Three years into the blog, and it’s fun to see the houses bought and projects finished — but it’s even more fun to see the weddings and, the babies (and the puppies and kittens.) Joe and Nikki are longtime readers… and when they tied the knot, they did it in enviable retro style. I asked Joe if he’d like immortalize the event online, and he was game. He gives us a complete report:
When we set out to find a ceremony location, we knew we wanted something different, something that may have not been done before. Being Mid-Century fans we wanted something from that era, the only problem is, there’s little to no Mid-Century architecture in this area. After exploring what seemed like dozens of locations only to come up short we found the diamond in the rough, the Wildwood Doo Wop Museum.
The museum started out as a restaurant that was closed up years ago. The city bought the structure and put it in storage until they could find a use for it. When I first called the Museum I was expecting to be instantly shot down with our crazy idea, turns out they were very receptive to the idea. We were the first people to ask for something like this since the museum opened a couple years prior.
Now that we had the ceremony part figured out, we needed to find a reception hall within a reasonable distance. You have no idea how hard this part was, since we were having a pseudo-destination wedding, Wildwood is about an hour and a half from anything else. Once again, after looking at endless locations, some too small, some too dingy, we found the Wildwood Country Club. After hammering out the details of the reception we were all set. Time to start the real planning.
I knew the entire time I wanted to drive our rusty 49 Chevy truck from the ceremony to the reception since it was ours and we both loved it. A limo is just not our style. Pink and black were the colors we chose, Cupcakes would be the take-home favors, and we were using vintage items from around the house as table markers. Keeping with the idea of not using traditional wedding items, we opted for cupcakes instead of a wedding cake, and custom made Lego Minifigs instead of a traditional wedding cake topper.
As a bonus, the manager of the country club let me decorate the entire bar like it was a Tiki bar. We brought down all of our Tiki goods and it looked great, unfortunately, we didn’t get a good picture of it.
Nikkis dress was altered to have a hot pink bottom to match her hot pink hair. The groomsman and I all wore vintage one button Tuxedos with hand tied bow ties, and let me tell you, actually tying a bow tie is not an easy task. We all wore cufflinks, parts of the groomsman’s gifts, but mine were specially made to have Pinup pictures of Nikki inside of them.
In addition to finding two great locations for the ceremony and the reception we also secured the Starlux hotel for all of our guests to stay at. Since we were having the wedding in their “off-season” they were more than happy for the business and offered the wedding guests and awesome rate. The hotel was originally built in the 50s and remodeled a couple years back to really embrace the Mid-Century feel of Wildwood.
It’s really hard to write up that entire weekend into a couple short paragraphs, and I’m sure there are details that I glazed over, but it should give you a pretty good idea of how awesome our wedding weekend was. Next stop…….the 11 day, 1100 mile up the Pacific Coast Highway Honeymoon.
Joe and Nikki, congratulations on your wedding, which, I have to say is one of the darn coolest I’ve ever seen. Thank you, Joe, for the report. We’re looking forward to hearing about the honeymoon — which I know was also a wonderful retro roadtrip.
Link love:
You can keep tabs on Joe and Nikki, they each have a blog:
and:
The Doo Wop Museum, Wildwood, NJ
Starlux Hotel, Wildwood, NJ
To view the following slide show, click on the first thumbnail to enlarge the image, then proceed using the arrows below each image:
37 photos from Joe and Nikkis retro California honeymoon 
Favorite photos from retro world this week 
The 1950 House at the Shelburne Museum: Historic Mid Century Homes to Visit 
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Beautiful, just beautiful.
Best wishes to you both.
Thanks for letting us share this Pam. As a teaser, I think we’ll be running a story on our Mid-Century/Tiki California honeymoon sometime soon too.
you can keep tabs on us at:
http://newfoundfreetime.blogspot.com
http://www.trixiepinks.com
Thanks again!
Joe&Nikki
OMG – I had chills looking through the photos they were SO fab! PLEASE hurry and post the ones from your honeymoon. Amazing idea and everything is gorgeous.
Best to you both,
“retrotravelgirl”
congrats!!! your dress is beautiful!!!
That looks like the coolest wedding ever! Congrats and best wishes!
Congratulations! Many Happy Years Together! What a Cool Wedding!
I love how you made your wedding so personal, so you!
