Last October I got married. Now, I knew I had found the right person when, having just found out my parents were going to throw us a wedding, my husband Rob looked at me mischievously. He paused for a long moment like he was trying to figure out how to phrase something, and then he asked, “I was thinking, if we’re going to have a big reception, how about a Halloween wedding?”. Never has someone more clearly read my mind! So, I present to you, our Halloween wedding!

So, it fell to me to design our wedding. And it came to be that it was up to me, and mostly ONLY me, to create it and make it happen. The first thing that really helped was, the Internet. I really feel the desire to just generally thank Pinterest and Etsy for giving those of us who are more “alternative” a wonderful outlet to find each other.

I set to work. For this first half of this post I want to show you my decorations. Working with a few general themes, I came up with a overall design. Doing this wedding was the most expansive project I’ve ever done. I’ve done jewelry for a bridal party, worked on some commissioned favors, and I’ve made some of my own displays and things for shows, but this was...HUGE.

So, let’s start with something small. This simple votive holder. Purple and black were my main colors, because they are my favorite. I got a case of simple purple glass votives and dressed them up with two bands of black rhinestones and a custom printed label. I did about 72 of them.

before and after blinging!

Another thing that really had to be produced in large numbers were the wedding favors. I couldn’t let the favors just be something simple and boring, everyone knows I make jewelry! Luck and comprise came into play here. Originally I had ordered these kinda cute, coffin shaped, favor boxes, but they weren’t “just right”. I was also reminded by my brother, coffin and casket imagery upsets my mother. Well, I truly did not want to that, so I went back on the hunt for a gothy, cool alternative.

Surely, it should come as no surprise that I like bats.

I like them just a little bit!

I found these wonderful bat-wing favor boxes. I blinged them up a bit with some purple rhinestones, lined them with light grey tissue paper and put in little, purple, organza drawstring bags. I put some tasty purple candy gems in them. I used the bags drawstring to attach the handmade favor. My thought was, a little for now (the candy) a little for latter ( the charm). I will talk about the charm itself in the next post.

The favor box, with friend!

Now, the biggest part of any wedding table arrangement is the centerpiece. Me, being me, managed to pick the most expensive flowers I could. I wanted purple roses and black calla lilies. So, to keep costs down, and not lose the theme, my florist hooked me up with some florist-grade synthetic purple roses. These are not your craft store fake flowers, these are the ones florists use to make their displays. I found these really excellent Halloween themed apothecary bottles at Michael’s craft store. They helped take a huge chunk of the work I had to do out of the way, because they were exactly what I was going to make to on my own. They just needed a little touch of bling, and voila!  I added little, rain drop shaped, rhinestones to some of the rose petals and I had the floral part of my centerpiece.

But I wanted more. I took these really cool, black glitter, foam core candelabras I got from a Halloween retailer and added large rhinestone gems to the “flames” so they would catch the light of the votive candles and the room light. I got them in two sizes, big and small, so I would have ones that “fit” everywhere.

Then, to really bring the Halloween, I painted these paper mache skulls pearl white and put purple acrylic gems in the eyes. I was thinking of how a witch’s table always seems to have a skull on it somewhere.

And so, this is the whole centerpiece arrangement

The next big table design I really needed to tackle was the gift table. Now, what Halloween is complete without a pumpkin? I found a lot of cool ideas. But, you know how is, “if I only had more time!”. One idea I knew I definitely wanted was a monogrammed pumpkin.  I had to figure this one out for myself. I was kind of lucky, as “K” is a pretty easy letter, because I could NOT find a rhinestone letter in the right size! But, I think it came out pretty good! I love these white pumpkins!

I wanted to use the pumpkin, and one of the smaller black glitter candelabras as the centerpiece for the gift table.

For the gift boxes themselves, I found these really neat blank paper mache book boxes. It’s a cardboard box that looks like a book that you can customize. I have to admit that, by this time, things were getting pretty close. I had “big plans” for the boxes, like labeling them with the names of famous, “evil” books like the “Necronomicon” and “To Serve Man” (from the Twilight Zone), but I also needed to get done!

The gift table with the pumpkin, the "books" and the small candelabra 

So, what I did was, on the spine, to help everyone to know where to put their gift cards, I stenciled “Thank You” and decorated in a general Halloweeny way. The one I’m most proud of is the one with the medallion on it. I had found these really cool, felt, coasters. They were a swirly design with a skull in the middle. They were black felt, so to make them stand out I painted them with a base of white pearl paint and a top coat of silver paint. I used it as the center of one “book” and used rhinestone flourish designs on the corners.

And in this picture, you can see the stenciling I did on the "book" spines.

Lastly, there is the cake topper. Well, that’s actually kind of something I had been mulling over since day one. I had once used some Playmobil figures to make a custom “Big Lebowski” cake topper for a friend's wedding.

The Dude abides! 

I thought of doing something like that again. Or, if, I couldn’t think of, or find anything else, I had these:

Such a cute couple! 

But, none of that was to be. While out at the craft store, looking for supplies and inspiration, my friend spotted the perfect cake topper. It wasn’t even designed to be a cake topper, just a little bit of Halloween statuary. But, it fit into our wedding theme so well, I just had to bring it home with me!

And this lovely, eternal, couple kept watch over our beautiful cake all night!

And lastly, a picture of the whole cake!

Not only was it beautiful, it was delicious! 

I want to thank Palermo’s Bakery for our amazing cake! I also want to thank our amazing photographer, Colleen at Astonishing Portraits for the wonderful pictures! Not only did she make our wedding look FABULOUS, but she made this post possible by capturing most of these pictures of my work!

The next post is all about the jewelry and the bling! I hope you’ve enjoyed this. Wedding season is upon us, and I just want to remind everyone, do what YOU want! It’s your day, claim it!