Weddingbee

I have to admit something to you ladies at large - Mr. Hummingbird and I are major geeks.

Sure we look all cool and hip on the outside but don’t be fooled by our natty exteriors - on the inside we’re 100 per cent pure fangirl and boy. The thing is, we weren’t always so open about our geeky proclivities. Mr. Hummingbird kept his massive collection of Star Wars Legos tucked away in large Tupperware containers and I kept my insane knowledge of classic Degrassi High to myself. But once we got together and managed to ID one another as followers of the cult of dork, it all came out in the open. We not only admitted what we were to each other, but we shared and exposed one another to different facets of geek culture. On our seventh date, Mr. Hummingbird exposed me to the pop culture phenomenon that is Mystery Science Theatre 3000 (Pod People is still my favourite episode!) and I exposed him to the joy that is Invader Zim.

So as you can imagine, with two people like this in a relationship, our apartment is not exactly the most conventional looking place. Jabba’s Palace is laid out in its full glory on our living room bookcase, a stack of graphic novels have overtaken my bedside table and our coffee table is cluttered with remotes from our various video game systems (on one of our first dates, I whipped Mr. Hummingbird’s butt at Soul Caliber on X-Box and for our three year anniversary, we bought ourselves a Wii.)

Anyway, after we first got engaged, Mr. Hummingbird, being the sweet guy he is, completely kowtowed to my taste because, unfortunately, to a certain extent, he had to. This was not because of me, but because of the way things seem to work. With the wedding industry, being what it is, so many things are set up around the bride that it kind of becomes an exclusively bridal club. However, the more I began to flip through magazines and notice the absence of groom-related things, the more it bugged me. I mean it wasn’t just MY day, it was our day, and when making the decisions about it, I wanted him to be happy and to be able to make them too, instead of just smiling and nodding while I picked stuff out. I was in the middle of trying to figure out what I should do when I came across this picture on Manolo For Brides:

Not only was it an absolute work of art (because I’m sure the cake decorator had to have pulled out most of their hair trying to get those Koopa Troopa shells right), but it pushed me to see some of the small and simpler ways we could make our wedding include the things we loved. After all, we’re not regularly obsessed with lace, roses and doves, what would be the point pretending we were for a day?

So the following Saturday, while in Silver Snail, a great comic book and action figure store in Toronto, I led Mr. Hummingbird to the wall of Star Wars toys, grabbed a set of Han Solo and Leia figurines off the wall and explained my idea to have an Ewok Village wedding cake and theming our tables to some of our favourite video games. For the first time since we had started talking about planning the wedding, I actually saw his eyes light up and the little boy inside him jump for joy. He was genuinely happy with the idea and thrilled that he finally had something to call his own in the middle of this girly fun fest.

In fact, he was so happy that he offered to take on the table and escort cards*. Check it out!

(We used the names of characters from Mr. Hummingbird’s comic strip for these demos.)

An overview of our early table and escort card designs.

A close up of one of the escort cards. (I totally love the way the graphics turned out.)

A little blurb on the back to explain the graphic on the card since not everyone knows video games.

Another grouping of table and escort cards. Mr. Hummingbird tracked down some of the original animation art from this older game, thus the slightly pixelated character design.

Some more closeups of escort cards. I know the graphic on the Maxine card is supposed to be scary in-game but I think it looks like Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc.

Another card back explaining the graphic. We’ve already started working on these since they’ll require a bit of explanation.

As it stands, I’m really happy with the arrangement. I feel like we’re showing off our personal style in a way that not only works for us, but doesn’t completely alienate people who aren’t of the same tastes. (Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen pics of theme weddings that look like a heckuva a lot of fun, but I don’t think I could be one of a complete geeky purist and have Grandma dress up like a storm trooper).

Anyway, what about you ladies? What personal touches are you planning on putting into your big day and how did you manage to include your significant other in the proceedings?

* Adorable side note = Mr. Hummingbird reads this site and when he finished the first set of demo cards, he was chomping at the bit for me to blog about his handiwork because he was so proud of it.

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