Having a Halloween wedding is appealing for a number of reasons:
- it will be difficult to forget your anniversary;
- you love the colors and "fun" of the season;
- the mystery of the occult and mystical intrigue you and you wish to explore it on your wedding day.
Whatever your reason, there is a location to make all your haunting dreams come true. In fact, in New Jersey, one county clerk has offered to officiate weddings at the Historic Burlington County Prison Museum in Mount Holly.
In the United States, Salem, Mass., and New Orleans, La., are both towns with a history where you can easily find buildings with high levels of paranormal activity. Then of course, there are the suitably named "ghost towns" of the Old West.
However, there's no need to travel far, you hometown or nearby region is likely to have a perfect location for your Halloween wedding.
Perhaps you already know haunted wedding possibilities in your area. If not, or if none that you know of are appealing as a wedding venue, a little research is in order. You can talk to your local librarian or local newspaper, or you can look up "ghost walk" on the Internet to see if there is a business in your area that specializes in haunted tours. If so, book a tour to check out the real potential for creepiness or haunted happenings at your wedding ceremony – if that is what you want at your wedding.
A bride interested in being the main attraction on her wedding day will want to choose a location that is a perfect backdrop for her chosen wedding colors, theme and herself. She need not concern herself in finding a haunted location because she wants the fun of the season while avoiding the creepy. However, those brides truly interested in the paranormal, who wish to include the supernatural in the ceremony might consider the following venues:
Local Mansions or Castles with Their Reputations for Being Haunted May Appeal to Couples Marrying on Halloween
A local mansion, castle, farm or plantation that has been renovated into a museum and tourist site often will allow weddings. For a wedding on Halloween, they also have the advantage of having rumors of seemingly unexplainable phenomenon (OK, they're haunted). Many older homes that have been inhabited by several generations of the same family are likely places to find paranormal activities. Such as the LaLaurie House in New Orleans, or the Dickson-Williams Mansion in Greeneville, Tennessee. The first is famous, the second, like the historic old home in your neighborhood, is practically unknown, although the D-W Mansion entertained presidents and numerous dignitaries.
For a bride interested in the colors and fun of the season, an ancient mansion or castle will provide an elegant background for the ceremony. She will want to schedule her wedding for the afternoon, of course, to cut down on the likelihood of being upstaged at her own wedding. For the more adventurous bride who would like (or thinks she would like) visitations during the ceremony, a nighttime exchange of vows is in order. Your strong nerves and those of your guests might dictate how close to midnight you schedule your event.
Prisons and Jails Entrap Not Just the Living, Provide Unusual Setting For Halloween Wedding
An historic jail that dates back several hundred years has seen much heart-ache and horrific deeds. That accumulated energy might just provide an interesting backdrop for a bride interested in a Halloween wedding. A jail/prison wedding would be much more casual and informal than one held in a mansion and the decorations can be creepy. The bride interested in the "story" or "myth" of Halloween more than believing in the paranormal can have fun with the rustic hardiness she can use in her decorations.
Halloween Brides May Like Beautiful, But Haunted, Seaside
Many, many ships have been lost at sea and their human crew washed ashore. Some sections of beach, located all around the world, are known for the strange happenings there. For instance, there are Cape Hatteras, N.C., and Newport, Ore., and certainly heavily haunted Cornwall in the British Isles. For couples who live near the ocean interested in marrying on Halloween, a beach wedding can be beautiful or perhaps spooky with the fog rolling in. It's all a matter of timing. For the landlocked, rivers and lakes also are prime places for ghost rumors and offer natural beauty for a wedding setting. Another possible setting would be a battleground, where spirits are said to be plentiful. The sites of many battles have been turned into parks, so planning a wedding there should be relatively easy.
Old Hotels Provide Elegance and Comfort For Halloween-Theme Wedding
Old hotels have haunting stories of love, murder and mayhem in their histories – prime ingredients in ghost stories. Many old hotels also provide elegance and comfort for the bridal party and guests as well as a suitable location for possible paranormal activity. What Halloween bride can resist checking out the possibility of a haunted hotel, whether it is in a famous "ghost town" like the Imperial in Cripple Creek, Colorado, the Hotel del Coronado near San Diego, California; the famous Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, where F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald stayed and where the wispy Pink Lady floats along; the little-known General Morgan Inn in Greeneville, Tenn., said by Appalachian Ghost Hunters to play home to a ghost or two; or a hotel in your hometown. Just plan a Halloween nighttime ceremony in an old hotel near you and see if you have an unexpected guest or two.
Cemetery Offers Spine-Tingling Choice for Halloween Wedding
The quintessential place for a Halloween wedding, for only the stout of heart, must be an old cemetery – and what town doesn't have at least one, and perhaps a few, from which to choose. If you don't already know of haunted cemeteries in your area, see if a company conducts haunted tours. A representative can surely tell you of graveyards suspected of having the most active ghosts. Or, just head out to your area's oldest cemetery one night with a digital camera. Whether or not there is known activity, any cemetery after dark will produce the ghostly effects a Halloween bride seeks for her guests to have a shivering good time.
So, whether the Halloween bride is looking for a fun theme, bright color scheme, or shivers up the back, hairs-standing-on-end fright wedding, she has several locations to make her dream wedding a reality.
Velma Southerland - Velma Southerland has been employed in the lifestyles section of an award-winning East Tennessee community newspaper for more than 20 ...
