When you get engaged, you start planning a special day that expresses who you are as a couple.
And who Tim and I are as a couple is very geeky, so naturally we couldn’t resist slipping a few elements of our favourite interests into the day.
Even better – with Covid we managed to get not one but two wedding days – an intimate 11-person wedding in September 2020, and a big do with all our friends and family two years later. This may have meant a lot of stress and more planning at the time, but it resulted in two equally memorable – and equally nerdy – special days.
1. Our Control Team
Rather than a bridal party, we had a Control Team. Functionally, the bridesmaids and groomsmen serve a fairly similar purpose to a Control Team at a megagame – taking ownership of certain aspects of the day, and making sure everything runs smoothly on behalf of Game Control (or, as they’re called at a wedding, the bride and groom).
On Tim’s side, this was doubly useful. He asked his best female friend and his sister to be in his Control Team, and calling them Groom Control avoided messy names like groomsladies or groomspeople.
Naturally nothing went smoothly – at the smaller wedding only Tim’s best man (Lead Groom Control) and one of my Bride Control could make it, and on the big day we were still missing two Bride Control and a Groom Control due to issues with international travel. But we managed to find ways to involve them, even from the other side of the world.
2. Flowers in my bouquet
Our wedding flowers featured two homages to two very different geeky interests.
Carnations featured in both of my bouquets and Tim’s buttonhole from our first wedding.
The reason for my love for this flower is thanks to Riptide, an immersive theatre company based in Leeds. Back in March 2018, I was sent a parcel containing carnations as my introduction to the Lucky Ones, and they popped up in various other places throughout the experience – in Lucy’s flat in the first Lucky Ones, and in my Capital Experience interview in the Lailah run.
And on the journey back from our Covid wedding, we even received a special Instagram story message from Riptide congratulating us on our marriage and reminding us that “your happiness is our primary concern”. But when we looked the next day, the story was gone… as if it never even happened.
The second special element was my TARDIS bouquet charm. There’s a quote from The Big Bang episode of Doctor Who, by the Doctor himself:
The daft old man who stole a magic box and ran away. Did I ever tell you that I stole it? Well I borrowed it. I was always going to take it back. Oh that box. Amy, you’ll dream about that box. It’ll never leave you. Big and little at the same time. Brand new and ancient and the bluest blue ever.
– The Doctor, Season 5 Episode 13, “The Big Bang”
Right from when I saw it, I knew I wanted a TARDIS at my wedding. We briefly mooted the idea of me walking out of one to walk down the aisle (which Tim shut down quickly), so instead I included this adorable little charm on both my bouquets.
I hadn’t tried too hard to incorporate the whole “something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue” into my wedding, figuring the TARDIS would work for all of them – but in the end, it was only my something blue.
My dress was new; my mum made my necklace using some of the same jewels as she used in my prom necklace for my something old; and on the day itself, I needed to borrow my mum’s lipstick when I left mine in my dad’s car!
3. Our readings
At the small wedding, we didn’t have any readings, which was disappointing because we were very excited about the ones we had planned. Luckily, we were able to incorporate them into our 2022 wedding.
The first reading was read by one of our close friends and megagamer Edward. It was a “Marriage Briefing” that Tim and I wrote – styled on the typical briefing that the Game Control gives to players at the start of a megagame. We found that many of the tips were transferable to marriage, such as communication, following the spirit of the vows not the letter, and remembering to eat lunch!
The second reading was done by two of our Control Team who had been unable to fly back from Japan for the wedding, Ellie and Callum. They donned their outfits that they’d been supposed to wear for our wedding and recorded a reading we selected from that most romantic of sources – Doctor Who!
I know there aren’t many certainties in any of our lives, but Becky, Tim, what I see you in you is the certainty you have in each other. Something I believe in my faith: love, in all its forms, is the most powerful weapon we have, because love is a form of hope and, like hope, love abides in the face of everything.
You both found love with each other. You believed in it, you fought for it, and you waited for it. And now, you’re committing to it. Which makes you, right now, the two strongest people on this planet. Maybe in this universe.
~ Doctor Who, Demons of the Punjabi
4. Mystery at the Wedding game
We knew we wanted to include a gaming element in the wedding, but many of our friends and family weren’t gamers! I came up with the idea of modifying a game design I’d written back in high school – a Cluedo style social game, where you need to see all the clues in order to solve a mystery of sorts.
Thus, “Theft at the Ticky Museum” was born! The conceit was that there is a museum called the Ticky Museum (a portmanteau of Tim and Becky, FYI) which houses all the artefacts from significant moments in mine and Tim’s relationship – but disaster! An exhibit has been stolen! We know it was one of the Control Team, and we know they hid it somewhere in the venue. But guests would need to work out which exhibit, who stole it and where they took it!
