Halloween Wrap-Up Pt. 2

My second Halloween costume was technically my wedding tuxedo, but at the same time, my wedding tuxedo was technically a costume. 

I'm not a fan of formal wear, so when I realized I was going to have to wear a tuxedo for my wedding, I wanted to do something that I could have fun with. And it would have to work for both our September ceremony and our Halloween reception.

My first idea was to try to piece together a suit that would mimic Voltron's five different lion colors. After all, Votron was the costume I was wearing when the RoBeastress and I first got together, so it would be highly symbolic. But I quickly realized that would be costly, wasteful, and a lot of hard work, so I instead tried to think of offbeat, yet iconic suits I could copy.

Eddie Murphy from Coming To America. 
The fur would most likely have been impossible to find--legally, at least. 

Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. 
I liked this one because, like Daniel LaRusso,
I am also from New Jersey and feel like an outsider at formal events.
Plus, I am also likely to get a giant spaghetti stain on my white shirt. 

Joe Pesci from My Cousin Vinny. 
This was a possibility because the RoBeastress was considering a Marisa Tomei outfit,
but it really only would have worked if she were much taller than me. 

Randy Savage in The Match Made in Hell. 
This felt like a jinx because he and Elizabeth were divorced less than a year later.
And they're both dead. :(

While these choices would have been hilarious, they probably definitely would have been a bit over the top. My last ditch pitch to the RoBeastress was from a film we both enjoyed as yoots: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

In the opening scene of the film, Harrison Ford wears a white dinner jacket when he heads into a Shanghai night club to deal with some gangsters. He soon gets poisoned, avoids getting shot, and eventually jumps out a window and escapes danger (temporarily), all while wearing the tuxedo. I figured if a white tux can survive that action, then it should be fine for whatever I plan on doing in it.

The outfit, which is a tribute to James Bond's tuxedo in Goldfinger (played, of course, by Indiana Jones' father Sean Connery), has several distinct characteristics: white jacket, peak lapels, black bow tie, single button, single breasted, black pants, and a red carnation. Indiana Jones' version also updates Bond's cummerbund to a black waistcoat. Tuxedo enthusiasts seem to disapprove of many of these wardrobe choices, but they're all fucking dorks and really need to get a life.

Putting this all together was not as easy I thought it might be. The white dinner jacket (technically, off-white) is not exactly the most popular jacket. And for some reason, notch and shawl lapels are much more prevalent than peak ones. Since I committed to searching high and wide for those specs, I figured I may as well obsess over the single button too.

To make a long story short, I finally found the perfect white dinner jacket on ebay. And, well, I also have a second one that is perfect, but the wrong size. (If you're interested in purchasing that, I'll give you a special RoBeast discount.) A vest that was not too high and not too low was a bit of a pain in the ass too, but I finally tracked the right size at a Turkish menswear store called Sarar. It was pricier than I had hoped, but at that point, I was crazy and desperate. It was on sale at least. 

The rest wasn't really too tough. Except for tying the bow tie. That is not something you should attempt to do for the first time a half hour before your wedding. Anyway, this is the final product:

The tie was fake by October. And the RoBeastress decided to get some more mileage out of her real wedding dress instead of going for Kate Capshaw's crazy red sequined thing. I don't blame her.

We also had a homemade Ark of the Covenant. I bought a plastic storage bin from Target, papier-mached it, spray painted it gold, and attached two 5' wood dowels to it. 

A view from the bottom before the aluminum foil murals were added. 

The elaborate lid had meager beginnings as cereal boxes...

...which eventually became beautiful golden cherubs. 

Many brain cells were killed during the making of the Ark. 

A shot of the original, from Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

And a recreation on Halloween. Despite being guarded by a handful of snakes, these two brave souls
(Stanford White & Professor Plum) were determined to learn the Ark's secrets. 

They were rewarded not by having their faces melt off, but by getting the first crack at 15 gallons of Halloween candy. 

I wanted to make a stamp of the Nazi with the melting face to put on all the candy bags, but it wasn't a very tasteful idea. Plus I already had the chance to make an Indiana Jones-related stamp--one that replicated the Top Secret warning found on the crate containing the Ark at the end of Raiders.

We put it on the return envelopes that went out with the wedding invitations. It really didn't serve any purpose other than getting people ready for a pile of obscure references. More of those tomorrow...