Nick & Barbara’s Pennsylvania wedding took place in August. “We started out telling people it was ‘classy nerd picnic’, began the bride. “But I think it ended up having a lightly late 40s, early 50s DIY aesthetic in bright colors with robots, Lego and family references everywhere. I can remember trying to explain this to our day-of planners for the first time and the poor man told me I needed to go and figure out what I wanted. But this was what we wanted! I like things where the theme isn’t neatly tied up in a bow, and I think when everything was put together it radiated joy and silliness.”
“We met in marching band in high school. We really rocked that trumpet section, and by ‘rocked’, I mean we didn’t pay attention and mostly made fun of each other”, she continued “I awkwardly asked Nick to a dance, Nick awkwardly asked me to be his girlfriend almost a year later, and nine years after that we got married. If our wedding is a testament to anything, it is to how many jokes you can accrue in ten years and to how much we were already a part of each other’s families.”
The wedding was held at Anchor Village, an old train pumping station in the middle of the woods.”We started out with our reception venue which cost us $500. A lot of the choices we made were to frame the venue in the best light and not trying to force it to be fussy. We wanted it to feel like an outdoor family picnic while being both outside and inside.”
“We only put energy into stuff that we really loved (I love color, cameras and polka dots; he loves science fiction and Harry Potter). We aren’t that cool in the first place, so we have a certain amount of freedom to do whatever the hell we wanted, and as long as we are having fun. We saw our wedding as the day we officially joined each other’s families, so almost everything is a reference to someone or some of our own traditions. We posed on my Grandpa’s antique firetruck for portraits, my hair wreath played homage to the one my mother wore on her wedding and I first got to know (and love) my mother-in-law when making tissue paper flowers for Nick’s junior prom. My Dad’s dixieland band even played!”
“I think one of my favorite things we did was making our own seating cards because they were essentially free! We stole a purse-full of paint swatches from Home Depot (!) and we glued them back to back, punched a border on the bottom and a hole in the top. My mom then wrote the names on them. We tied them to the lattice at the entrance of the reception and it really looked great.”
“For favors I also made a name bracelet for each of our guests which we tied to the cards. They were a huge hit. The bracelets were a reference to a necklace Nick had made me back in high school, which I wore constantly until it broke. It was fun to see everyone wearing them and I think they weirdly gave everyone collective license to be dorkier than they usually would.”
SO awesome. I love a nerdy wedding don’t you? And I can hand on my heart say I’ve never seen a bride & groom dressed as giant robots before! Thank you to Nick & Barbara and their wedding photographer First Blush Photos for sharing with us today.
