Everyone who reads my blog regularly knows that I am a die-hard insect fan.  Insects pervade every part of my life including my clothing, my home decor, and my creative style.  I am SO much of a bug fan that I even had an insect-themed wedding!  Terribly geeky, I know, but I couldn’t help myself.  I thought it was a lot of fun, so indulge me as I share some of the details.

The hardest part of being an entomologist for me is knowing that the vast majority of people I meet think that I am completely insane for liking insects as much as I do.  This unfortunately extends to many of my family members, regardless of how much they love me and how often I try to change their minds.  They’re quite happy that I am following my dream and all, but when they come face to face with an insect, many of them fall into the “insect stomping” category of humanity rather than the “insect loving” category like me.  I wanted to have an insect-themed wedding, but how does one do that without scaring off all of your guests, and more importantly, your insect phobic fiancée?  Simple!  Just call your theme something other than “entomology” or “insect:”

“My wedding theme isn’t entomology!  Who would be that silly?  Ho ho ho!  No, the theme is woodland glade.“

Officially, my theme was woodland glade, which was a fancy name for “insects with a few other things tossed in for looks.”  :)

So here I was, dead set on having a wedding with an entomological theme and a bunch of guests and a fiancée who don’t like insects.  I had to figure out a way to keep it from being blatantly apparent that there were insects everywhere so that people wouldn’t be too scared to come.  Live insects were out, though if you read my Friday 5 on Arizona’s beetles you know that this wasn’t for lack of interest on my part.  I don’t particularly relish being the center of attention, not even on my wedding day, and I was more than happy to give up my jars of live aquatic beetles to make sure my relatives were at the wedding.   I was throwing a big party and I wanted to make everyone happy, so live insects were out.*

I also focused on insects that most people like.  Butterflies were an obvious choice.  I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest fan of butterflies.  I like big scary insects!  I like the bad a** insects.  Butterflies simply aren’t bad a**.  But, butterflies are well-loved by nearly everyone while the bad a** insects are not.  That makes butterflies a little more acceptable to people who generally don’t like insects.  In fact, people use them in their weddings all the time – even on edible things like cakes!  When someone like Martha Stewart promotes butterflies for wedding cakes, you know they’re okay.

If you’re me and ecstatic about the crafting and do-it-yourself opportunities that a wedding affords, the wider availability of things like butterfly rubber stamps and paper punches compared to dragonflies or any other insects also needs to be taken into account.  Have you ever tried to find a decent dragonfly paper punch that’s bigger than an inch across?  They don’t exist!  So, I incorporated a lot of butterflies into my decor.  This should be abundantly obvious from looking at the photos.  I spent months making paper flowers and potting plants and stamping table runners and making invitations entirely by hand.  I used dragonflies, bumblebees, and plants too.  To keep it from becoming completely obvious that I was having a bug wedding, I tossed in some birds to throw people off the scent.   The little stuffed felt birds served as our wedding favors and made “woodland glade” a believable theme.  :)

My husband and I were married just over a year ago.  I found the most amazing venue in the foothills of the western slope of the Chiricahua Mountains 2 1/2 hours east of Tucson.  It was the perfect combination of stunningly beautiful, out-of-town, and cheap.  We took a chance having an outdoor wedding at a higher elevation in March and it ended up being a sunny, cool, perfect day.  Nearly everyone we invited came.  I was able to get married by water, under a huge tree by a beautiful lake.  Our officiant was an entomologist, as was our photographer.  Our food was amazing.  Our cake was amazing.  Lots and lots of things went wrong at the last second (e.g. did you see my dog in the photo?  He wasn’t supposed to be there!), but I didn’t care.  I didn’t have any live insects at my wedding, but I didn’t care.  I thought it was perfect.  I would change a thing!

But the best part: even my husband enjoyed it.  That’s right – my husband, who screamed like a little girl one night when a roach crawled on him, liked our bug themed wedding.  I drove home that night with my new husband and our two dogs, the happiest person on the planet.

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Photos by Alex Yellich.  You can view photos of the invitations and our altar by clicking on the links.

* You might wonder why I didn’t consider having a butterfly release at my insect-themed wedding.  Partly it was because it usually costs over $5 a piece to have butterflies shipped to you, which is a lot of money to spend on something that is going to freeze to death the night after your wedding, especially when you only have $5000 to spend altogether.  Also, I read a fabulous Dave Barry column about weddings when I was in high school that made them seem less than appealing.  I decided right then and there that I was never going to do it.  Well worth a read!

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