Mara and I met in college, both getting our B.S in Electrical Engineering. We are both true passionate geeks; we love to tinker and create things. So it’s no wonder why we put so much into creating a truly original Geek Wedding. There was a lot of 3D printing involved, meters of wire used on our clothes; we even used a soldering iron during the ceremony. We developed a lot of useful stuff during the creation phase, and of course everything is Open Source.
The Projects
- The Geeky Proposal
Before the wedding come the Engagement story. How did I ask her to marry me? Why by hiding the message on a PCB she designed! After we sent them off to be fabricated, I contacted the PCB pool coordinator and asked him to add some text the the silkscreen. When Mara got ready to populate the boards, she found the message of a lifetime.
- Electronic Wedding Invitations
Then it came time to design our wedding invitations. We decided to take our wedding theme (circuits and swirls) literally by creating invitations with actual circuits on them. Completely hand crafted, we used a solid ink printer to make flexible circuit boards at home and added an ATTiny13 and some LEDs for a sparkling effect. Bonus, there’s an Easter egg in the code!
- Electronic Wedding Wishing Well
A ‘Wishing Well’ at a wedding is a tradition where guests write well-wishes for the couple. We decided to make a well that did more then just sit there by adding some light and sound effects. Combing an Arduino, an inexpesive music player, an PWM shield, and a 3D printed latch, the well puts on a quick show every time a ‘wish’ is deposited.
- 3D Printed Wedding Table Center Pieces
To keep ourselves on budget, we ended up designing and 3D prinitng our own unique table centerpieces. Using a Makerbot 3D printer and a Silhouette cutter, these centerpieces are completely DIY.
- Electronic Wedding Attire
When it came time to think about our wedding attire, did we keep to tradition? Of course not! Instead, we added LEDs and EL wire to our outfits. To keep bulges low, we had to re-purpose EL inverters for standalone operation. We also used inexpensive LilyTiny’s to run 12 LEDS with 4 IO pins.
- Circuit Wedding Ceremony
Not content with tradition wedding vows, we came up with our own wedding ceremony involving a soldering iron and LED display. Bonus: it used the same boards I asked Mara to marry me on!
- Photobooth Mod
We took a Photoboop kit and added a RGB button and some sounds to attract the attention of our guests.
- Hand Painted Isle Runner
Mara and her wedding party spent many hours hand painting a custom isle runner to match our geeky theme. (click to enlarge)
- EL Wire Bouquets
Mara worked directly with the florist to design unique bouquets complete with 3 meters of EL wire each.
- Electronic Themed Jewelry
Mara and my mother worked together to create unique jewelry with resistor and PCB elements from old print cartridges.
The Technology Created
We created a few new and different technologies during the creation of our various wedding projects. First is Vixeno, an easy way to embed Vixen light shows in AVR code.
Next is code for a Charlieplexing display powered by a LilyTiny, ATTiny85.
Even though we didn’t end up using it, we came up with an easy way to light up small fiber-optic sheets available from Sparkfun.
The Pictures
Some of the best photos from the wedding can bee seen in this Flickr slideshow.