Tips and Ideas

Star Wars wedding ideas:

1. Invitations:  For informal weddings, you can buy party-type Star Wars invitations.  For a more formal approach, you can do your own on a computer. OR do what we did--use a regular invitation, then make mention of your theme inside.  We used a castle/fantasy invitation with the following wording:      "To help celebrate our theme, 'Star Wars: a Jedi Wedding', guests are encouraged to attend in costumed attire (optional)"
   
2. Programs: use Star Wars fonts and clipart and do these on your computer.  We put a section called "Why a Star Wars Costume theme?" in ours to explain our choice.  We also listed the Star Wars music used in the ceremony.
   
3. Attire: Choose regular wedding attire and use your theme as scenery or go all out and put everyone in costume.  The bride can wear traditional garb, but dressing as Princess Leia (conveniently she sports a white, floor length gown in the first fim!) or Queen Amidala can be fun!  Costume events take more time to plan, since you will have to find a place to buy or rent them, or else have them made (or make them yourself!).  Check our Resources and We Can Help pages for more information on costuming a Star Wars wedding.
   
4. Flowers: I did my own silks to save money and have control over making unusual displays.  It really doesn't take a florist or design whiz to do bouquets!   I used  pearl sprays, unusual stalks of round pink globes, and iridenscent "spacey" ribbon to give a more out-of-this world feel.  There are also plastic iridescent bubbles on stems you can get for this purpose.
   
5. Ring pillow: We used a clear plastic orb bought at a craft store for $4, jazzed it up a bit, and suspended our (fake) rings inside. 
   
6. Setting: You can pull of a Star Wars theme anywhere, but a setting that already looks theme-ish only helps.  We chose an outdoor location with statuary, rich tile, and floral-laden vines that looked a lot like the royal city's courtyard on Naboo.  Or take a plain area like a reception hall and have a handy friend do paper or canvas backdrops to hang on the walls.  We recently appeared in costume at a party where they had put up painted backdrops on the walls that resembled Tatooine. 
   
7. Cake:  You can use Star Wars figures atop your cake, or have several positioned all over.
   
8. Centerpieces:  Buy a styrofoam base, cover it with silk or real greenery, and pose action figures or one larger Star Wars figure on it.   Or place two crossed lightsabers (toy ones) atop it.   Or affix toy Star Wars ships atop sticks inserted in the base to resemble flight.   Don Post masks (see Resource page) of Vader, Stormtroopers, Xwing pilots, Chewbacca, etc can adorn the center.   I went a different route:  I wanted guests to walk into the darkened reception area and have it look similar to the underwater Gungan city with its lit up bubble globes.  So we bought glass candle globles, filled them with iridescent easter grass and water, then hid colored neon light-up sticks in the center.
   
9. Favors: Star Wars keychains; wedding programs; polaroid shot of each guest, preferably against a Star Wars backdrop or next to cardboard stand-ees of main characters.  Also consider having a disposable camera for each guest to shoot a roll and take home, or one per table that you keep.
   
10. Food:  If you're having a printed menu it's always fun to name foods after elements of the theme.  For instance, "Han Solo sandwiches", "Chewbacca Chili", "Skywalker Salad Nicoise", etc.
    
11. Tables: Instead of numbering your tables, label them with names of Star Wars characters or planets.
    
12. Stickers:  Use Star Wars stickers to adorn place cards, programs, menus, etc
    
13. Music: While a matter of personal taste, I reviewed all the soundtracks endlessly to pick the right song for each element of our ceremony.  Our prelude music was a compilation of nice music not picked for the ceremony.  The groom entered to the "Throne Room" music at the end of "A New Hope."  The Bridesmaids processed to "Anakin's Theme" from Episode 1; the Bridal march was to the Main Star Wars theme.  We used "Princess Leia's Theme" for the candlelighting ceremony, "Victory Celebration" end music from Return of the Jedi for our first kiss/ family hug, and "Augie's Great Municipal Band" for the Recessional.  Guests were prompted to exit the ceremony when the Star Wars "End Credits" music played.