During the afternoon reception, when Tim and I were tied up with formal photos, we made sure everyone got a clue card and an answer sheet. By speaking to other guests and exchanging information, players would be able to figure out all three bits of information – and just in case people were stuck, we also gave everyone a second clue in with their favours at the start of the wedding breakfast.
We hoped that even a few people would enjoy it, but honestly I was blown away by how many of our guest got stuck right in, even ones that weren’t even casual gamers! One of the funniest moments of the day was when one of our friends, Thom, came up to my dad shortly after the meal and dumped a huge pile of clues in front of him for them to sort out together!
Just before the evening reception started, we gave Haribo (a homage to one of the “exhibits”) out to all the guests who guessed any part of the mystery right, and we drew one of the seven guests who got all three right to win a prize!
Note: if you want to have a custom Mystery at the Wedding game at your wedding, you can! It’s available to purchase now in my designs section.
5. Megagame themed tables
One decision we made early on was what we were naming our tables. I’ve always thought that a shared passion is a great way to name your tables, whether that’s travel, whisky, music… or megagames. It also felt significant that megagaming was the hobby that brought us back together after we drifted apart following uni. Tim had asked me for a bed to crash at when he visited London for a megagame, and within six months I was going along to the games as well.
The tough call was choosing which games to feature! Rather than going for our favourite games (although many of our faves did make the list), we chose games that meant something to us, individually or as a couple. We had Renaissance and Reformation, my first megagame, and Urban Nightmare, Tim’s first (and a game that he ran, later on). We had all three games that we’d designed: Shot Heard Round The Universe, Trope High and Everybody Dies (though choosing who to put on that table was a challenge).
A New Age Dawns, our last megagame before we got together. Watch The Skies, our first megagame after getting together. The Spanish Road, where we both went BIG on costumes.
For each table, we contacted the game runners for any game components they may have, and scattered badges, counters, dice and knick knacks across each one, plus photos from the games.
There was also the table name, and on the reverse we wrote the story of why each table was named what it was.
Our top table was Not Over By Christmas, mostly because it was very funny to us as a top table name, but also because it was one of the most memorable games, where I may have persuaded France to nuke Germany. We even bought tiny mushroom clouds, but for some reason they didn’t make it onto the table…
6. Arkham Horror cake toppers
We had known for a long time that, rather than the traditional tiered wedding cake, we wanted brownies from our fave Leeds-local company, Brown and Blond. We had a taste-test back in early 2020 (pre-lockdown) to select favours.
We hadn’t originally planned to have a cake-topper. But one day we were chatting about it and realised that we already owned the perfect thing to top the cake! We play a lot of the Arkham Horror Living Card Game, and got particularly obsessed with it over Covid – we even bought a new campaign to play on our original wedding date back in May 2020.
A few years ago, my brother gifted us custom mini-figs for two characters from the game, which he’d hand painted. The characters were two of our favourite ones to play – Mark Harrigan the Soldier for Tim, and Jenny Barnes the Dilettante for me. They had just been Christmas presents, but once we thought of putting them atop our brownie pile, we couldn’t get the idea out of our heads!
7. Board games at the reception
It’s a classic for any nerd, but for some reason we decided on having board games during the wedding at a pretty late stage. Tim was worried about them detracting from the dancefloor and I was concerned about the impact of low lighting and loud music on the gameplay.
But the structure of our day meant that the guests were moved to a downstairs bar for about an hour while the main room was changed around for the evening ents – which we realised was the perfect time to bring out the games! We chose them carefully – just Wavelength and Codenames, which are both great games for any number of players. They’re also super quick and easy to teach, and we asked a couple of friends to help out in case anyone was unsure how to play. We were off getting our golden hour photos taken, but plenty of our friends and family got involved.
8. Just Married escape rooms
Escape rooms have played a big role in our relationship – we got engaged in one after all – so how could we resist including them in our wedding too!
Rather than nipping off during the day to break out of a room, we did save this for the day after – the day after both weddings! After our Covid wedding, we chose Poacher’s Compound by Kanyu Escape. We’ve done quite a few of Kanyu’s games and really enjoyed them, but even better it was one of very few outdoor escape rooms in Yorkshire.
In 2022 we had more options and decided to combine it with a minimoon in Nottingham. This gave us the opportunity to head to one of the best escape companies in the UK, Escapologic, to do their room Robin of Lockskey. I’d already done their fantastic room Curio and this was another excellent experience.
Bring on geeky weddings
I’m firmly of the opinion that, while weddings obviously have to consider what 80-odd guests would be happy doing for a full day, they’re also a great opportunity to take what you enjoy as a couple and really make it shine. Tons of our friends and family said that our wedding was so incredibly us (and in a good way), and we were really happy that we got to share our interests with the people we care about.
If you’re on the fence about incorporating your nerdier interests into your wedding, my advice is to go for it!
And of course, if you want a custom Mystery at the Wedding game at your wedding, get in touch!