How to have a blissfully nerdy wedding ceremony
Are you and your partner both proudly nerdy? Did you fall in love while playing D&D, or meet through fandom? Does geeking out together bring you joy? Maybe you’ve decided to plan a nerdy wedding because your geeky hobbies form such an important part of your lives and your relationship.
While you’re thinking about things like theming your tables around your fandoms, including board games as part of the evening entertainment, and sprinkling in your nerdiness through little details like your cake topper, your decor and styling, your signage and stationery, have you thought about how to make your actual ceremony nerdy?
Have you considered having a wedding registry consisting entirely of board games? (Photo by Madeline Liu on Unsplash)
You might have been to a wedding before and sat through a rather stiff, formal ceremony and wondered Do we have to do that? Or is there a way to make the ceremony more like us and show off our geeky selves?
Great news! I’m an independent wedding celebrant, and I like to think of myself as pretty nerdy - I’d love to help you have the fun, relaxed, nerdy ceremony of your dreams!
You can go as all-out geeky as you’d like - or you can just have more subtle nods to your fandoms. It’s totally up to you. Here are a few ideas for how you can add a nerdy touch to your wedding ceremony - but feel free to do ALL OF THEM to create the nerdiest ceremony ever!
Five flourishes for a gloriously geeky wedding ceremony
1. Play music related to your fandoms
There’s a fair amount of music involved in a ceremony. You (and your wedding party, if you have one) enter to music, you exit to music, you might even have a musical interlude or two in the middle of the ceremony. Why not choose a theme song from your favourite show to enter the ceremony space to? Or that love song from that one musical that always makes you a bit weepy? (Mine’s like, every love song from Hadestown…)
2. Incorporate quotes or readings from your fandoms
There are lots of opportunity throughout a ceremony to insert fandom references. If there are any quotes related to life and love, marriage and relationships from your favourite shows/books/movies that have always tugged at your heartstrings, you simply must include them. You want to pack your ceremony with things that have personal meaning and this is such a great way to do it! No generic, boring script here - we want your ceremony to be based on things that move you. So tell your celebrant about them, and we can work them into the flow of the ceremony where they make most sense.
For meatier passages, ask a loved one to read them as interludes during the ceremony! So many wedding readings have been repeated at hundreds if not thousands of weddings before, but if you pick something from one of your fandoms, it’s going to hit different! 🙌
(Psst… One of my friends read an excerpt from a fanfic when I got married, which was INCREDIBLE, and probably not a reading that’s ever been done at any other wedding! The rest of your guests don’t have to know it was from a fanfic, if you don’t want them to 🤫)
3. Roll initiative to decide who goes first with the wedding vows
You’re exchanging personal vows. How do you decide who goes first? Well, usually it’s random, or whoever’s keen goes first. 🤷 But if you’re avid D&D players, why not roll for it?
Roll for initiative! (Photo by Gian-Luca Riner on Unsplash)
Bring your favourite D20s to the ceremony or D20s that have you have a sentimental attachment to. Or use this excuse to splurge on some brand new shiny dice!
Do you have characters that you’ve been playing for a long time/that you’re particularly fond of? Why not use their stats to decide what you’re adding to your initiative? As your celebrant, I can also use this opportunity to tell your guests an anecdote about your relationship that’s related to these PCs!
Or you can have fun figuring out what your real life initiative bonus would be! Maybe one of you is a lot more dexterous and alert than the other in real life and the other is known for their clumsiness and slow reactions… Even guests who don’t know anything about D&D will have no problem grasping this and you’re sure to get some chuckles out of it! 😂
4. Make your ring exchange a geeky moment
Exchanging wedding bands can typically feel like a very traditional part of a ceremony, but it doesn’t have to be. Some ways you can change it up and make it feel true to who you are:
Put your rings in a fandom-related item instead of a plain old ring box! I’ve seen Pokémon fans put their rings inside a Poké Ball, which is so fun!
Have a meaningful fandom-related word/phrase engraved on the inside of your wedding bands - and weave this into the words you say to each other when you exchange the rings.
Act out a quest with your ringbearer! Maybe your ringbearer gives you a riddle that you have to solve or you have to answer three questions - whatever it is, your ringbearer won’t hand over the rings until you’ve bested them in some way! Maybe make the questions an easy peasy multiple choice though, so that your nerves don’t get the better of you and you fail to acquire your rings! (Or you can try cheeky bribery as a last resort!) 🤪
Do away with rings all together and exchange something else instead that feels more befitting to your personalities! Swords are a good one! ⚔️
5. Include a uniquely nerdy unity ceremony/symbolic ritual
A unity ceremony/symbolic ritual is an activity you do during your ceremony to symbolise your marriage. For example, a sand ceremony is a common one, where you and your partner both pour sand from different vessels into the same vessel, as a visual representation of your lives blending together. But a unity ceremony can look like anything you want, and it should be something that is meaningful to your relationship. So here are some suggestions:
Mix a bunch of dice together! You can involve your guests or certain loved ones by asking them to bring some dice along themselves, and you can pour all the dice together into one container to make a new shared dice collection that you can use as a married couple on game nights!
Lego lovers? Find a simple lego set that you’re confident you can assemble in a handful of minutes, and build this together for your unity ceremony!
Aw, look at Batman and Superman on their ice cream date! (Photo by Yulia Matvienko on Unsplash)
Try handfasting, where your hands are bound together with cord/ribbon/fabric and a knot is tied - this can work really well for a wedding with a fantasy vibe, or you can use pieces of fabric that are fandom-related, for example strips of old fandom T-shirts, ties with a fandom-related print, bits of costumes that you once wore for a cosplay you did together!
Have your celebrant or that cherished friend who’s always DM'd for you (sending my love and gratitude to all the forever DMs out there 🥲❤️) DM a quick D&D fight scene as you join together to defeat a monster, symbolising you overcoming any problems in life side by side!
Pop quiz time! Your celebrant can do some research and come up with some trivia questions related to your favourite fandoms, or you can hand this task over to a friend who shares your interests. You and your partner will answer these questions as a team - and win or lose, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you work together and have fun, a lesson for your marriage going forward!
Work with a nerdy celebrant who gets it!
Now, none of this would really mean much if you’re not working with a wedding celebrant who understands your vision and who will be as wholeheartedly into it as you are. And this is where I come in!
Hi, I’m Holden (they/them) - a proudly nerdy wedding celebrant based in London, UK, and happy to travel! 👋 I craft and deliver inclusive wedding ceremonies that are all about what makes you swoon with joy, and I’d love to create a joyfully geeky ceremony that’s completely tailor-made for you.
Please tell me your nerdy ceremony dreams! (Photo by Caitlin Wilder)
I play D&D and other TTRPGs and I watch and listen to actual play shows like Dimension 20 and NADDPOD, I’ve read (and written!) plenty of fanfiction in my life, I am always trying to get friends to come over for board games, I love anything fantasy/sci-fi, I’ve seen certain musicals 4+ times in the theatre, and there are some video games I’ll hold close to my heart till the day I die. Fandom has been incredibly important to me since I was a teenager, and I’ve made several lasting friendships through it.
Look, I won’t necessarily claim to be nerdy about the things you’re nerdy about - so I may not have all the right references ready to go for your particular fandoms. But what I can promise is that I will be armed with heaps of enthusiasm to celebrate your love story and your specific brand of nerdiness with you!
Get in touch today using my enquiry form
Or follow me on Instagram and drop me a DM!
