Illinois newlyweds Jessica and Nathan Stevens just expertly navigated life’s Death Star trench run and sent two proton torpedoes into its exhaust port. In other words, they’re destroying it ― and with perhaps no better example than their wedding portrait.
To celebrate the couple’s marriage, Jessica’s parents surprised them with a piece of artwork that reflects their movie, TV and comic book interests. Marvel artist Scott Johnson, a high school friend of the bride’s mother, created the amazing illustration.
The portrait features a wide cast of comic book, TV and movie characters, including Captain Kirk, the Avengers, Woody and Buzz Lightyear (hidden at the end of the aisle), Rocket and Groot, plus an array of Disney favorites. The amount of nerd culture packed into this piece is pretty incredible.
On Monday, Jessica Stevens posted the artwork to Reddit, where it understandably went viral, hitting the front page and gaining more than 55,000 upvotes by Friday.
“I had seen [Johnson] post a similar commission years ago that I saved to my phone,” said Stevens’ mother, Marilyn. “When the time came we knew that’s what we wanted to give our daughter and her new husband as a wedding present. It’s something unique that we knew they would treasure for years to come.”
Stevens told HuffPost she and her husband had absolutely no idea about the gift ahead of time. But the portrait was merely the cap on an incredible geek wedding.
It started with a Harry Potter-themed wedding shower thrown by their families, featuring a candy display inspired by the series’ Honeydukes sweets shop.
Then came the bride and groom’s first look before the ceremony: an epic lightsaber duel that the bride says was not planned. If that’s not love, what even is love?
The couple packed in many of their favorite passions for their wedding ceremony, as Stevens described to HuffPost in a message via Reddit:
Our bridal party processional song was “Concerning Hobbits” from the “Lord of the Rings” series. The ring bear (yes, “bear,” which we lovingly took from “How I Met Your Mother”) walked down with a pillow made in the form of “Fellowship of the Ring” (complete with the first page sewn in on the inside).
The bridal march started, and everyone rose expecting to see me walking down the aisle ― but then the record “scratched,” and the imperial march started. Three stormtroopers filed in on each side of the room, marched down side-by-side and took a place behind the bridal party. My dad and I were then escorted in by Darth Vader himself. (HUGE thank you to the 501st Legion for making that happen!)
We also wrote the ceremony ourselves, which was rife with jokes and references, and the whole thing was very personal and a total blast.
After the ceremony, any disputes within the bridal party were settled the traditional way ― Hogwarts style, with wands at the ready.
Here’s to the newlyweds. May they have many happy years in all the worlds.
