The Story of our Marvel-ous Wedding
After eleven years together, Andy and I were lucky enough to get married on October 15th, 2016 in a MARVELous Captain America themed wedding in front of all our friends and family. Yes, friends, that makes today our second anniversary. Our ceremony and reception were held at a local museum in our hometown of San Jose, California just a few blocks from where we graduated college together at SJSU. We took our engagement photos there and at San Jose City Hall. If you missed our post about our Marvel-themed engagement shoot, you can read it here.
On our wedding day, we spent most of the day getting ready across the street at The Fairmont Hotel which was absolutely gorgeous and incredibly accommodating. They were awesome enough to let us keep our dogs, Crush and Coco with us. They even helped us coordinate getting items to the venue due to rainy weather. At the time, Downtown San Jose was hosting the Bacon Festival, so I had to pretty much walk through the festival to get from the hotel to the venue. Patti's Perfect Pantry in Morgan Hill, a 100% gluten-free restaurant and bakery, took care of all my gluten-free needs for breakfast and lunch that day. A well-fed bride is a happy bride! We had our family friend's catering company do all our wedding food. They made sure that I was fed safely that night and kept my special wine flowing. Andy surprised me a few weeks before our wedding with a special case of Nocking Point Wine's collaboration with Jared Padalecki from Supernatural. It has now been dubbed our "wedding wine" and we will be opening another bottle tonight!
To achieve the perfect Marvel wedding, we had to enlist many vendors and family members to help. My wedding dress was from Allure in the Madison James collection. It was actually the first dress I ever tried on at Elegant Lace. I knew it was the one from the moment I put it on. A lot of my friends were not expecting the princess look but it was exactly what five-year-old Shannon has always wanted. I never felt so gorgeous in my life and that's all thanks to Kim Baker's amazing makeup talents and Krista Walton's fabulous hair expertise. Krista spent over a year and a half getting my hair healthy and the color to the custom purplish-red wine color it is now. In addition, Kim went out of her way to make sure all my allergies were addressed which was a huge concern for me. I went for a classic Agent Carter makeup look which Kim nailed! All of my bridesmaid's dresses were ordered from David’s Bridal. I wanted them to be comfortable and in something that they could wear again! I have been in enough weddings to know that spending a fortune on an ugly dress is no fun. My flower girl's dress and all our shoes were custom made from various Etsy stores! I seriously could not have done this wedding without the help of the Etsy community. I've listed below as many of the stores as I could! Our rings are actually also custom pieces made by our favorite local family jeweler. Andy had a custom engagement ring made from all emails I sent him of "rings I liked" over the past 10 years. I love all the intricate details and classic look it has. I choose to have my wedding band be very plain just so that my engagement ring could shine and the side details could be seen. Andy's wedding band is a carbon copy of his father's wedding band. It meant a lot to him to have a piece of his dad with him now. The groomsmen’s tuxedos are all from Men’s Wearhouse as well as the ushers and ring bearer's tux. We went with superhero socks and cufflinks for each of the groomsmen. They got to choose their favorite Marvel character. We found the cufflinks through Etsy stores and the socks on Amazon! Our godson, the ring bearer, even had custom Marvel superhero vans! The light-up Shield briefcase that he is carrying was our ring box and was borrowed from a The Game of Nerds staff member.
Our favorite decoration of the ceremony was the aisle runner. I had found a literary version of it on Pinterest and spent WEEKS getting it the way I wanted it. It probably has close to 50-75 Marvel comic books on it. All decorations, designs, signs, and favors were created by my mother's party business and myself. I wanted really unique flowers and Touch of Love knocked it out of the park. We had never seen blue roses until we saw them in their shop! But the real hero of this wedding story is our favorite future sister in law Lyndsey, she got the entire wedding set up, told everyone exactly what to do, got herself ready, and was helping me down the aisle without a drop of sweat. The girl deserves a damn purple medal for everything she did that day. Andy and I are forever grateful for her help. We got married in the upstairs level of the museum that way the downstairs reception could continue to be set up. After we got married, we took our favorite shots of the entire wedding on the roof of the museum while everyone snacked on appetizers!
Once everything was ready, our reception began in the lower level of the museum with the exhibits. Our guests were able to party and play! We had a blast eating, dancing, and exploring all the different things in the museum. We wanted to make sure all of the kids I nannied and the little ones in our family could all come to have a blast. At one point, we had a massive Conga line to “Jump in the Line” by Harry Belafonte.
Our cake was something very special to me. Due to my Celiac Disease trying to find food to accommodate me for the wedding was difficult. Besides my dress, my only other stipulation for this wedding was a gluten-free cake. This cake was made by the insanely talented bakery, Gluten-Free Gourmet, and is completely celiac safe! We gathered about 6-10 different cake designs on Pinterest to come up with our wedding cake. Of course, Funko Pops had to be our wedding cake topper!
All our guests signed our Captain America shield that we used in our engagement shoot and left with Marvel Superhero PEZ as favors. In 2018, we were able to meet the great Stan Lee for a second time and got him to sign our shield as well. It's one of our most treasured possessions. I hope you have enjoyed our Marvelously Nerdy wedding. All vendors are listed below, but please comment or email if you have any questions!
Photography: Blurred Line Photography Dress & Veil: Madison James from Elegant Lace Bridal Make Up: Kim Baker Beauty Hair: Krista Walton
Nails: Vivan's Nail Bar
Rings: Dynasty Jewelers
Flowers: A Touch of Love in San Jose High Heels: BareYourSoleFootwear Etsy Store Ribbon: dbDabblings Etsy Store Cufflinks: Various Etsy Stores & Amazon Cake: Gluten Free Gourmet