Medieval Werewolf Wedding 2011

 This is our Medieval Werewolf Wedding June 4th, 2011. The following pictures show part of the creative planning and construction of various items that helped make our wedding unique and one of a kind. This is not an instructable for one particular creation or item but more an instructable to show how you can create a ceremony and reception uniquely your own by adding special touches from beginning to end. When it comes to creativity, the sky is the limit! As you read through this, I have given descriptions of the photos in the order that the photos are posted. There were so many projects that we worked on for our big day that I have tried to tone it down a bit, otherwise this instructable would be bombarded with too many photos and too much reading material. We planned to have our wedding "Halloween Style" in June, in Michigan, at their annual Great Lakes FrightFest. The bridal party consisted of the following characters: Werewolf Bride and Werewolf Groom, Maid of Honor-Dead Riding Hood, Bridesmaid: Zombie Wench, Best Man-Medieval Lumberjack, in place of Father of the bride: Medieval Knight and an Executioner. We wrote our own ceremony and vows, which consisted of: The Greeting, Giving Away of the Bride, Intent of Marriage, Vows, Rings, Unity Torch, The Kiss and the Introduction of the New Couple. I have posted them in an image type file for your reading pleasure. We wanted every aspect to be a combination of medieval era mixed with Werewolf theme and all the Halloween/Creepy flare that we could conjure. A dear "Halloween" friend of mine and I, got together and created our own cd soundtrack on her computer with various creepy sounds to use during our ceremony. (She also happened to be my Maid of Honor). The cd includes: crickets chirping, thunder clashes, wolves howling and growling and an evil, off key, pipe organ wedding march. At the beginning of the soundtrack when you hear wolves howling, that was the cue for the next person to walk up our creepy isle/path. Click on the following link and you can hear the soundtrack we made especially for our "Medieval Werewolf Wedding 2011": http://youtu.be/AVtSLyAka4M . Two months prior to the wedding we made a trip to Garden City, Michigan, to get a life casting of Dave's face, to have special made prosthetics, that were made to fit the contours of his face, for our wedding. I wanted some creepy looking dishes for our reception, so I took some face masks and cut the top of the heads off and hot glued them to containers and added more hot glue around the tops of their heads and then painted it red to look like dripping blood, with red fingernail polish.  I also took an egg dish and added skulls around the sides by attaching them with hot glue, then painted the eyes, teeth and cracks with black craft paint. My maid of honor was "Dead Riding Hood" and I wanted her to carry a basket with a severed head of a wolf. I took a white basket with a handle and painted the whole thing with brown spray paint. Then I used a can of Great Stuff and put some on the handle of the basket and then painted it red, to add to the realism of a freshly severed wolf head, just placed in the basket. I bought a cheap wolf mask and then detailed it to look more gruesome and realistic. I took a mannequin head and added the mask to it and painted the wolf face in shades of brown. I then glued hair to the face so it would be more wolf like. I used some Great Stuff and added it to the neck, to make it look like it had been severed and I used hot glue to make drips of blood coming from his mouth and neck and painted them with red craft paint and red spray paint. I bought a coyote decoy and added some faux, black fur to make it look like a black wolf  and made a tail and ears out of the same fabric and attached with hot glue. I painted the inside of the mouth/gum area with black craft paint, to make it look more like a real canine. This wolf was used as a prop in the graveyard part of our wedding scene.  I purchased some cheap, mid-length, black gloves and added black faux fur and yellow fingernails for part of my "Werewolf" wedding dress/costume.  I took a pair of my black socks and added black faux fur and some creepy nails to the toe area for my "Werewolf" looking feet, which became a part of my "Werewolf" wedding dress/costume. I bought a three piece werewolf prosthetic for myself that was flesh color and too big for my face. I cut it to fit my face and painted it dark gray and black colors because I wanted to be a black wolf "Werewolf" bride. I practiced my Werewolf Bride look, at home, along with the yellow contacts, to make sure I was happy with the "look". I took a wicker basket and a cheap pair of monster hands/gloves and painted the hands dark brown with spray paint, let them dry and filled the hands with Great Stuff and added a little to the edge of the basket.  I also attached them to the side of the basket with Great Stuff and when they dried I painted them with red craft paint and red spray paint, to look bloody and as if they have been severed. I took several cheap skulls and put a hole through the top of the heads with a wooden dowel and inserted an electric flicker candle light. I painted the faux candle red and made it look like blood running down the top of the skulls. I attached the skulls to the top of tiki torches with hot glue. I made a rustic skull lantern by taking a new lantern and denting it up with a hammer and painting it with red and brown spray paint to look rusty. I took an old, broken, plastic skull that I had laying around and attached battery operated, red, LED lights into the eye sockets and then fitted it into the lantern and hot glued everything into place. I owned a life-size, autopsy body and I wanted to use him for part of the reception food line and serve food out of his abdomen, I thought that would add alot of creepiness to the food line. I gave him a good cleaning and dressed him in some old fashion clothing that I found at the second hand store. I tied some fabric over his face and head, to make him look like a tortured, unfortunate victim. I painted blood in the nose and mouth area with red spray paint. I held the nozzle down pretty hard, so the paint would run. I used some foam insulation "Great Stuff" and added to the abdomen area, to look like intestines and other internal body parts and painted it in different shades of red and added black craft paint with a small brush into the crevices, for depth. On the evening of the wedding I lined the inside of the abdomen with aluminum foil and put tortilla chips and salsa inside the abdomen cavity for guests to feast upon. For the reception I made some tasty sweets. One of the treats was some Skeleton Fingers that I called "Skeleton Sticks". I purchased some skeleton finger molds and I melted white chocolate and poured into the