I love the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland… so much so that it inspired me to have a Disneyland-style Haunted Mansion wedding. People thought I was crazy and that it was a huge undertaking, which drove that passion even deeper to develop and design something our wedding guests would get a kick out of and truly feel that they were somehow transported to the Haunted Mansion.
We built iconic scenes from the Haunted Mansion with the hitchhiking ghosts pointing you in the right direction . . .
Everything was made from scratch, from the bat stanchions to the Haunted Mansion wall plaques. The caretaker, the tea mummy, the old man, and the elaborate portraits that changed with the sounds of lightning were all handmade. We built iconic scenes from the Haunted Mansion with the hitchhiking ghosts pointing you in the right direction with their thumbs, and our wonderful wedding cake was baked by my mother in-law, Diane, and my wife, Melissa. My friend Anthony, who at the time was putting on a Zombie Walk to benefit a local charity, was pulled in as he has always wanted to create a bride and groom from the Haunted Mansion. He did a heart-beating bride chasing the groom, and he even put glasses on him—nice touches all the way around.
We had our wedding in the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather at Forest Lawn Cemetery
I remember the months and months of developing just the right color tone, size, and layout of the Haunted Mansion’s hall of doors wallpaper so that it mimicked the same color tone when you take a picture of it and it turns a purple tone. (You have to be a true Haunted Mansion Disney geek to know what I mean.) That wall is blue but when you take a picture of it (you’re not supposed to ’cause the spooks are frightfully sensitive to bright lights), it has a purple tone to it. Most people don’t even realize it but, yes, months of research proved that point. As with any true Disney geek, one final thing in the nature of haunts is that we had our wedding in the Wee Kirk o’ the Heather at Forest Lawn Cemetery as it had the most similar look to the Mansion (in Florida). It’s also where Mr. Disney’s gravesite is. We found out that my wife’s grandparents got married there, too!
It was a truly amazing Disney geek wedding.
I think the geekiest Disney moment from my wedding is when my wife and I wore our bride and groom Mickey ears as we entered our reception with “Wish Upon a Star” sung by Gene Simmons, yes Gene Simmons. Then when I went to pull the garter belt off my wife’s leg, the background music was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ “Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho.” It was a truly amazing Disney geek wedding.
