A 13-color handfasting and fire dancing at this Quebec wiccan wedding

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The Offbeat Bride: Vanessa, Religious studies graduate and archivist

Her offbeat partner: Alexander, computer technician

Date and location of wedding: Bergeries de l'Acadie, St-Jean-sur-richelieu, Quebec, Canada - May 7, 2016

Our offbeat wedding at a glance:

Alex and I are hobby musicians (heavy metal for him and folk/classical for me) and we like medieval and fantasy stuff. Since I am a practicing wiccan/heathen, we wanted to have a real handfasting ritual for our wedding. We had 160 guests for our pagan wedding.

We wanted to involve most of our friends who are very talented people, so we asked them to help at each step of the wedding. A couple who we like very much led our wedding ritual, a friend made my black dress, and another one made my second dress for the evening. Our musician friends did the performances and we also asked our fire spinners friends to perform. We had belly dancers and even the very talented photographer was a friend of ours.

We had an outside ceremony ritual in the nature surrounded by trees and a river, followed by a cocktail party with entertainment of live electric cello and fire spinners. A dinner with a live medieval band and dancers followed by a night of dancing to DJ music who played all our favorite rock songs from the '80s.

Tell us about the ceremony:

Our officiants dressed in white and performed a wiccan ritual written by me and the priestess. We had 13 groomsmen and bridesmaids who entered with candles and made a big circle around the altar. Alex then entered with his parents and I entered with my parents, my mom carrying my wedding broom.

During the entrance there was a Viking song playing by Wardruna with live drums and electric cello. We started by calling the four elements with the priests, which is important in Wiccan spirituality. The priestess then called our 13 friends who came one by one and wrapped around our hands a different colored ribbon (13 colors) to give us a blessing. My husband and I then shared mead by saying that we entered this life in perfect love and perfect trust. After that, we jumped the broom to symbolize entering married life together.

Tell us about your reception:

Two of my belly dancer friends danced for us as we arrived at our table at the reception. Then the live traditional band named Skarazula started to play for dinner.The centerpieces of the tables were small trees with lights that I made to remember the yggdrasil tree from viking tradition. Each table had a name of a realm in the viking mythology.

We did a quiz with fantasy/medieval questions. Every table won, so we had to do a dance contest with one member of each table and the winner received a bottle of wine for the table. The musicians also taught medieval dances to the guests.

We served locally-farmed lamb barbecue, but since I am vegetarian as are most of my friends, they also served a vegetarian option. We didn't have cake, only small cupcakes as the restaurant already was serving chocolate mousse. We had pagan molded chocolate as decoration but the kids ate it all!