molds and inserted pretzel rods and then covered the back side with melted milk chocolate. I let them set by putting them in the fridge for several minutes and then popped them out of the molds and wrapped them in clear bags and tied them with black yarn. On my computer I made several signs that said Skeleton Sticks and used 2 sided tape to attach the labels to large clear containers. The finished chocolate skeleton fingers were put into the containers and served at the reception. I made round sugar cookies and by using a fork, I dragged the prongs across the top of the cookie, to look like claw marks and put red food coloring into the marks with a small brush. I made some "Severed Finger" butter cookies that were very gruesome to look at. I followed a basic butter cookie recipe and put some cookie dough into the severed finger cavities of the pan, that had red food coloring in them. The dough soaked up the red coloring and when the cookies were finished baking they looked quite bloody and realistic. We built a 5' wooden coffin for the dirt cake/wedding cake for the guests. My fiance' made a pattern out of cardboard prior to making the wooden coffin. He traced his pattern onto wood and then cut the pieces with our table saw and attached them with small screws. I cut out cardboard patterns that fit inside the wooden coffin, that I put on top of the sheet cakes and cut around them to get an exact shape of the cake to put inside the coffin. After the cake was fitted into the bottom of the coffin, I put vanilla pudding on top of the cake and then I a non-dairy whipped icing on top of that.  I cut out cake in the shape of a body and positioned that inside the coffin, on top of the already iced cake. I iced the body shaped cake and then covered the whole thing with chocolate cake crumbs and Oreo cookie crumbs, which I made myself. Then I took an edible, life-size, marshmallow aorta/heart and put it in the center of the chest, of the body shaped cake. After the cake was completely assembled we added Styrofoam sides that were made to look like old wood, to give it that ancient, rustic, coffin look. I also made a two layer, red velvet cake for our cake cutting portion of the wedding. I used a non dairy whipped cream icing and put a layer of icing in the middle of the layers. Then I cut out a section in the center of the cake to insert our unique wolf heads statue that we picked out for a wedding cake top. After it was firmly positioned into the cake I iced both layers and then decorated it with icing borders, garland and I wrote our names on the top of the cake with black icing. I added a few small skull jewels, where the top of the icing garland/swags joined together. Our reception snacks/foods were served in containers I made or distorted for a creepy appearance. I took large black plastic cauldrons and painted them with textured spray paint, and red and brown spray paint, to give them a rusty old look. I inserted large red plastic bowls into the cauldrons for the treats to be served from. We purchased a Werewolf puppy/prop to be in our wedding and I made a basket and a blanket out of a real deer hide that my fiance' tanned himself. I made a creepy pacifier for our Werewolf son. I bought some cheap pacifiers at a dollar store and cut the nipple off and took a rubber severed finger, that I already owned, and cut the bottom off because it was hollow inside and hot glued it around the base of the nipple. I added a little bit of red fingernail polish to the base of the severed finger to give it a little added detail and a freshly severed look. We purchased some "Severed Finger Bubbles" for our guests and thought they were a little too friendly looking, so we added red paint drippings just below the lid for a little more realism and for a more disturbing look. (Hey...if you're going to have a creepy, Halloween style kind of wedding you gotta do it up right.)  I made a Scrap book/guest book all in one. I used Medieval looking scrapbooking pages for putting photos on and made multiple papers with lines on them, for the guests to sign their names on, I used the Print Shop on my computer. They were assembled into a wooden book, bound together with gold nuts and bolts. I made a wooden pulpit type stand especially for the guest book to rest upon and then painted it with different shades of brown spray paint and added some dead looking leafs on a vine for that Halloween look. Next to the guestbook you will see a bone with a leather cord attached to it...my fiance' took a real bone that he found in the woods and I bleached it with chlorine bleach and then he drilled it out and put a pen inside of it, creating a real bone pen for our guests to sign our book with. I went online and created a 6' banner, advertising our wedding. This was hung on the front of the haunted house at Great Lakes Fright Fest. I purchased 2 werewolf posters online, that resemble front page, old newspapers. For each one I cut out a slightly larger type of fiber board, to attach them to. I painted the fiber board black, let it dry and then used 2 sided tape and attached the posters to them. I then took a utility knife and put slashes through the posters in several locations, to resemble wolf slash marks. I used red spray paint in the slash marks and when that dried, I used hot glue and attached black faux fur to look like wolf fur. I cut 6' long 2" X 4" boards to make posts for the signs and cut a point on one end to drive into the ground.  I painted the posts black and used small screws to attach the posters to them. I wanted the signs to look like a warning sign/poster for the wild "Werewolf Territory" that they were entering...Beware!  In fall of 2010, I started to collect wild flowers and weeds that would become part of my bouquet. I hung them upside down during the winter months on my front porch to dry. I banded several bunches together with a rubber band and sprayed them with hair spray, to help dry and preserve them. I wanted to make a dead flower boquet for my bridal bouquet and for the Maid of Honor or bridesmaid. Instead of calling it a bouquet, we called it a "Boo-quet". In the center of the bridal boo-quet I put a goat skull that we found in the woods and added an assortment of dried flowers and several black silk roses. To help complete the look of a Werewolf, I purchased some yellow contacts to give my eyes a creepy Wolf look. When we were setting up for the wedding, we added Spanish moss to the creepy looking trees that already had vines growing into them, it helped make a Spooky entrance for the wedding party. We also put a couple of our tiki torch skulls in front of the moss filled tree and put a red spot light in the ground, pointed at that area, to complete the grand entrance. Our wedding ceremony is about 15 min's long and can be watched by following this link: http://youtu.be/Xhws9FoLNdE