Alex and Zoe Pitas are big Harry Potter fans. Really big. So big, they decided to theme their recent wedding around the Boy Who Lived, to the tune of £20,000.
That's roughly $34,000 U.S., including rental of the Wroxler Hotel near Shrewsbury in the U.K.
Every detail of the wedding, from the place settings to the music, was inspired by J.K. Rowling's books. The bride's bouquet was made of paper flowers crafted out of actual pages from the books. The wedding music was comprised entirely of selections from the films' soundtracks. The wedding vows incorporated lines from the Harry Potter books. The cake was in the shape of a big stack of wizard textbooks (each one being a different cake flavor), topped by the Sorting Hat and Harry's snowy owl Hedwig.
The dining tables at the reception were white and adorned with plush owls, they sported tiny cauldrons and "floating" candles. Bottled potions made by Alex and Zoe were scattered around the reception. There were six tables, and each one was themed. Four were named after the Hogwarts houses — Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin — and the last two were named after the two opposing forces in the wizard war: the Death Eaters and the Order of the Phoenix.
Every guest got their own wand, which the happy couple had spent months making by hand. In keeping with the Potter mythology, every one of the 100 wands was different and unique. A card accompanied the wands that read, "The wand chooses you, Harry." The guests later used those wands to take part in a playful wizards duel, which JOL Photography captured.
The couple — 25-year-old Zoe Howe from Shropshire, U.K. and 26-year-old Alex Pitas from Wisconsin, U.S. — met nine years ago. Alex had grown up reading the Potter books, but Zoe had never indulged in the phenomenon. She was introduced to the books when, at Alex's prodding, she began reading them to their 2-year-old son Max, and found herself unable to put them down. When it came time to plan their wedding, they decided to go with the one thing they both adored, and saved up for two years to make it happen.
Geeky festivities like this are becoming increasingly common, but all too often they turn into tacky, silly events. Looking at the photos from the Pitas wedding, it's plain to see that there was nothing gaudy about it. Even the bride was happily surprised by its elegance.
"It was just the perfect day," she said afterward. "Neither of us had done anything like this before so we were unsure what it would look like overall, but I am so pleased with how everything turned out. It wasn't tacky. It felt magical."
One can only hope that the wedding between Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley was this cool.
