The Final Day! Filled with Fantasy and Legend.

Our day...

 Jesse and I wanted to incorporate our geeky, video game loving, nature into our wedding. How was the question! We've seen other blogs who've posted their "Minecraft", "Mario", and "Star Wars" themed weddings and thought they were all delightful, but they didn't feel like us. 

So we pondered...What games do we play the most, which ones are closest to our hearts?

This answer was simple: Legend of Zelda & Final Fantasy

How to incorporate two of the most iconic games into our wedding without being cheesy, gaudy, or just plain overboard, was our question. A question we had tons of fun answering!

1. Save The Date!

This was the defining moment of our geeky decisions. How did we want the Save the Dates to look? We had my bridesmaid, Sarah, do our engagement photos. She's amazing with a camera even though she won't admit it. After getting the photos back, we picked our favorite and added the geeky touch. Here's how it came out:

We also did a Facebook announcement for our family and friends. This was more of an MMO thing, kinda like an achievement. We had so much fun with this!

2. Asking my Bridal Party to be my Bridal Party

This one was easy for me to do. I created cards that folded onto themselves to create their own envelope. The bridesmaids had this:

 My Maid of Honor found this inside hers:

Every girl was ecstatic to open their card up and see what was inside.

3. Our Accessories

Since we wanted to incorporate both traditional and geeky elements into our wedding, we chose to be geeky where it counted. My garter belt was a 2 part garter: A big one I kept and a skinnier one to throw. It's also blue, which takes care of my "something blue". Here's a link (har har) to the garter: https://www.etsy.com/listing/164635223/legend-of-zelda-triforce-inspired?ref=hp_mod_rf

Jesse's cufflinks were fancy gold Triforces, which looked even better in person!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/179713308/18k-gold-plated-legend-of-zelda-triforce?ref=hp_mod_rf

And his groomsmen wore the Hyrule Shield:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/158608934/the-legend-of-zelda-hylian-sheild?ref=hp_mod_rf

Here's a picture of what all three look like together:

4. The Wedding Invitations

This was my favorite part! I asked my very talented sister to do the artwork for our invitations. Thank goodness she agreed because they came out AMAZING! I also had lots of fun basing the text off of Final Fantasy 7.  

Here's the RSVP card:

 My sister did such a fantastic job of recreating the trees from Advent Children! Jesse and I couldn't have been more pleased with how they came out! I would 100% recommend doing your own invitations if you have the skill/means to create them. Ours (for 100 invitations) cost about $100, no joke! It's worth it if you can do it!

5. When Everything Came Together

So there's more fun geeky stuff we added, not just the puny amount I've told you about so far, but in order to show you I'd ruin the fun! Until now that is!

The Table Settings:

Here's where we had fun! Each table was named after a Final Fantasy location, and our immediate families tables were named after Legend of Zelda. They came out so fantastic!

Below is a collage of it all:

"Where's Your Save File?" 

is written at the top with curious little Navi!

Here's what the men's accessories looked like together, the ring bearer got to carry a box that looked like an NES controller:

 I had tons of fun making the boutonnieres!

The ladies weren't so geeky, we all ended up looking very elegant, but it's ok, my garter took care of the necessary geekiness.

These were my accessories:

 The rings:

The girls:

 I did make all their hairpieces and jewelry.

Lastly, a picture of all us girls together, celebrating getting the dress on! It was around 100 degrees that day!

Walking down the isle...

This was the most nervous part of the day, waiting to walk...Breathing did the trick to calm everything down though, thank goodness! My father laughed at me when he heard the song I had chosen. I just smiled and told him he knew I wouldn't have it any other way.

 

My Dad walked me down to "Legend of Zelda Theme Song" by Apocalyptica

Holy moly it was awesome!

After the ceremony (that felt like 5 minutes long), we cheered and sprang off for pictures!

 We were told to look goofy, so we did!

 This was a total surprise! Fantastic!

 This picture was very fun! One of my favorites!

 After pictures I insisted Jesse and I play corn hole, which, of course, was Zelda Themed.

Can you guess: I made the bags as well...They were super easy! I wish I captured how I made them to make a tutorial.

Now...The best part ever...THE CAKE!

Most everyone loves cake, and the cake from the Freedom Bakery was the best cake I've ever had! We chose two flavors: Cookies & Creme and White cake with Mango buttercream! Both were a fantastic choice! As amazing as the inside was, and it was fantastic, what the cake looked like was even more epic. Pictures speak louder than words:

That's right: Final Fantasy 7 cake! It took a few emails and a few visits with the bakery owner to make sure everything was right, but it was worth it! Jesse and I sat around for a night or two thinking about what we wanted the cake to look like...We had the action figures (yeah they were huge!) so we knew we wanted them to interact on the cake as opposed to standing on the top like weirdos. But how?! We came up with the idea that while we know Aeris story is tragic, we wanted to put an interesting spin on it. Which we did :) 

The story behind the cake:

Aeris dies in the City of Ancients in the game. So the cake displays Cloud in the Church (where they first meet), reaching for Aeris. He's pulling her up from the City of Ancients, and saving her from death, ultimately giving her a second chance. Which in a way is what Jesse has done for me in real life.

My Dad's reaction to the cake was entertaining. He had no knowledge of the cake, what it was going to look like or anything, so this was a fun surprise.

Jesse and I really enjoyed feeding each other the cake...Of course I had to do what I had to do...

We also had fun creating what life might be like in about 50 years:

But seriously, we're all about fun and games! Yes games...lots of games!

Lastly I leave you with a few fun pictures we did with sparklers. I recommend you get the metal ones that are 36" (3 feet) long if you'd like to do this for your wedding. It was so worth it!

