There were a lot of important steps to planning a Halloween wedding. First, we had to tell people. At the time, that included some friends who had very young children, and we received a little bit of backlash for deciding to host such an important event on a night when many parents want to take their young ones trick-or-treating. We considered this briefly, but decided to move forward with the wedding.
I also had to tell my mother. I was raised in a very religious home and was not allowed to dress like witch for Halloween, to read Harry Potter, to watch movies with depictions of witches… We were always allowed to dress up in other costumes and go trick-or-treating, but I knew actually holding our wedding on Halloween would be a bit of a different story. But, like we did with our parent friends, we decided to move forward anyway.
Then, we had to decide what we wanted the wedding to be like. Did we want people to dress in costumes? Did we want it to be super spooky? We talked through all these details with each other and with everyone who asked – and we did get asked a lot. Eventually, we landed on a masquerade theme. It would allow everyone to come in a type of costume but wouldn’t seem kitschy.
It wasn’t just how we wanted people to dress. We also wanted to find the right balance with our aesthetic. Did we want spooky? Elegant? Fun? A generic Fall theme that ignored the fact it was on Halloween but focused rather on October in general? Ultimately, we went for a mixture. We have a few spooky decor pieces. Our centerpieces will be elegant. Some of the things we’ll have during the ceremony and reception will be fun and goofy. At the end of the day, it all represents us, with elements that reflect Ben, elements that reflect me and elements that reflect our relationship.
Finding the right balance with our guest list was also an initial struggle. We originally did not want children at the wedding at all. Almost to the point of saying if you’re under 18, we hope you’ve got other plans. We did budge on this a little, and then we made friends with people who had four young children. We decided a while back to allow these children to come, but we ended up having to change that plan due to COVID. I’ll get to that later.
For a hot minute, Ben and I felt super unique. We’re planning a Halloween wedding. How cool and different and special! But we’ve heard from quite a few other couples who celebrate their anniversaries on Halloween. So maybe we’re not all that unique, but our wedding sure will be.
