CakeWreck's Halloween Special

Every so often, CakeWrecks post some wonderful delights (as a change from their usual sugary disasters). Check out this post on Halloween Wedding Cakes - I love these ghosty cupcakes!

Dedalo Jewellery: skull cufflinks

Skull Cuflinks, $80, from Dedalo, mounted on stirling silver bas. The enamel was hand-fired in a kiln.

Cufflinks from the Pirate Bay, $60, from Dedalo. Stirling Silver - oxidised, frosted and polished.

If you're groom needs a skully touch on his sombre suit, why not check out Dedalo's amazing skull cufflinks and Pirate Bay cufflinks. I've seen a few skull cufflinks around the internets, but none as swish as these.

A gifted jeweller, Matt from Dedalo creates these unique cufflinks including dragons, anchors and Fleur de Lys (these are SO Victorian Gothic!). He even does rings and other jewellery to match!

Check out Dedalo's etsy shop or follow Matt on Twitter.

Merry Skully Christmas!

Wedding Skulls would like to wish you a very Skully Christmas and a totally Nekro New Years! Please be sensible and safe on the roads this year, and enjoy your gastrocentric delights.

The blog may take a short break between now and New Years as I am journeying to far off Rotorua to visit my best friend in the whole widest world. I'm not sure what my interwebs access will be down there.

Peace, love and Heavy Metal!

Skully Wedding: Steff's Heavy Metal Halloween Wedding

Steff and CDH outside the Freaky Forest, Spookers, Kingseat Hospital, Auckland

A new feature here on Wedding Skulls is the 'Skully Wedding of the Week' - this won't happen every week, but as often as I can manage. The Skully Wedding will be a feature-length blog post about a unique real-life wedding that draws it's inspiration from all the Wedding Skulls adores - gothic, punk, skulls and roses, heavy metal, rockabilly, dark elegance, and more. To kick off the series, I thought it might be appropriate to tell you about my recent wedding:

WHO BE YOU? We be Steff and CDH, from Auckland, New Zealand.

WHAT MAKES YOUR DAY A 'SKULLY WEDDING'? We decided on the theme 'heavy metal' which encapsulates everything we love - music, medieval and viking history, swords, horror films, gothic literature, skulls, and having fun with our friends - and the rest of the details fell into place. Our wedding venue was Spookers, an abandoned metal asylum turned haunted attraction. Our candlelit ceremony took place inside a multi-coloured circus tent, and we ate our banquet inside a blood-red hall, before we all romped through the haunted house!

The owner of Spookers made this hearse himself!


The 'Bogan' table in the banquet hall

An 'uninvited' guest

TELL US ABOUT YOUR FAVOURITE WEDDING DETAILS: My dress - from Dress Of Your Dreams - which cost only $500 and I felt like a fairy queen. CDH's sword and cloakpin from Wulflund, the groomsmens' velvet cloaks, make by my mum, our awesome cake (made by a friend) lego cake-topper, the bridesmaids' lanterns and our Battleaxe registry pen.

MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT: When I walked down the aisle to meet CDH, he looked like a fierce warrior with his cloak sweeping at his feet. He took my hands and his face lit up in this HUGE smile and tears rolled down his cheeks - I fell in love all over again :)

ANY ADVICE FOR WEDDING SKULLS?: A wedding is two things and two things only - a ritual to mark your union, and a celebration. Don't let yourself get caught up in anything else. It should NOT be stressful or a chore or debt-inducing - it should be FUN.

For more photos see my full write-up on my website and my flickr steam. More photos and inside information buried within the pages of the Halloween Wedding Ebook!

Steampunk Trunk

Steampunk charm bracelet featuring skull, spooky hand and bullet, $40 from Steampunk Trunk.

I adore Steampunk Trunk jewellery! Just look at this awesome Steampunk Charm Bracelet and the Steampunk grunge earring and necklace set! They're a long-established etsy store with some remarkable custom jewellery.

Free shipping in the US, and Steampunk Trunk ships fast - usually the same day you order. All of their items are made from recycled, found objects - watch parts, vintage jewellery, etc. 95% of pieces are one-of-a-kind.

Stay tuned for an upcoming feature on Steampunk Trunk with a few special treats for Wedding Skulls Brides and Grooms!

Reminder!

Just a reminder that there's only a few hours left to get your sexy gothic/steampunk/Halloween hands on the Halloween Wedding Planner at the reduced Christmas Promotion price of $6.95.

Just type the code WEDDINGSKULLS into the box on the top right of your screen, or over at my website. This promotion ends at midnight tonight, so get while the getting's good! Merry Christmas you snazzy brides and grooms!

Pyramid Collection

Embers Coat, $140 from Pyramid Collection

The Pyramid Collection is a pagan/new age shop selling clothing, jewellery, crystals, statues, tarot cards, candles, fantasy prints. They stock an extensive Gothic collection, and this stuff is well priced and Wicked! Look at this beautiful Legacy Brocaded Coat, this onyx and garnet ring, this Renaissance Poison Ring and this Purple Seduction Corset. You have to see this stuff to believe it!

