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Frightfully romantic
Wedding was a monsters' ball for the happy couple and their guests
  
By SCOTT WALDMAN, Staff writer
First published: Monday, October 29, 2007

ROTTERDAM -- Craig Ostrander and Claudia Jones would be pleased if you told them their wedding was doomed.
They exchanged vows on Sunday dressed in matching green flesh paint while dressed as the Munsters. The bride was walked by her vampire father past a real coffin full of candy as theme music from "The Exorcist" played.

  
Her husband -- stiff from nerves or maybe just playing his character, Herman Munster -- shuffled from side to side in his black platform shoes.

When it came time for the Halloween-loving couple to exchange rings, a disembodied hand crawled along the floor to bring them. That got a rousing chuckle from the roughly 100 people attending the themed wedding. The crowd included a Wonder Woman, a Bat Girl, a gladiator, and a couple dressed as bacon and eggs.

Screams of terror came from a machine in a hallway lined with cobwebs. A pilgrim and a vampire snapped pictures.

Both Ostrander, 35, and Jones, 33, said the same thing when asked why they loved Halloween so much they wanted to combine it with their big day.

"You can be somebody else for a day."

The newlyweds insisted, however, that at 3:13 p.m. Sunday at the Rotterdam Elks Lodge, they'd both be themselves.

They were, when Ostrander grabbed his ghoulish wife and planted a big kiss on her blackened lips and the crowd cheered. Alice Cooper's "Feed My Frankenstein" blared as they walked down an aisle strewn with fall leaves.

Debra Countermine, dressed in a homemade "Star Trek" costume with pointy ears, said she wasn't surprised that the couple chose Halloween as a wedding theme because it was reflection of their fun-loving personalities.

"They're not into evil or anything, they're into partying and having a good time," she said.

So superheroes intermingled with knights and maidens. A man dressed in doctor's scrubs smoked a sweet-smelling cigar in the parking lot with another man dressed as bacon.

The groom's father, Russ Ostrander, admitted that he never expected to dress up as a doctor at his son's wedding some day. But he was glad that it took some of the tension out of the intense planning that typically comes with wedding vows.

"I'd rather see people relaxed and having a good time," he said, "not acting like stuffed shirts."

Scott Waldman can be reached at 454-5080 or by e-mail at swaldman@timesunion.com.

Wow! They certainly put a lot of time and thought and creativity into this wedding. I'm surprised they didn't do Michael Jackson's famous THRILLER dance!