May the 4th be with you! Small ways to incorporate Star Wars into a May 4 wedding

May the 4th be with you! Small ways to incorporate Star Wars into a May 4 wedding

Written by Heather

Topics: Life in Virginia

We owe Star Wars a big thank you for helping us meet.

Years before Gav and I ever met, I met his best friend Kev online because we both had an interest in Star Wars. While I still enjoy Star Wars, I REALLY loved Star Wars at the time. I’d seen the movies, read many of the books, dressed up as a Jedi for Halloween, owned some action figures, and used some variation of the name of my favorite character as my username online.

Thanks to Star Wars I met Kev in 2004/5, and through that friendship, I met Gav in 2011.

After Gav proposed on Valentine’s Day in 2012, we quickly started the planning process. And when we saw that May 4 would be on a Saturday in 2013, we knew we’d found our date. We didn’t want a Star Wars themed wedding, though some friends asked when they received our save-the-dates, but we wanted to give a nod to Star Wars for helping us meet.

Along with selecting “Star Wars Day” for our date, we found several fun, subtle, and cute ways to incorporate Star Wars into our casual outdoor spring wedding.

star-wars-may-4-wedding-ideas

May the fourth be with you! Before the ceremony…

If you’re new to the blog, you won’t know that Gav was born and raised in England and moved to the USA less than a year ago!

Last fall we dressed up in our orange and blue wedding colors to become legally married (visa regulations and time frames) before our May 4 wedding. My friend Mary Beth took a photo that we used on our wedding website.

may-the-fourth-be-with-us

Months later at our engagement shoot, we took advantage of a chalkboard at the downtown pedestrian mall to share our love with a Han and Leia quote. The famous “I love you” and “I know” lines were used several times throughout the weekend.

i-love-you-i-know-star-wars

For our May 3 rehearsal dinner, I wore Princess Leia buns purchased on Amazon and purple light saber earrings from Etsy. Gav wore a Yoda ribbon/badge I’d found at Walmart. These small additions were a huge hit with the Star Wars fans in attendance.

yoda-jedi-master-badge-ribbon

Best Man Kev received a bonus gift — a Star Wars lunch box (with themed sandwich cut outs inside) from William Sonoma.

star-wars-lunch-box-best-man-gift

And with another great Etsy find, we had cutlery for the rehearsal dinner meal.

Star Wars ideas in our May 4th wedding

Thanks to a friend of a friend, I was able to purchase “I love you”/”I know” shirts from last year’s Star Wars Celebration event. Two years ago Han was the one saying “I know” but last year it was Leia’s turn. I wore my shirt to the airport when I welcomed Gav to the USA for good, and we both wore our shirts before getting dressed for the ceremony.

i-love-you-i-know-shirt

Evan, the same friend who helped me score the t-shirts (he’s one of my dearest friends and was a groomsman) let me borrow one of his Disney Star Wars pins. We found the perfect place for my “something borrowed” just under the dress.

star-wars-disney-pin

Kev wore a Star Wars tie and a belt buckle. When groomsman Andrew needed to borrow a blue tie, Kev loaned his second Star Wars tie. Aww.

star-wars-tie-wedding

star-wars-wedding-belt-buckle-ties

After a beautiful outdoor ceremony in a garden at my alma mater, we ventured to my parents’ spacious backyard for a casual reception. Gav and I were all smiles when the wedding party was announced while walking in to the Star Wars theme.

Each table had slightly different decorations, including different images or quotes in frames. I purchased this hand drawn greeting card on Etsy for Gav and just had to have it on the table.

One of my favorite Star Wars elements was the Han and Leia cupcake toppers. You guessed it, another Etsy find. Dozens of guests took pictures of Han and Leia.

han-leia-cupcake-topper-wedding

We had a large dessert bar, and my dad contributed a cake from a local bakery. We had no idea he asked them to write this message on top until we saw it for ourselves.

Gav and I enjoyed incorporating Star Wars into our wedding, and our guests, especially the fans, really seemed to get a kick out of each new surprise. In upcoming posts, I’ll share more photos and stories from our special day.

uva-gardens-wedding-charlottesville

All photos except the one from Mary Beth were taken by my fabulous friend and our wedding photographer Allison Suter.

15 Comments Comments For This Post I'd Love to Hear Yours!

  1. Allison says:

    So good Heather! I love seeing everything all tied together! It was pretty subtle (the awesome kind of subtle) at the wedding, but is pretty incredible when you put it all together like this! It’s like a perfect little bow on your wedding day!

    • Heather says:

      Al, it was fun looking through the photos (for the 100th time at least :-)) to find the Star Wars related pics for this post. More of your awesomeness to come!

  2. Julia says:

    Loved this post! More wedding photos please 🙂
    Also – those cupcakes look so delicious. What flavour did you go with?

    • Heather says:

      Julia, more photos are coming the rest of the month 🙂 ♥

      We chose three flavors of cupcakes from The Sweet Lobby in DC — salted caramel, lemon cream, and strawberry champagne. Mouth-watering descriptions are on the bakery’s site, and I’m definitely showing off the dessert bar in a future post.

  3. Mom says:

    Mom Cried reliving the day in your blog!!! Such a special day for all of us!

  4. Amy says:

    AH!! I love it, Heather! So cute, and so perfect for you guys! I can’t wait to see and read more from the big day. 🙂

  5. Toni says:

    The cake toppers are SO cute! Lovely touches all around hun 🙂

  6. Laura says:

    I love passionate people. You can really see your love for Star Wars here and I think it was so fun! You had such great ideas!

  7. Jennifer says:

    Thanks for sharing this, I love the story! Although hate to now admit that I don’t like star wars lol 🙂

    • Heather says:

      HA, no worries, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea 🙂 Thanks for the support though Jennifer – that’s what matters!

  8. Decoybetty says:

    my first screen name was Star Wars related too – although for different reasons. My brothers LOVED star wars growing up and I claimed to hate it (my brother forced me to watch it when I was 3 and it was terrified! TERRIFIED). And I refused to watch them until I was 17 and had to for school.

    Then when I met IC and he hadn’t watched them, I was horrified.

    I love seeing pictures of your happy day! You look gorgeous!

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