By Greg Grisolano
ggrisolano@joplinglobe.com
Coffins, spiders and skulls may not be the traditional decor of weddings, but Charles Ward and his bride, Sylvia (Curtis) Ward, wouldn’t have it any other way.
“There’s so many stuffy old weddings where you pat them on the back and send them down the road,” Charles Ward, 50, a residential contractor, said Friday ahead of the ceremony. “This thing here is definitely not a normal, everyday wedding.”
The Wards tied the knot Friday night in front of family and friends — many of whom were also in costume — at a ceremony at Jack Lawton Webb Convention Center.
The date was chosen in part because Halloween is Sylvia Ward’s favorite holiday.
“Halloween is my very favorite holiday,” she said. “It just seemed right at the time, and it turned out amazing.”
Members of the couple’s family said they were surprised by the date initially.
“I thought they’d both just gone crazy,” said Amber Ward, Charles’ daughter, who served as maid of honor in a Geisha costume. “I’d never heard of anything like it. But the more we went along with it, the more I thought this could be cool.”
Charles Ward said some of his family were skeptical at first of the wedding date.
“At first they were like, ‘What?’” he said. “Now, they’re all into it.”
The couple exchanged traditional wedding vows before a minister, but everything else — from the costumed wedding party to a fully functional haunted house within the reception hall — was offbeat.
“We haven’t left Christianity out of it at all,” Charles Ward said.
Planning the ceremony took quite some time, and several late-night brainstorming sessions, according to the bride.
“For about a month, we’d wake each other up at 2 or 3 in the morning and say, ‘How about this?’” Sylvia Ward said.
Even the wedding-march music took a cue from the season. Flower girls tossed spiders instead of petals. The groom’s party entered to Michael Jackson’s Halloween hit “Thriller,” while the wedding march combined two AC/DC hits — “Hell’s Bells” and “Thunderstruck.”
The groom kept his costume a secret while the bride, accompanied by her 18-year-old daughter, Holly Curtis, were dressed as a vampire princess and Dallas Cowboys cheerleader.
“Mom’s never wanted a traditional wedding,” Curtis said. “This was a total better idea.”
The spider-shaped wedding cake and skull-shaped steins were also part of the ambiance.
With such a memorable date for the wedding, Sylvia Ward said the family plans to incorporate the holiday into future anniversary parties.
“Because our anniversary is going to be on Halloween, we’ll just have a big party every year to celebrate,” she said.
Haunted house
Charles Ward and some co-workers spent several days building the haunted house, which included a fog machine, scary music, and plenty of creepy-crawlies.
“We scared the grandchildren last night,” Ward joked.