Everything looks so elegant, and yet so fun. I bet people were talking about it for weeks afterward. Can’t wait to see pictures of your honeymoon!
Absolutely stunning and the details are the best! And I looooooove the wedding dress. I’m also glad that the truck was used. It’s great!
Nikki & Joe ~ super duper fantastic wedding and photos!!! What a wonderful event and kudos to you both for making it so MCM memorable! I smiled on every pic and thank you for sharing! All the best to you both always!!!
Best. Wedding. Ever. I’m dazzled by everything. Makes me wish I could rewind to my own very informal bohemian wedding and do it over just like this. Congratulations, and may you have many wonderful years of marriage together!
Nikki and Joe, I love everything about your wedding – from the dress, to the truck, to the pink hair, to the sideburns, to the cufflinks! What a fabulous memory you created for yourself and all of your guests. Congratulations and enjoy your honeymoon. Can’t wait to see snapshots from your old Kodak!
Wow. Nikki is a bombshell! Good job Joe! Congratulations you two!
This is the most awesome wedding EVER! Looking at the usual run-of-mill wedding photos from others, this stands out as the funnest wedding photos I’ve ever seen. Great job on really embracing a theme (and so tastefully too!), and being so creative.
Best wishes for many many happy years together – you are definitely off to a great start! Thank you for sharing
How Sweet!!
Thanks for all the kind words. I’ve been working on the Honeymoon pictures and everyone is going to love us and hate us at the same time, but we have a perfect Vintage Pink kitchen that will be featured on here at some point. I have a little bit more work to do on that (sick pupp sidetracked us).
Sidenote- BIG thanks to Eartha Kitsch for making a donation to the Gidget Fund!!!! I just got back from her 1st visit to our Vet and it was pretty pricey. thanks again!
Thanks everyone for the wonderful wishes! It was a wonderful time and I’d do it over and over if I could! I’m so happy to get to share it all with such fun loving people!
Nikki
On another note, I am now obsessed with that stenciled floor in front of the sofa at the museum. If I could transport that entire vignette to my house I would.
Hey Pam!
this is where I live, and the invite still stands to ‘Flash Back to the 1950′s’
You just gotta see this town
Kory
Thanks, Kory — one of these days, for sure!
Joe and Nikki, Thank you for sharing the photos of your wonderful, unique wedding! I now have both the hotel and museum bookmarked as a place for my husband and I to go on a weekend trip someday
I hope your pup is feeling better. Best wishes for much happiness and good fortune to you both.
Congrats! To the happy couple. I also had a retro wedding almost two years ago in California. Would love to share the photos if able to.
Wonderful. Loved it. You two must have had a blast. Not a fan of the cake in the face stuff but otherwise fab and fun.
The cake in the face is a pretty traditional thing, plus when else do I get clearance to smash Nikki in the face with cake and NOT have her mad at me for like a week? It was all in good fun, although all I could smell was Icing for the rest of the night.
OMG what an amazing, beautiful wedding! I’m getting married next year and I’m totally, completely in love with your wedding dress!!!!! Where did you get it??
If I recall the dress was bought at a local Bridal Shop but then taken to one of those crazy old Russian lady seamstresses who’ve been sewing for like a hundred years and she added the pink to the bottom. I’ll double check with Nikki, she has some other Pics I can probably dig up too.
Ok thanks!!
Wow, what a fun wedding! You both are gorgeous, and your photographer is so talented to really bring out the best in you. Love the pink in the dress, the cufflinks, and the old truck. Looking forward to the pink kitchen!
So enjoyed seeing the pictures! Your wedding is a wonderful example of how cleverness and creativity are what really makes a great wedding, not copious amounts of money.
Using your own MCM pieces on the tables was perfect, and the planet thanks you for not burdening the landfill with cute but useless wedding favors. We went to a lovely wedding last month where each guest was given a pizza cutter with hearts cut through the fender-style cover/handle. With 200 guests, but only 80 households, you can guess where those cutters went.
My favorite picture was the one on the tailgate of the truck. Absolutely perfect. Best of everything to you both!
The best wedding EVER!!!
Gosh I bet this was an awesome wedding. I love her dress and the hair. SO COOL!
Congratulations. Every detail made me smile. But the best was seeing how much fun everyone was having. Wishing you many happy years of vintage shopping together.