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

Captain America: Civil War

Greetings, geeks and geekettes!

Things have been busy this side, but in between everything, we made time to go see the very first possible show of Captain America: Civil War. What fun to know that we got to see it a full week and a half before the USA!

Since we enjoy going to some lengths to support the things we are passionate about, we decided to dress up a little bit for the movie. We were a bit pressed for time, money and ingenuity, so this does not exactly count as a cosplay or even a dress-up; we just used what we had to support Cap and Iron Man (okay, we bought the masks, but they're awesome!).

We got a few stares in the mall, and two teenage girls asked to take a photo with us. Overall, though, dressed up like that, you don't really care what mere mortals think of you anymore. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. The masks only came off once the cinema literally went dark for the movie to start.

Before we post a few pictures, just a comment or two on the movie: GO WATCH IT NOW!!!! This is the best superhero movie ever made. Even in retrospect, neither one of us can find a single flaw with it. Yes, we are total Marvel fanboys, but still: go watch the movie. Do it. Do it on the big screen. We are planning to go watch it again - it's just that good.

Okay, enough shameless Marvel propaganda. Here are a few pics:

Afternoon tea picnic

This weekend, we were invited to a lovely Sunday afternoon birthday picnic with a Mad Hatters theme. We opted for a classical 'posh afternoon tea' look instead of an actual full-on Alice in Wonderland vibe, what with it being a Sunday afternoon (you don't want to be scrubbing off a Cheshire cat grin on a Sunday night).

Even though this isn't technically cosplay or geeky dress-up, we thought we'd share the photos with our online friends.

Machi Koro with Harbour Expansion: easy to learn, fun to play

Today, we're posting the first of many (hopefully!) blog posts regarding our love for board games.

The focus on this post is on Machi Koro. We've had this game for a while (purchased at Exclusive Books), and quite enjoyed it. Since this is a card-based game, the sheer number of different cards can be quite daunting when you open the box the first time, but it's actually really straightforward and easy to grasp.

Without going into too much detail, you basically buy properties which generate income (determined by a dice roll), which you can then use to upgrade your properties and build your city, until the first player manages to build the specified four properties which win the game. Of course, things get interesting when you start earning income from other players, and taking away their hard-earned savings!

After a few play-throughs, we started feeling that we wanted to buy the Harbour Expansion for Machi Koro, which takes the number of players up from 4 to 5, adds more cards, and makes the gameplay more unpredictable by randomising and limiting the properties you are able to buy from the shop.

We looked out for the expansion everywhere, ordering it from at least 2 places, only to hear that every place in the entire South Africa was out of stock. So sad! Fortunately, Annalene's dad, who lives in London, decided to come visit us in Bloemfontein recently, and he agreed to bring us the expansion all the way from England.

The Harbour Expansion is quite a game changer, and is to be recommended for any Machi Koro lovers. We played it by ourselves first, and then invited some friends over for a board game evening, and they also loved it. When 5 people are playing, things can get quite hectic on the bank though, so Marius decided to handle the money and give everyone else a chance to build properties. This worked out quite well, as he was constantly handing out coins and giving change.

We have a few pictures from our own play-through, but unfortunately we were too busy having fun when we played this with friends, and we completely forgot to pause for photos.