just doesn’t sit right.

You haven’t considered the fact that with everybody travelling over this period, a large number of your guests WON’T be able to come?

Look, the reason Christmas is magical is NOT because it’s Dec 25th, but because all your loved ones are gathered together and totally celebrating being with each other. That’s what gives Christmas that surrealistic faery quality (I know what you mean about that).

Christmas should be a time for people to be with and appreciate their own families, and I think you should remember that before you ask them to spend time and energy celebrating yours. Weddings DO take time and energy, even if you do EVERYTHING yourself. A would have to RSVP, arrange transport to your wedding, find a babysitter, buy a present, arrange transport home again and attend any pre-wedding parties (like a bachelorette party). While that’s not much on its own, add that to the list above, and you have one stressed-out and resentful guest.

Surely there’s a compromise between having a Christmassy wedding (complete with that faery magic) and having your wedding at a time when everyone you love is more able to celebrate with you? Even moving the wedding back to the first or second week of January would give you that wonderful Christmas season while ensuring everyone’s holiday plans have more or less finished.

Really, what does the date matter? It’s the fun you have and the memories you create and the man you marry, isn’t it? And you can have that magic 365 days of the year.

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.

Hello, poor neglected wedding blog. My, how I have missed you!

Two good friends of mine are getting married soon, in a smallish ceremony with gothic overtones. They have one beautiful daughter, and another child on the way.

This raised the question in my mind. How do you include children in the wedding who haven’t been born yet?

The taboo against been married while pregnant (thereby rubbing in the face of all your well-mannered guests that you DID in fact do the dirty before the vows) still exists in most western society. And while us alternative types think this is all silliness, it might not be silliness to some of the guests you intend on inviting.

If this is the case with your little lump of joy, I might be able to offer a few tips to create a perfect wedding while pregnant.

• Choose a floaty, comfortable dress that accentuates your belly. Instead of trying to flatten that lump with corsetry and lacing, why not be a fertility goddess, a manifestation of your love for one another. I think your child would love to look back on the wedding photos and see that round tummy and think, “I was there.”
• Black is slimming – I’d love to see a beautiful soon-to-be mother bride wearing a floor-length, black empire dress. Gorgeous!
• Take time out for a family portrait. You, your partner, and your children. All your children.
• If you’re going to be heavily pregnant on your wedding day, you need to arrange the day so you’re not running around, being stressed and on your feet all the time. The wedding day needs to be low stress, low maintenance, and fun but not overwhelming. The last thing you want is to do harm to yourself or the baby.
• Acquire some ladies- or men-in-waiting, to attend your needs leading up to and on the day of the wedding.
• All those DIY projects you want to get done? Re-assess the importance of all those tasks on your wedding-to-do list. A wedding is just one day, a party, but planning now for your new baby’s future is more important.
• If any of your guests voice their disdain for you being pregnant on your wedding day, you need to speak up and tell them that’s not okay. Your child is being brought up in a family of love and understand, and you should not have your wedding day tainted with ill feelings towards your pregnancy. Having a child is a wonderful, beautiful event and should be viewed as such. Threaten to remove naysayers from the guest list, and follow up on your threats if you feel certain people are still being inappropriate and offensive. If you wouldn’t tolerate that talk from strangers, don’t accept it from friends and family. Don’t suffer these bad vibes!
• Mention your children in your vows. Vow to stay true to them and raise them in a home of love and understanding. Write your vows on paper and preserve them in an album for your children to read when they’re older.
• Write down your Doctor’s details and have the paper handy with a helpful friend in case something goes wrong on the wedding day.
• Choose a pregnancy-friendly menu.
• Add some awesome alternative baby clothes to the wedding registry list (if you made one). I love Metal Kids.
• And above all, take the time out from wedding planning to enjoy time with your husband before the baby comes, and to marvel over the miracle of life that’s happening inside you.

Amazing steampunk wedding couple!

I saw this amazing wedding on Offbeat Bride today – Ingi and Jay’s neo-Victorian, Steampunk, black and white, garden wedding. I know lots of you are planning Steampunk weddings, and I love seeing pictures of how they turn out.

This particular wedding was held at the Edgar Allen Poe Museum – how rad is that? It’s full of wonderful steamy detailing and loving friends. I especially love the brides wonderful answer to the question “What was your biggest challenge?”

