According to an article I found in a back issue of Symmetry, when physicists marry physicists the beginning may be a big bang…but real life reveals itself pretty quickly. I think that any time two people following the same career track get hitched, there are bound to be moments of tension. Of course, if you’re not physicists, the potential for big bang jokes drops dramatically.
And from The Great Geek Manual comes this list designed to help you discover whether you are indeed marrying a dyed in the wool geek.
10. You met him at a Con and were brought together by your love of CosPlay.
09. He proposes… through a Diggnation podcast, through a news forum, through a search engine, through a webcomic, through an XBox game, through the webcam in front of an Apple Store, or using an iPod.
08. He proposes with a ring… inscribed with amino acid chains, inscribed with binary, inscribed with the word soulbound, or made from serial connectors.
07. You hold your ceremony in game… in Azeroth, Gielinor, or MapleStory. And it counts double for especially obscure games, like FlyFF.
06. The Groomsmen are all wearing Stormtrooper helmets.
05. You hold the wedding in the real world, but on the bridge of the Enterprise … and the story of the wedding is recorded as an ebook or a movie.
04. The wedding cake is decorated with… is shaped like an iPhone, iPod mini, lines of programming, Nintendo, R2-D2, Xbox (or any video game console, really), or if it has a Super Mario Brothers or World of Warcraft theme.
03. You strike poses from classic sci-fi films for your wedding pictures.
02. He surprises you on your honeymoon with a cruise, during which you take computer classes.
01. He tries to talk you into giving your child a name straight out of World of Warcraft… and succeeds.
The one thing I don’t like about this list is that it assumes that the geek you’re marrying is of the XY persuasion. Why aren’t the bridesmaids wearing Stormtrooper helmets? If you think about it, half the items wouldn’t fly with a non-geeky bride. Item one hits home a little hard… I’m geeky, and The Beard is geeky. When we briefly considered choosing a new last name for both of us, he wanted to go with something like Mr. and Mrs. B. Optimus-Prime. That’s when I decided to take his last name.
What geeky thing did you do at your wedding?
I agree, the list is a little bit discriminatory towards lady-geeks. For my upcoming wedding, next May, I had to do a great deal of talking to convince my fiance that it is entirely appropriate to hire musicians to play Zelda’s lullaby from Ocarina of Time instead of the traditional wedding march. I finally got him to cosplay this September, was flat turned down for the console wedding cake, and am still battling it out for the ‘Soulbound’ wedding rings. To be entirely fair, the groomsmen would definitely go for the stormtrooper helmets before the bridesmaids would.
My husband and I had a number of readings at our ceremony, the geekiest of which (and our favorite!) was Darwin’s list of pros and cons for proposing to his eventual bride. Some of the pros: “These things good for one’s health—but terrible loss of time” and “Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow.”
Our rings are Mobius strips. We get shown off at all the geek parties.
We’re both geeks–I’m a science fiction/fantasy book editor, my husband runs a particle accelerator. We met through an online personal ad in which I described my plush Cthulhu as what you would find in my bedroom. However, we didn’t do anything particularly geeky at the wedding, other than invite a lot of other geeks to be guests. And, no, there will be no children with names from fantasy novels.
I do, however, know a Near Eastern archaeologist who had a 3,000 year old Akkadian wedding text written in cuneiform on her wedding cake (her husband is also an archaeologist.)
I was on the road to being a geek but changed my major from electrical engineering to English. My sweetie, however, stuck with engineering and now meets at least half the requirements for nerdom as described in the video here:
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/6582-Ridin-Dirty.html
PS Remember in Revenge of the Nerds that it was the nerd who was great at sex because “all the jocks ever think about is sports.”
PPS I love the cake!
We are big geeks, but we did our best to keep it out of our wedding. We figured everyone knew we were geeks without putting up a neon sign.
We’re thinking of having our guests solve math problems on their seating cards to figure out their table number, but we might only do this for our other geeky friends. Some family has complained that they’re worried they might not find their seats!
We figured everyone knew we were geeks without putting up a neon sign.
Exactly, Lynn. Everyone at our wedding knows we’re big geeks, and to be honest, being a geek is only a part of our lives. Our wedding celebrated our love for each other, not our love for science fiction. Although there is a picture of us cutting the cake in Locus magazine. 😉 (A cake decorated with roses and lovebirds.)
I’m not married to my geek (met via in MMORPG) but when a friend met him for the first time she said “Oh! If you get married you should have the cake topper be a Gnome and an Elf.” Um, yeah. That’s Wood Elf. Sheesh. And really, do you know how hard it is to find a female gnome at all, not to mention one without a pointy hat and beard?
Oddly, Jennifer, I do know how hard it is! I was a female gnome in a D&D game, and we used little figurines to orientate ourselves on the hand-drawn maps. My friend had to cobble together a figurine from spare parts.
When physicists marry physicists, they name their children Quantum, Quasar, and Quark. Yes, I know Quantum and Quasar.