We’re MARRIED!!!

I did it! I married my BFF on Halloween! It feels pretty freakin’ sweet.

I’m sitting on the floor of my honeymoon suite in a cute little bed and breakfast in Montreal. Mr. Zombie is still asleep, so I’ve snuck on the computer to write a quick blurb about how insanely perfect our wedding day was.

When I was little, I barely gave weddings a second thought. My bridesmaid, Eponine (not her real name, but she LOVES Les Mis :D) and I figured I’d be the last to get married… that is… if I ever got married. So, to answer the common question “is it the wedding you’ve always dreamed of since you were little?” my answer would be: I would definitely imagine so. While I didn’t think about weddings as a little girl… there were many elements in this wedding that I’ve definitely obsessed about ever since I was little: the passion for film, the love of Tim Burton, Halloween, technology and most importantly, finding someone who could share these little bouts of geekery with for the rest of my life. So yes… I do believe that this was the perfect wedding for us!

I won’t go into too much detail as I do want to write a bazillion recaps of every aspect of this awesome day. I will leave you with a few quick highlights that stuck in my head about our day. ANDDDD GO.

– Thanks to my awesome friendors working on my wedding look, I looked so freakin’ burlesque, I gave everyone a lot of side boob tease!

– Mr. Zombie looked hot. Very very hot. So very hot. Hot. Hot. Hot.

– Someone has to upload the video of Mr. Zombie walking down the aisle to THE BATMAN THEME. I missed it, but from the cheers I heard from the lobby, it must have been epic.

– I had never heard so much laughter during a ceremony before. Even our officiant couldn’t hold it in! This is what made our ceremony so perfect… it was genuine, lighthearted and a lot of fun.

– I have the best bridesmaids in the world. Each of them really came through for me from fluffing my dress, to chanting “DEAD BABIES!” with me when I was trying to keep calm minutes before the ceremony.

– The groomsmen looked so hot. Especially Mr. Zombie’s groomsgirl, who was a good sport and wore her tie over her dress with pride!

– epic wedding cake of epicness. That is all.

– I thought I had reached my crying limit when my mom did her speech at the reception. Then I danced with my dad. I was even more of a blubbering mess after that dance.

– Our Repo! shadow cast screamed “EVERYBODY! EVERYBODY MAKE YOUR FIANCE YOUR SPOUSE!” right before Mr. Zombie and I were announced as husband and wife. We love you guys!

– We were so exhausted by the time we got to Rocky Horror… but man was it ever so much fun! Thank you Excited Mental State for ending our wedding day with a bang!

– Seeing all these people you love from different aspects of your life was truly a wonderful experience. Thank you so much for coming, guys!

Mr. Zombie and I have started a Flickr pool for guests to submit their photos from our wedding. Please add to them!

Alright… I think it’s time for breakfast! 🙂 Recaps to commence after the honeymoon!

The Zombie invitation

It took two Sundays and an assembly line of bridesmaids, but the invitations are finally done! 

(sorry for the crappy iPhone photo. I am sans camera at the moment. Will take better photos next time)

The invitations were inspired by the Pumpkin door to Halloween Town that is seen in the forrest at the beginning of Nightmare Before Christmas. One of my favourite aesthetic from the film that I wanted to incorporate into the invitations was the roughness of the lines and the texture in the scenery. I picked a textured black linen paper from the Paper Place and chose to block print the tree to get that feel. I carved two linoleum blocks to make the tree (one for each side of the trifold, which was cut from an 8.5×11 sheet and folded from scratch) and used a brayer and silver block printing ink to stamp the halves on, one at a time. The pumpkin was also made with a homemade linoleum stamp, printed on orange textured linen paper and cut to form. When the ink was dry, it was adhered to the invitation with a medium glue dot. Tada! You have a door!

The biggest pain in the ass about the trifold, especially when you have thick card gravel-coloured card stock glue-dotted on the inside with all the info is that the sides tend to pop up on you and never stay shut. This was remedied with a vellum slip. I got the idea from my mom’s friend’s wedding invitation, who had a similar trifold set up as we did. To add a bit more Nightmare Before Christmas flare to the invitation, I printed a photo of Lock, Shock and Barrel and the words of the famous musical opening lines: “Boys and girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strange?” They were printed multiple times on regular 8.5 x 11 vellum, cut into strips and stuck together with a glue dot. 

The inside is actually pretty plain, I have to admit. Just regular ol’ gravel card stock with black and orange words on ’em with info concerning the wedding. Perhaps one day I will take a photo of the inside. In the mean time, here is our formal invitation wording (which I wrote in what I thought to be something Tim Burton would do had he written the invitation his way):

Dearly Beloved,
An announcement must be said
By proud parents and their children to be wed.

Mr. Zombie

&

Miss Zombie

Invite you on this spooky day of Halloween,
to gather before the silver screen,
then later have cocktails and poutine,
and witness a wedding you’ve never yet seen. 

On the right side of the trifold, there is a small sheet glue-dotted on the flap, which includes our “wedsite”, hotel information, venue addresses and a simplified map that I painstakingly drew on Illustrator. No registry details since we had no room. That info is on the “wedsite” anyway. 

The envelopes were A7 size in a matte gravel colour. I incorporated my silhouette rendition of the graveyard, spiral hill and the treehouse by goccoing the illustration to the back of the envelope. The addresses were printed on clear labels in the Burton’s Nightmare font. Our return address is on the front side and each envelope is sealed with a round black sticker with a spider web stamp on it. 

Et voila, invitations ala Zombie. The whole thing cost me about $3.20 per invitation, which is pretty freakin’ sweet. 

 

What I’ve learned from the invitation making process: 

– always buy extra paper and supplies incase you screw up.
– always measure more than once. Remember, you only have one chance at cutting them.
– no matter how simple it was to make your mock-up, making it multiple times over (in my case, 60 times) will still make you want to kill yourself.
– always accept help when making them. My bridesmaids were absolute super stars helping me make these and I couldn’t have done it so fast without them.
– vellum adhesives are made from the bowels of hell. Glue dots are your best friend. 
– best to wrap the vellum around the invitation as you are doing it instead of pre-folding them. We pre-made the sleeves only to find out that they were a wee bit too small to fit the invitations and had to re-fold and seal them all over again 😦 
– keep your addresses organized! I didn’t and it took me a bazillion hours to track down each one 😦

The biggest eye-opener for me when making these invitations was realizing how many people I actually knew. I had always been a really quiet person with very little social life, but after going through the guest list process and having to make some tough decisions about who to send invitations to, I realize that… damn… Mr. Zombie and I know a shitload of people. But hey, if anything, it really makes you dwell on who you love the most, right? 

Alrighty, off to the post office I go to mail these babies!