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!

Grab yer cutlass and grog for an epic pirate party

For Annalene’s birthday last year we decided to throw a pirate-themed party (our first birthday party as a married couple!). We usually go for something more unusual or geeky, but who can resist pirates?

It was so much fun to look for cutlasses, blunderbusses and eyepatches. We decorated the apartment with ‘Wanted’ posters, pictures of ships and pirate flags. Marius created an edible arrangement of chocolates and cookie crumbs that looked like a beach scene, and one of our friends brought a pirate cake.

Who says pirate parties are only for kids? Scroll down to see some pictures J

Lord of the Rings collection

Today, we'd like to share our Lord of the Rings gear with you. We've made our love for Star Wars and superheroes pretty clear by now, but both of us are also huge Tolkien fans! And as an added bonus, we happen to live in JRR Tolkien's birth town - Bloemfontein, South Africa.

When we moved in together, we actually had doubles of the Lord of the Rings books and DVDs, so we gave away the extras and combined our collections.

We actually bought Andúril (Aragorn's sword) for our wedding - perhaps one day we'll have a blog post on that - so that was our first combined Lord of the Rings purchase. Unfortunately, Middle Earth craze seems to be subsiding a bit, so epic Lord of the Rings gear is in short supply in most places. We found the sword in a very random Chinese toy shop in Bloemfontein - someone else had ordered it, but never came to pay for it / pick it up, so the owners let us have it. Score!

There are different opinions on the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movie adaptations, but both of us have agreed never to speak of the Hobbit movies.

In addition to the collection pictured below, we also have a bunch of Lord of the Rings games (most of them digitally purchased, borrowed or sold, so not pictured): Shadow of Mordor (PS4), Lord of the Rings War in the North (PS3), Lego Lord of the Rings (PS Vita), Battle for Middle Earth (PC), and Lord of the Rings Conquest (PC).

So without any further ado, here are the pictures:

The full collection

The trilogy

The Hobbit and The Silmarillion (both great reads)

A nice coffee table book

Inside the Tolkien Illustrated Encyclopedia

Really nice art book

Inside the Illustrated Atlas

Gollum with his favourite snack

This came with Marius' copy of the Extended DVD version of The Two Towers

More Gollum

No collection is complete without the One Ring

My Precious... This came with a Lego Lord of the Rings pre-order (BT Games)

Extended DVD collection - a must for any true fan

This shows why the Extended DVDs are worth it

Andúril

Blade, sheath and knife

The knife fits into the sheath

Andúril can also be used for cake cutting :)