I must say the biggest challenge of the day was when I managed to set myself on fire during the cocktail hour. My dress caught flame while I was in the kitchenette placing the wedding cake pulls into the wedding cake and just like in those now-not-so-funny videos on AFV, I was quickly engulfed in flame. I’m proud to say that I remembered to stop, drop and roll, which saved both most of my dress and myself. I quickly ran to the bridal room with my bridesmaids where we hacked off the burnt portions of my dress, pulled the melted thigh highs out of the burn wounds on my leg, ingested pain pills, chugged a glass of wine and rejoined the party. And know what? It was still the best day ever. He said yes and I couldn’t have been happier.

The amazing dress came from Bound By Obsession (see them on Etsy) and the cute hair fascinator is by Pinup Girl Clothing. I can’t believe I’ve never discovered either of these classy shops before, and I’m looking enviously at the Bound by Obsession corsets and emsembles. yummy!

CDH and I are moving into a new house in 16 days.  This is the first time we will be living in a house without flatmates, so all the interior decorating falls to me (this is not a bad thing). I’m thinking a lot about how to tie the somewhat worn furniture we have to the fresh, new, gorgeous house we will be habitating. I’ve been wondering about themes, and that got me on to thinking about wedding themes.

I’ve always been of the school of thought that any event – especially an event as large and important to you as a wedding – needs a theme, if for no other reason then to tie your thoughts together in your mind, and help you decide which of your seven-million ideas to use and which to discard.

But is a theme actually necessary? I always advise brides and grooms to think of their theme as one of the first activities of wedding planning. But what if that’s limiting? What if that’s taking precious time away from thinking about the complexities of marriage, and placing the focus on the wedding “aesthetic”.

I do think aesthetics are important, because I’m a girl and I like to look at pictures of our wedding and think “dam, we looked kick-ass!” But do some couples worry overly about theme and aesthetics and creating a “look” and a “feel” and lose something of the aspect of their wedding?

Can’t a theme simply be “stuff we like”? Couldn’t a theme be “hey, we’re getting married. How cool is that?”

Lots of Skully Brides and Grooms celebrating Halloween by getting hitched. For your pleasure, links to some of the awesomest Halloween wedding bling around the web:

Offbeat Bride has been featuring Halloween Weddings all month long: You might recognise the couple getting married at this Haunted Heavy Metal Viking Wedding of Epicness.

What do you think of this story? An Elmsford couple’s Halloween Wedding was not allowed at Sleepy Hollow church. On the one hand, I always think it’s sad when people misinterpret gothic / Halloween weddings as jokes, and the people that choose them as Satanists. On the other hand, if you’re having a wedding in a church, even a church in a haunted town, you should really discuss your décor / music ideas with the clergymen in charge of said church when you choose the place, rather than spring them on him so close to your wedding day.

A non-scary Halloween wedding. Not the usual “fall” theme. I loved this.

Via Intimate Weddings, a Halloween wedding in New Orleans. Every guest is wearing a beautiful costume!

Details about a wedding held in a funeral home. Sadly lacking in pictures, however, their pumpkin wedding cake is to die for.

Another photoless Halloween Wedding blog feature. Lots of cool ideas though.

Inspired by This has a tribute to Halloween Wedding Details. Inspiring stuff!

CakeWrecks Sunday Sweets feature amazing cakes (as opposed to the usual horrific ones). Check out her Halloween cakes this year. She’s also done a Sunday Sweets post on Twilight Cakes.

Halloween Reception Room video.

Another Halloween Reception.

A spider web wedding cake, from Mike and Brooke Jones’s Halloween wedding.

Happy Halloween everybody – I hope you all had a spooky weekend. CDH and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary on Sunday, with an exchange of gifts (Pandora beads and a book on building model trains), a pub lunch, looking at houses to rent, a kick ass bbq hosted by friends, cupcakes, “eyeballs”, cardboard guitars, silly talk, and a Halloween gig to top it off.

I’m happy to announce the winners of the Halloween Competition are Darkangelwingz and Malice Ann – a copy of the Halloween Wedding Planner is winging it’s way to you ladies today!

I’m behind on work, blogging and writing at the moment, and I’m desperately searching for a place for CDH and I to live. Posts here might be sparse until I can get my life back on track.

Have a Skully day!
Steff