The perfect Halloween wedding requires planning regardless if your celebration is one of fall charm or a ghoulish occasion fit for a "monster" bash. Make your All Hallow's Eve wedding perfect by adding your own flair. Find inspiration through suggestions and examples of various Halloween wedding attire and decorations.
The Perfect Halloween Wedding
Once you and your spouse have settled upon October 31 as your wedding date, you will need to begin planning. If your engagement falls over Halloween, you can pick up a number of discounted decorative items. But before you start picking up all those clearance items, you should decide together how Halloween will be incorporated into your wedding.
For some couples, it is all about the holiday. Everything from the colors to the attire to the menu to the reception venue relates to Halloween. These affairs are often causal and fun. More traditional or formal Halloween weddings will add small details, such as centerpieces of pumpkins or bridesmaids dresses in burnt orange and black, to accentuate the holiday without going overboard.
Hiring a wedding planner to help out with some of the more difficult details can really help bring your themed wedding together. You may also choose to plan it yourself, especially if you have a long engagement or are very detail-oriented.
It's All in the Details
With a memorable date like Halloween, you want to be sure that all of your details fit into your vision. For couples who really want to make the most of it, just about anything goes. A more subtle approach can bring out the best of the holiday without making it the focal point of the perfect Halloween wedding.
Wedding Attire
Hosting a costumed wedding can be fun and exciting. Include wording on your invitations or in an insert indicating that guests can dress up. However, making it mandatory could make some people uncomfortable. For those who opt not to wear a costume, have cheap hats, masks, or funny glasses available for them to wear if they so choose.
The bride and groom have a number of ways to get dressed up. Excellent characters for you to emulate as a costumed couple include:
- Frankenstein and his bride
- Dracula and his bride
- Anthony and Cleopatra
- King Louis and Marie Antoinette
- Romeo and Juliet
- Tarzan and Jane
- Prince Charming and Cinderella
Should you want a more subtle approach, the bride could wear a more formal, traditional dress. She could find a colored dress that is white/cream with black or red detailing, or buy a dress and add an orange sash. The groom could wear traditional tails with a top hat.
Dress the bridal party according to your colors and the depth of your theme. Bridesmaids in black, red, or orange would be appropriate, and groomsmen with matching cummerbunds work well with the more traditional attire. For a costumed wedding, you may want to get costumes from a party rental store.
Food
Of course, you want to have a delicious meal to serve everyone. For a smaller, casual wedding, you could serve spaghetti and "eyeballs" accompanied by blood-red punch. Larger weddings may want to serve a main dish that includes pumpkin, or include it as part of a dessert bar.
Of course, the cake is the ultimate food expression at a perfect Halloween wedding. Use a wedding cake topper that features a bride and groom, fall leaves, or miniature pumpkins. You could choose to serve a red velvet or pumpkin spice cake along with the more traditional vanilla and chocolate flavors.
Decorations
Decorate your ceremony site according to the rules. If you are getting married in a religious place, such as a church, there may be stipulations for decorations for Halloween weddings. While a number of churches are fairly modern, you want to check into things like this before you get too far in planning. Candles are an excellent way to make a statement at both the ceremony site and reception venue. You can have black, orange, red, brown, and purple tapered candles in ceremony windows or as part of pew decorations. Tabletop candelabras surrounded by leaves and gourds are excellent wedding reception centerpieces.
Include colored tulle as part of your altar decorations and along the head table. Floral arrangements can include dried leaves and flowers can be dyed to match your color scheme. Black magic roses or orange daffodils would accent a Halloween wedding perfectly.
Wedding Favors
Your Halloween wedding favors can be just about anything you wish. Even if it does not fit into your theme, you can add orange, black, or red tags and ribbons to accent the favor.
Here are some Halloween wedding favor ideas:
- Individually wrapped cookies, in the shape of pumpkins, leaves, ghosts, or gravestones
- Packet of pumpkin seeds for planting in the spring
- Cookie cutters in Halloween shapes, with a tag attached saying "Jane and John were cut out for each other!"
- Trick or treat bags with Jordan almonds in red, orange, and black
- Favor boxes filled with orange and black candies
- Halloween themed key chains
- Halloween candles in caramel, apple, or other seasonal scents
Beyond the Ordinary
While hosting a Halloween wedding itself is unusual, you can go above and beyond just changing up the typical wedding details. If you have the money, time, and inclination, you can really plan a spooky wedding.Consider having the rehearsal dinner at a haunted mansion or hotel. Check out AllStays.com's list of haunted hotels and bed and breakfasts to find one near you.
For the reception, you could hire a fortune teller to set up in one corner and give readings to your guests. If you plan to have a lot of children at your reception, or are forgoing a dance, you could spend some money and hire a creepy magician to entertain.
The ultimate Halloween wedding detail would be to plan your trip to the supposed home of Count Dracula himself. Visit your travel agent and book a honeymoon to Transylvania.
Planning the perfect Halloween wedding may take a bit of planning, but in the end, it will be a night with tricks and treats no one will forget.