Pyramid Collections operates with a money back guarantee and their shipping rates are reasonable. If you're looking for unique items to complement your gothic, steampunk or skully wedding or you want some dark aspects to your traditional ceremony, browse through their extensive website. I'm sure you won't be dissapointed.

Vampire Wine

Located in a secret vineyard in Paso Robles, California, Vampire Vineyard have been concocting tempting elixers for...several thousand years. Rumour has it that the Vampire Vineyards are ACTUALLY owned by a coven of bloodsuckers.

The Vampire Vineyard offers a succulent selection for your reception table - from the black cheery and chocolate infused Dracula's Syrah to the Crisp, refeshing Vampire Chardonnay to the spicy, red Vampire Merlot.

They even offer Vampire Vodka, Vampire NRG (energy drinks) and Dracola. What will those wacky Drac's think of next?

You can buy online from their website, or visit their Vampire Blog.

Subcultural Weddings for Eternal Teenagers

When we were discussing wedding plans with our wonderful parents, one of their concerns was the lack of 'timelessness' about our wedding. Would we, in ten, twenty or fifty years time, look back on our wedding photos and think - yep, I'm glad we did it like that. Would we look at the red dress, viking cloak, air-guitar photos, haunted asylum and wedding sword and think, 'oh dear, can you believe we were ever into that stuff?'

If you're planning a subcultural wedding, especially one that subverts normal wedding tropes like Goth, Punk, Heavy Metal or Steampink weddings, you'll probably also have to deal with the assumption of regret - from friends, family or vendors.

"You don't want a white wedding dress?' One shop lady asked me as I flicked with disdain through the racks. 'But it won't feel like a wedding without one!"

Urgh.

Subcultures - especially the ones I'm familiar with - tend to attract teenagers. A large number of teens experiment with various subculture, but eventually outgrow their own experiment, perhaps because the mood of the experience, the rebellian, the asserting of individuality, meant more than the culture itself. They might break out their Iron Maiden records every once in awhile, but otherwise, they remove themselves from the scene and assimilate into modern adult life.

But the ones who don't...they're the people like me and CDF - metalheads for life! They're the people for whom subcultural weddings exist.

When you become ingrained in a subculture - it becomes you. Our friends are metal, our music is metal, our hobbies are metal, our morals and attitudes are metal, our lives are metal. We are heavy fucking metal.

The people worrying that you'll 'outgrow' your subculture wedding are the people who don't understand subculture. And that's okey. I'll totally accept that when some people just don't get heavy metal, and they look at CDH and his ripped jeans and black shirts and just can't concieve why he would dress like that when there's perfectly good jeans and non-black, non-sinister-artwork-splattered t-shirts. There are people all over the internet who cannot comprehend why I would wear a red wedding dress.

And all the explaining in the world won't make it make sense to them. I have a well-rehearsed speech that compares heavy metal to classical music, but my workmates still roll their eyes and nod and smile when I talk about what gigs I went to in the weekend. 'Why doesn't she just do normal things?' they think.

People kept asking me where I was getting married and I'd say 'In an old mental asylum that's been converted into a haunted house' and...there was never a need to say much else. You could see the thoughts ticking over in their heads - 'what a stupid idea', 'why would you WANT that?', 'how tacky and horrible are their photos going to be!'

My advice for dealing with the impression of the eternal teenager is to just get on with your life and your wedding plans. You could explain a million times and it wouldn't be enough, so save your breath for more important things, like kissing or, you know, breathing. Just get on with it and bugger everyone else - that's the metal way to do it.

Readers, I throw this out to you - discuss! Have you had any negative feedback about your subcultural wedding plans? Do you feel you'll 'outgrow' your own wedding? How do you deal with others' impressions of you as an eternal teenager? Can you offer any advice to other subcultural brides?

Blue Tulip Designs - Skully Invites

Wedding Skulls invitations from Blue Tulip Designs.

I'm IN LOVE with Martha from Blue Tulip Designs! A self confessed fan of "happy" papers and fabrics, satin and crossgrain ribbons and vintage desgins, Martha creates cute, elegant and fun cards and invitations, including these awesome Wedding Skulls.

The prices she lists are per card, but she offer quantity discounts on both the products themselves and the shipping. If you like one of her designs but it's a bit out of your price range, she'll substitute different papers or details to make your invites more affordable.

Halloween Wedding Planner Ebook Christmas Promotion!

Boy howdy, is that title a mouthful!

My Ebook 'Halloween Wedding Planner' goes on sale today. Yaaarrr! I'm so excited about this ebook - I compiled every piece of knowledge I gained over the seventeen months we planned and saved for our wedding into it's 110 pages. If you're planning a Halloween Wedding - whether its a cemetery picnic or a haunted theatre or a heavy metal rollar derby or a pagan harvest festival or something totally rad - I reckon you should get a copy.

CDH and I standing at the altar. Everything about our day was perfect, because our months of planning ensured every detail came together. Everything I learned about planning alternative weddings I've written down in the Halloween Wedding Planner, so you can have a wedding as wonderful as ours.

