My Big Fat Geek Wedding

Growing up, I was never a girly girl. I never wanted to put on dresses or wear my mom's makeup or have the perfect hairdo. No, I was at the other end of the spectrum. I was the girl who wanted to wear pants. Who wanted to climb trees. Who wanted to play with He-Man action figures with the neighborhood boys. I never thought this was all that weird until I, an only child, entered school and was surrounded by a bunch of girls who looked at me like I was from Mars. I got teased for having short hair, for wearing jeans and for liking "boy things." So, to make life easier for myself, I learned to blend in. I grew my hair out, I added a few more skirts to my wardrobe, and I eventually learned to apply makeup. I was infiltrating enemy lines and the uniform of girl was my camouflage.

However, as I grew older, I realized that all this girly fuss wasn't worth the trouble, so I reverted back to my natural state. I was a geek who liked different things and, if other people didn't like or understand that, that was okay.

Much to my joy, when I was 21 years old, I met a guy who had been a closet nerd, too. A Star Wars fan and a Lego fiend, he had hidden his atypical interests from his past girlfriends for fear of being made fun of. But now that we'd found each other, we put our dorkishness out in the open and celebrated the unconventional things we liked. We went to Renaissance festivals, we quoted Monty Python at each other, and we spent our first Valentine's Day in bed together watching The Last Crusade and debating the merits of Indiana Jones versus Han Solo. It was the golden age of geekdom for both of us and we loved it.

My fiance and I dressed up for Harry Potter night at the bookstore he used to work at. He was a quidditch player and I was a Beauxbatons-style groupie.

Unfortunately, three years later, when we decided to get hitched, we faced offbeat oppression yet again when we went to plan the wedding. Everywhere I turned, things seemed to be frilly and ultra feminine, and everyone I spoke to seemed to reinforce these ideas.

"Come on!" they'd insist, as they shoved rose and dove adorned wedding favors at me, "You're supposed to like this stuff! You're a bride!"

And looking around, it was a hard sentiment to fight against. There was so much pressure to pick from a pile of pretty little pink things, I started to doubt myself. Maybe this was what I was supposed to do. I felt just about ready to cave and buy a puffball of a wedding dress, when I realized the teenage tactics of peer pressure were striking against me again. I knew it was time to put a stop to it, so my fiancé and I made a pact—if we were going to do this whole wedding thing, we were going to do it our way.

And with nine days until the wedding, after months of hard work, we've managed to pull it off. Sure, my wedding dress is probably the most girly thing I've ever worn (okay, I caved a little there, but I truly do love it!), but our geekiness is on full display pretty much everywhere else, from our table and escort cards (video game themed) to entrance music (the Halo theme) to our cake (based on Return of the Jedi with assorted Ewoks and a Han and Leia topper).

A full shot of all of our table cards. My fiancé designed them all to have individual characters on the front and a little blurb explaining their nerdy significance on the back.

A couple of individual tablescapes. We went with a bunch of classic games (like Super Mario because our parents could identify it)...

And a bunch of games that had special significance to us (like Warcraft as my fiancé and I both play it online).

Not only did everything turn out nicely, but we're happy that our guests can attend a wedding that represents who we are, instead of some cookie cutter wedding couple. It might be unusual, but it's definitely us and, for a couple of geeks, I think that's pretty cool. :)

Posted by Miss Hummingbird at 4:13 p.m.