This spooky renaissance faire wedding had the cutest mushroom wedding cake!

spooky renaissance faire wedding ideas on offbeat wed 28 — **Photographer:** Organic Images Photography @organicimagesny

Offbeat partners: Vini (she/her) & Quin (they/them)

Date and location: 10/31/2025 at Beardslee Castle in Little Falls, NY

Our spooky Renaissance-Faire themed Hallowedding wedding at a glance:

Quin and I met when we were 18 and 19 and have been together for 8 years. We take a yearly trip to Salem, Massachusetts for Halloween and in 2023 we got engaged at the Salem Art Gallery. We chose to get married on Halloween as it is our favorite day of the year, and we knew that our wedding would be as non-traditional as possible.

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In February 2025, we booked Beardslee Castle as our venue after immediately falling in love with it during our visit. It turned out to be perfect for our Renaissance Faire themed wedding! Guests were asked to wear their best fantasy/medieval garb and every single person understood the assignment! All of the planning we did on our own, and with the help of my bridesmaids we were able to DIY a lot including centerpieces and wood floral arrangements.

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Tell us about the ceremony:

Our ceremony took place on the second floor of the castle in front of the arched windows surrounded by pumpkins. Above the window, we had a string of photographs of our 4 cats.

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Our music selection for pre-ceremony and during ceremony was very fantasy based, including songs from The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, Dark Souls, and Skyrim.

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Our officiant was Quin’s mom, who is an ordained minister for the Church of Gnome! She wrote up a beautiful ceremony script based around the medieval & fantasy aspects of our wedding. For the ring ceremony, we exchanged our vows written by her:

“I plight thee my troth,
and promise my love,
to be by your side in times of gladness and times of challenge.
I will honor you,
and listen to your words,
and respond with respect.
I love you today, tomorrow, and forever.”

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Following our exchanging of rings, we had a beautiful handfasting ceremony which we chose to do based on Quin’s Celtic background and my Wiccan beliefs. Our handfasting cord was custom made by Ceotha and included our wedding date and birth constellations. My bridesmaids carried lanterns as their bouquets, and the entire wedding had swords which they held up for us to walk through following the ceremony. Our recession song was “The Court of the Crimson King” by King Crimson, which perfectly went with our theme!

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Tell us about the Hallowedding reception:

Our formal photos were taken outside of the castle, while guests were inside for cocktail hour enjoying passed appetizers, a mashed potato bar, and a magician who came dressed as a medieval jester!

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Following our formal pictures, our party had a grand entrance into the reception hall upstairs. Quin and I went right into our first dance – “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce. Dinner begun with “Disposition” and “Reflection” by our favorite band Tool. We enjoyed a wonderful meal of mac & cheese, rosemary chicken, and ratatouille.

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We perfectly curated our reception playlist to include Halloween songs such as “Monster Mash”, “Thriller”, and “Werewolves of London”. Other selections were songs by Ghost, Neal Francis, David Bowie, Talking Heads, Grateful Dead, and the BeeGees.

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Our cake was a 2-tier oreo cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. The background was a celestial blue/purple/gold and it was decorated with mushrooms and plant accents. The cake toppers were bride and groom rats!

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For the guests, we had 4 different kinds of cupcakes- red velvet, carrot cake, oreo, and gluten/dairy free marble -with a menu sign I made using my drawings of our 4 cats in a medieval manuscript style. Guests were encouraged to sign a decorative pumpkin and leave photos in our guest book using our instant camera.

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What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding?

I think my biggest challenge was deciding to plan the entire thing myself – but I’m so glad I did! It really did get a bit stressful towards the end especially with working on DIY things every single day after work, but it was definitely worth it.

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I’d recommend to anyone planning their own wedding to use some kind of physical planner to keep your mind organized! I downloaded one for less than $10 off of Etsy, it had everything I needed and I was able to edit it completely in Canva to remove things I didn’t need or add whatever I wanted to. Canva Pro was also a great thing to have – I designed all of my save the dates, invites, menus, programs, and small signs.