When I decided to Google “Edgar Allan Poe themed things”, I had a feeling shit was going to get weird. As it turns out, there are Poe themed restaurants, tattoos, and posters, but my favorite out of all of the oddities were the weddings. Yes, couples actually themed their weddings after the writer. Complete with things like raven centerpieces, skeleton hand boutenieres, blood red roses, and black linens, these weddings are designed to embody the style and themes of Poe’s work. I cannot be the only person that finds it difficult to see the romance in a Poe wedding, but after all he is a Dark “Romantic”. 

When I read about him on the Poe Museum website, I realized that maybe Poe did embody some romance. His marriage to Virginia was nothing short of happy (and disturbing) and it seemed as his home life was what kept him going through the poverty that he faced. When his cousin wife died, Poe was devastated and could not even bring himself to write. However, it did not take him long to become infatuated with another woman who inspired some of his poems such as “For Annie”, the only issue being that she was married. Since he couldn’t be with her, Poe became engaged to a different woman who he had been with before and as he traveled they wrote love letters back and forth. Unfortunately, he died before they ever married.

But the point of talking about Poe’s personal life is that maybe there is some sense in an Edgar Allan Poe themed wedding, even if most of his writing is dark and gruesome. After all, to have a love like he had for Virginia is pretty special. Even if she was his baby cousin.

At the Edgar Allan Poe museum in Richmond, VA, there is an “Enchanted Garden” and the museum website claims that Poe thought gardens were an “art form”. The museum hosts weddings in the garden, for a fee obviously, where couples can get married and…

“live happily evermore”.