Dragon Con: Destination for weird weddings
ATLANTA — Dragon Con — the annual pop culture and sci-fi convention held in downtown Atlanta on Labor Day Weekend — is a place where memories are made. For some, those memories include tying the knot.
The convention follows a strict schedule and is unable to host or conduct weddings, but that hasn’t stopped couples from getting married anyway.
In 2015, Ashley Paramore and Justin Robert Young put on a show in the Crystal Ballroom of the Hilton Atlanta, one of the five hotels where Dragon Con takes place. Their wedding ceremony at Dragon Con was actually the season finale of the couple’s Jury More podcast about their journey to the altar. A video of the season finale was posed online months later.
The couple had been legally married in California days before, but they came to Dragon Con that year to celebrate in the place where they met.
The bridal party was dressed in a style inspired by “Game of Thrones,” and the groom and groomsmen, “Battlestar Galactica.”
The flower girl was an alien, and the ring bearer was dressed as a medieval soldier.
“It was definitely a pop culture mashup,” Young said.
The couple exchanged vows, had
their first dance and took a selfie with their audience. They sliced into a Jury More-themed wedding cake while the audience members enjoyed mini cupcakes. A scripted gift-giving ceremony also took place.
The couple received a traditional toaster, or as they called it — a Cylon detector for detecting bad robots in “Battlestar Galactica,” and Paramore was given a vegan cake shaped like a horse’s heart alluding to “Game of Thrones.”
The last gift giver — a friend from England — walked onto the stage with a toy sword.
“He was the bad guy,” Paramore said.
And he was also a Cylon who had escaped detection. He attacked the newly married couple with his sword, then other planted audience members ran up on the stage and “murdered” the entire wedding party — as in the notorious “Red Wedding” scene from “Game of Thrones.”
“That was the end of our wedding,” Paramore said.
Afterward, the very much alive and happy couple enjoyed a private dinner at a restaurant.
Other couples have invited friends and officiants to Dragon Con and have tried to conduct weddings on the spot despite the convention’s policy of not being able to host weddings.
In 2017, Dragon Con attendees Emily and Chase Swiatek had planned their wedding to take place at the Atlanta Marriott Marquis, a convention hotel, but they actually ended up at the Hilton Atlanta.
Their wedding party included their daughter, an officiant dressed as burnt-faced Deadpool and a handful of friends. There were no bridesmaids or groomsmen. Chase dressed as Link from “Zelda,” and Emily was Link’s shoulder fairy, the Navi.
For the Swiateks, a Dragon Con wedding seemed better than having to deal with the stress of planning a traditional wedding. At first, the couple tried planning many traditional weddings.
“We’d always come up with the plans, and they’d always be really expensive,” Chase said. “And it didn’t feel like us.”
The couple wanted it to be their day and didn’t want to worry about pleasing everyone else.
“It’s a combination of getting married in a way that you like — that you enjoy [and] in a theme that you like,” Emily said, “and it also is turned into a mini honeymoon.”
Dragon Con attendees Kevin and Laura Close celebrated their one-year anniversary at Dragon Con this year. In 2017, the couple had a small gathering with friends on the steps outside the Sun Trust Plaza on the outskirts of Dragon Con’s festivities.
Kevin and Laura already had been married in New York, but they wanted to do something special at Dragon Con.
“We have friends that we go to see in Georgia every year,” Laura said. “We wanted to really celebrate with them, because they weren’t gonna be able to come to New York.”
They tried reaching out to the Georgia Aquarium and asked if they could reserve floor space but the aquarium couldn’t guarantee it.
To save money and avoid uncertainty, Kevin and Laura took the wedding outside. Kevin was dressed in a bright blue suit like the Wyndham Hotels Wyzard, and Laura was Sophie from “Howl’s Moving Castle.” Kevin also had worn his suit for the ceremony in New York.
“We were trying to decide on budget and what our colors should be and everything else,” Laura said. “I told him that he should get that suit for our wedding so that it doubled as a cosplay.”
Kevin posted a photo of his costume online and later was contacted by Wyndham Hotels, which offered the couple a mini vacation at a hotel in Clearwater, Florida. Unfortunately, their trip was cut short when bad weather came.