tamarinne

The Star Trek wedding was... everything and then some. It was absolutely awesome.

I finished Heather & Brad’s costumes a little over a week before the wedding. Heather’s costume was a Bajoran Kai (essentially the pope of the Bajoran church) and Brad’s was a Starfleet captain (a “Wrath of Khan” era uniform). My costume, a Bajoran Vedek (essentially a cardinal of the Bajoran church) was finished on Sunday evening, a mere six days before the wedding. I had opted against trying to create the “Sydney Opera House Hat” (as we called it) that went with the costume, but I ended up bringing hat-making materials with me to Vegas on Tuesday and was able to complete the hat by Thursday night. I’m glad that I did – it turned out really well. (Pictures of this, and all the other wedding bits, will follow in a few days.)

Since we were both going as Bajorans, Heather hired a professional makeup artist, Jonathan Seti, to come in and do our makeup and prosthetic noses. He was tremendous – personable and interesting, with lots of stories about the work he’s done (he was one of fifteen makeup artists who worked on Mystique for X-Men, for example). It took him about three hours to fit us with the prosthetic noses, attach them with spirit gum and eyelash glue, smooth the edges with liquid latex, and then cover our faces and the noses with makeup. When it was done we both looked... well, Bajoran. It made looking in the mirror distinctly odd.

We gathered for the wedding outside the Star Trek Experience around 5:30 on Saturday night. It turned out that the woman who was going to conduct the ceremony had been an actor in an episode of the original series – sadly, I can’t remember her name or which episode, but she was a sweet little lady in her 60’s or 70’s who was delighted by the whole wedding party. Brad & Heather’s costumes got a ton of compliments (yay, me!) and if I do say so myself, they both looked fantastic. I was really pleased to see that most of the wedding guests, even the family members, got into the spirit of things and came in costume. Brad’s dad, the doctor, relented at the last minute and came as a Starfleet Medical officer, and someone’s grandparents both came in Starfleet Command uniforms – they looked awesome, like a pair of senior command admirals who had been in the service their whole lives. Most people came in Starfleet uniforms (unsurprisingly, since they’re the easiest to rent or buy) but a few people did themselves up as aliens (including a Vulcan, a Trill, and one girl who put her Vulcan ears on backwards and ended up looking a little like an Elfquest elf.) My favorite was Vulcan Elvis, who elicited a comment from a stranger walking by, “so THAT’S where he’s been all these years!”

Around 6 PM, they guided us through the exhibit towards the bridge of the Enterprise. As we walked through the hallways (which were all darkened and felt a lot like the interior of a spaceship, with bulkheads and twisty passages and so forth), we had an honor guard of uniformed Starfleet personnel standing at attention as we walked by. I’m sure they were just there to keep people from wandering off into the exhibit, but it still felt great. We finally reached the doorway that led to the bridge. They opened the door to let us in and.... holy cow. I mean... damn. It looked exactly, and I mean EXACTLY, like the bridge from the show. (Well, except for the fact that the Ready Room and Turbolift doors were on the wrong sides.) (And how much of a geek am I that I noticed that???) They had all the guests stand behind the railing (up by the security console where Worf stood on the show) and Brad, Doug (the best man), the minister and I lined up in front of the view screen. Richard stepped in and announced Heather (something to the effect of “presenting the spiritual leader of the planet Bajor, Kai Shulick”) and Heather walked in to an explosion of flashbulbs.

The wedding itself was short and lovely. It started with the great line from the original show about “since the days of the first wooden vessels, ship captains have had the privilege of conducting weddings” and enjoined them to love one another unconditionally. Brad flubbed a few lines, but the minister gently corrected him to much laughter. Unlike most weddings, I had no urge to cry – on the contrary, I couldn’t get the smile off my face. The ceremony lasted about ten minutes, but the subsequent pictures probably lasted for half an hour or more. Everyone wanted their picture sitting in the captain’s chair or standing at a console, and some of the pictures were fantastic, especially Richard (in a classic era captain’s uniform) and MA (in a classic era Uhura-style mini-dress) – their vamping got so bad that even the photographer couldn’t stop laughing, and MA broke Richard pretty thoroughly. We had a Klingon woman (provided by the Experience) who came and posed in a bunch of photos, and you could see that there was a certain Yeoman Hagedorn who was ready to tackle her and steal her costume, but restrained herself.

Eventually they shepherded us out of the bridge and down an elevator to Quark’s bar, where the reception was being held. Richard and I ordered a Warp Core Breach (an enormous foaming kettle of rum and other drinky bits) and memories get a LOT less clear after that. I remember MA spilling her water and getting a sippy cup from the waiter, to shouts of laughter from the rest of the table; I remember a Ferengi coming over and trash-talking Bajor; I remember a kid walking by, looking at me, and saying “Hey, cool, a Bajoran!”... but it’s all pretty fuzzy. The combination of the rum and exhaustion and the release of the costume stress left me falling asleep by 9:30, and so Richard and I called it a night and took the monorail back to our hotel. Much to my disappointment, I barely got so much as a look on the train or in our hotel, despite the fact that I was still completely in costume (nose and all). We did catch one woman staring who quickly looked away when we saw her, but mostly people didn’t even seem to notice. I guess Vegas gets way weirder people than us every day. Once back in the room, I stripped off the nose, scrubbed all the makeup and spirit gum and whatnot off my face, and almost immediately fell asleep.

The rest of the trip (before and after the wedding) was a good time - did some shopping, ate some great food, got to hang out with Alex & Alex, and walked so much that I think I've voided the warranty on my feet. It was a great vacation. And in a few days, I'll hopefully have recovered enough to be able to function normally again.