If I knew half the stuff I knew now, back then! Well, I might have saved us even more money and had even MORE fun (it's hard to imagine, though...)

To celebrate the release and the fact Christmas (my second favourite holiday after Halloween) is around the corner, I'm offering the Halloween Wedding Planner ebook, PLUS the Halloween Wedding Directory (over 200 pages of website links for venues, gowns, jewellery, favours and accessories) for the DISCOUNTED price of $6.95 (normally $8.95).

So not only do you get TWO fabulous ebooks to help you plan, you get $2 off the price! How's that for a christmas present!

To get your discount, just write the discount code WEDDINGSKULLS (not case sensitive) into the box above the Buy Now button, either on the blog or over at my website, and the $2 will automatically be removed from your bill. We accept Paypal and all major credit cards.

But you'd better hurry, this offer only lasts till Midnight on Christmas Eve!

Want a BadAss, Punked up Wedding Ring?

Skull Mask Ring from BadAss Jewellery

Calvin Munroe at Badass Jewellery creates a bold, edgy collection, including skull, horseshoe and bomber cat rings. For the punk who has everything, he's even got a toaster ring! Badass excel at custom work, so send Calvin your ideas and let him work his punkass magick!

BadAss products are stocked in several stores across the US, but you can also order online from their BadAss Storefront. You can even check out the Badass Jewellery blog for updates and randomness.

Totally Uncorked: test-tube jewellery

I'm absolutly loving these cork necklaces inside test tubes from Uncorked. As a long-time Optometrist frequenter (I've been vision-impaired since birth) I think I'll be getting myself one of these eyechart cork necklaces, which retails for $16 and just looks fabulous!

Other designs include I Read Banned Books, Don't be Trashy, and these totally rad Octopus Cork Earrings.

And, in case that's not enough reason to check out this quirky store, all these products are made from 100% repurposed sustainable materials. She sources cork from managed forests in Spain and Portugal, where the cork (bark from cork oaks) is harvested only once every nine years in a traditional manner, using only handtools and no fertiliser. The glass is science grade - 62% recycled. And the zinc is 30% recycled (from Uncorked's etsy profile.)

Boy of Blue: macabre photography

Warning: Not for the squeamish!

Although your wedding photographer might be your most important vendor at your wedding, seldom is the camera itself given any special attention. Ladies and Gentlemen, for your dark delights, I present Boy of Blue.

Wayne Martin Belger creates functional pin hole cameras made from steampunk pieces, real animal and human blood, bones and organs, 'Designed to study the Beauty of Decay'.

This camera is made from the 150 year old skull of a 13 year old girl.

He displays his photographic work alongside his grisly creations. When explaining his love for pinhole photography, Belger says "With pinhole photography, the same air that touches my subject can pass through the pinhole and touch the photo emulsion on the film...what you get is an unmanipulated true representation of a segment of light and time, a pure reflection of what is at that moment."

You can see Boy of Blue's designs here and even sign up for his mailing list!

Gallery Serpentine: Gothic and Victorian gowns and corsets

Wedding Skull's brides love a well-made, figure defining corset. But boy howdy can those babies set you back a small fortune!

For my first vendor review, I introduce Gallery Serpentine, a Sydney-based company specialising in beautifully-detailled corsets, Victorian gowns and garments, frock coats and bridal ensembles. They have an extensive website and mail-order service, but you can also visit their retail locations in Emore and Robertson (about 1.5 hours from Sydney).

When we visited Sydney earlier this year for the Iron Maiden Somewhere Back in Time show, my wonderful CDH took me down to Gallery Serpentine's Enmore store and INSISTED I purchuse a corset. These are not custom made, but they have a range of styles and sizes for you to try on. You choose the style and size you want, the colour and fabric, and any extras (I added straps and extra black lace to mine), when we returned from our holiday, my beautiful corset sat on the doorstep, awaiting me.

Gallery Serpentine's garments come in extremely high quality fabrics, with beautifully finished laces, bindings, eyelets and details. Their selection of Men's Victorian and Gothic attire will leave the fellas drooling for swallowtails and damask frock coats. You won't find these unique clothes elsewhere and - good news for you US brides - the Aussie exchange rate means these babies are extremely affordable!

Welcome to Wedding Skulls!

Wedding Skulls is a blog for alternative brides and grooms planning interesting, zany, offbeat, dark and distorted weddings. If your planning a gothic, halloween, steampunk, rockabilly, heavy metal, cemetery, concert or otherwise dark and unusual wedding, you'll find product reviews, vendor sources and inspiration galore!

As for me, your boo-tastic webmistress, I'm a freelance writer and heavy metal connoisseur with a love of travel, history and sausage rolls. I've recently married my CDH (Cantankerous Drummer Husband) in a medieval heavy metal ceremony at a haunted mental assylum.

You can read about our wedding and see photos on my main website, Steff Green.com. You can also purchase my 100 page ebook - the Halloween Wedding Planner.

I look forward to bringing you all sorts of delectable wedding goodies, and await your comments, criticisms and wisdom!