Our medieval winter wedding

On 13 June, we will be celebrating our first anniversary as a married couple. Still going strong with lots of geeky fun!

This week, we decided to do a throwback post to our actual wedding last year. (Who doesn't love bragging with their pretty wedding pictures?) The wedding featured a decidedly medieval vibe with an epic sword, so it's not your everyday generic romantic pics.

We held the ceremony in Bloemfontein, in the heart of South Africa, during the winter. This was a great excuse to have a lovely long-sleeved wedding gown, old-fashioned boot spats for the groom, toasty spiced Gluhwein, and an indoor banquet-style reception.

But enough talking - let's get to the photos!

The sword is supposedly a replica of Aragorn's sword from The Lord of the Rings. We just wanted a huge epic sword to pose with and to threaten any unruly guests or relatives with.

The dress was white velvet and the suit featured an unusual evening-style coat and knee-high boot spats, to go with the slightly geeky/medieval theme.

Playing with the sword was so much fun, we didn't stress about anything else that day.

Arthurian legend moment?

Knighting Sir Marius

Pro tip: get a sword for your wedding!

The rings

Showing off the dress and sword

Annalene walked down the aisle to a song from the Dark Souls soundtrack - Marius' favourite game, and one of the few songs we both thought would be perfect for the moment (listen here).

Inside the beautiful little chapel at The Willows, where we tied the knot.

We were very blessed to have the ceremony officiated by Annalene's grandfather.

The rings, waiting in their little loot box.

Once again, the sword was central to everything.

Signing away our lives... 

Gluhwein in the garden after the ceremony.

A more traditional wedding pic - no sword in sight.

We could not resist cutting the cake with our wedding sword.

The sword was basically the only reason we even had a cake.

Licking off the icing...

The wedding cake. Marius designed the shield.

This is what the guest place settings looked like. 

The guests sat at long banquet-style tables, while we sat at our own little table like a Lord and Lady.

We had our first dance as man and wife while the guests blew bubbles. Of course we chose no ordinary love song - we danced to Black Majesty's Six Ribbons, an awesome metal medieval love song (listen to it here).

We had so much fun doing the wedding we wanted (okay, we might have had wild boar on the spit and swords for everyone if we had an unlimited budget!), and not worrying about what other people expected a wedding to be. At the end of the day, our wedding suited our personalities and tastes, and everyone else also seemed to have a good time. Here's to many more years of a happy, healthy, geeky marriage (clinks invisible Gluhwein glasses)!


If you are interested in the venue, you can find them here. We highly recommend them!