Don't be afraid to add geeky touches to your wedding! Stay true to who you and your fiance are! Jesse kept asking me if I was sure we wanted to go in the video game direction, and every time I said "I would regret it if we didn't." Stay geeky! Play video games!

Hey! Save The Date!

This was a fun project to take on :) We wanted to take some engagement photos for our Save The Dates. We've seen lots of inspiration on Pinterest, and we were lucky enough to have our friend Sarah take the photos for us. If you have a friend or family member who's good at photography (or enjoys taking photos), ask them to take your engagement pictures. It saves you money and you don't have to be gushy in front of a stranger. Jesse and I found it so much more comfortable to have Sarah capture our photos. She was also the one who captured the pictures of Jesse proposing. 

We took our photos out at Point Lobos, in Pacific Grove. I had been on this one trail once before and remembered how pretty it was! Turns out it was the perfect place for our pictures! We found it was very difficult to pic the one we wanted to use for our Save the Date. 

Here are the other contenders we were thinking about using:

And here's the official picture we chose, edited for the Save the Dates and everything!

We used the Triforce font, which can be found here: http://www.dafont.com/triforce.font

The goal was to capture our dorkiness, along with being cute. I think we did a good job!

We used vistaprint to create postcards (about $20 for 50) that we could send out to our families. It was an affordable way to do something we thought was more practical than putting them into envelopes. We're saving that for the invitations. The best part about using vistaprint was that we could upload our own image to the front and back of the postcard.

Garters, Cufflinks, and Zelda...Oh My!

Finally some geekiness joins the wedding planning! 

Granted, our wedding won't be like the Scifi's "My Big Fat Geek Wedding", but we are trying to incorporate personal geeky touches. Jesse and I play video games all the time and The Legend of Zelda is one of our favorites. Thankfully, Zelda themed items are easy to find on Etsy.com! Somehow...Etsy has become my first go-to for geek/nerd related items for our wedding. If I can't find what I'm looking for there I scour the web (Pinterest, Google, Ebay, Amazon, etc.) for other ways of finding what we have in mind. 

So far, Etsy has proven useful! While there are many fun geek/nerd items on Etsy, Zelda items are the easiest to find aside from comic book heroes like Spiderman or Batman. Although, I suggest that if you find something you LOVE on Etsy, buy it; and don't be afraid to message the seller if you need a larger quantity than the listing offers. 

There was a set of clear triforce cufflinks we were going to get Jesse, but by the time we were ready to get them, they were no longer available. Luckily there were a few other designs we also liked, and it turns out that they go with our theme better. The groomsmens cufflinks were also found on Etsy, along with my garters. All Zelda themed! Yay!

 

There are many more items on Etsy like this, plus lots that are similar. Remember: it's easy to incorporate your geektasticness into your wedding! We all just need to know where to look. Hopefully I'm helping you plan your dream geek wedding too!

The Venue

Originally I had wanted to have our wedding amongst lots of trees...but because we live in the Monterey Bay area, having this type of venue costs WAY too much. The rental of the venue itself (no vendors or nothin'), will start roughly around $5,000. This was the lowest estimate I was given! So we looked elsewhere...

 After getting quotes from MANY places, we were told by many of our family and church friends about a barn located in Hollister. We gave the owner a call, and after taking a look at her private property, it became our venue.

It's ok to change your ideal venue to an alternative vision. I've grown up being a girly girl, and loving fairies, so I wanted to extend that ethereal/fantasy feel into our wedding...Now it's a romantic barn feeling. But Jesse and I have some plans hidden in our bags that will make it as special as we are.

If it's meant to be, it will work out. Patience is key! Admittedly, I'm very impatient at times, especially when it comes to things I really want. So I understand!

Here are some additional pictures for you to check out:

This is the "bar" that's set up. I love how the top is made out of doors! Whee!

It comes with two drink troughs as well. Super handy for keeping them cold!

Assuming the wedding day will be free of rain deposits, this is where we'll have the ceremony.

Isn't that view incredible?

And the nice thing is the barn is just a few steps away. The closer the date gets the more exciting everything is!

See everyone in the next post!

Telling Family and Friends

Here's one way to be fun and geeky! Jesse and I told our immediate family and friends in person. For everyone else whom we couldn't tell in person we made a collage with all our proposal photos and added a caption to it. 

Both of us are guilty of being MMO players. I was a WoW player for 6 years until Cata came out. When that happened a new game called Rift was getting ready to launch. This was when I switched. Jesse and I were only friends at this time (I was dating his cousin at the time), so the three of us played together. We were kind of awesome :) and so geeky >.<

So this collage is a tribute to video games/pc games. Get inspired! I'd love to see what you come up with! I'd love to see it!

Getting Started!

First thing's first:

Hey there! My name is Sharon Snow & welcome!

My fiance, Jesse, purposed to me on January 20, 2014. This just so happened to be MLK day as well. "I have a dream that I will get married...to an amazing man."

We were on a mini vacation to Yosemite National Park with our friends, the Bocchino's. As they are from Florida, it was their first trip out there. Naturally, Jesse and I had to go with them to share our knowledge! Little did I know that there was something else brewing until we were getting ready to leave the park.

As we were following the pathway back to the road we stopped off at a pick-nick bench. I was trying to capture some photos of how sad the water level was, as California was declared in a drought around this time, and Jesse called me over to where he was standing. Next thing I know...This happens:

I was besides myself...Of all the places, and all the times this could have happened, Jesse outdid himself. I feel so blessed to be marrying my best friend in the whole world. 

Plus he got the most beautiful ring! With some help :) Thanks to a website called Pinterest, I had found this gorgeous ring a few months prior for when this day would come. And the nerdy detail?

√(-1)  <3 u

Which reads: i love you.

Jesse got this inscribed into the band, he knows me well :)

Now off to plan our geeky wedding!