Yk wedding Game of Thrones style
West Hollywood couple head North to tie knot under the Northern lights
Robin Grant
Northern News Services
Wednesday, September 7, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Getting married under the Northern lights sounded like a perfect wedding to Ryan Panaligan of West Hollywood, Calif.
Brandon Panaligan, left, and Ryan Panaligan get married at Somba K'e Civic Plaza on Friday evening. The couple travelled all the way to Yellowknife from West Hollywood, Calif., to exchange vows of matrimony. - photo courtesy of Brandon and Ryan Panaligan |
With the aurora dancing directly overhead in the night sky Friday, the choice he and his now husband Brandon Panaligan made for a destination wedding appeared to have proved to be a wise one.
Ryan Panaligan described the occasion in Somba K'e Park Plaza as a "pre-contact ceremony," referring to the time before aboriginal people and outside culture made contact.
"The more we learned about Yellowknife and the different cultures up here, the more we really fell in love with it," said Panaligan.
"We didn't want to bring L.A. to Yellowknife. We wanted to bring Yellowknife to us."
And that's exactly what the couple did. But not before kicking off the celebration with a Game of Thrones costume party at the Top Knight pub on Thursday.
The couple planned the costume party so the more than 50 guests arriving from around the world could meet and get to know each other. It served as an icebreaker, said Panaligan, adding that even bar staff dressed up.
"What better way to break the ice than to have a costume party," he said.
"We all love Game of Thrones so we decided to have a Game of Thrones costume party."
In keeping with the pre-contact theme, the wedding ceremony featured what Panaligan called hand-fasting, a pagan custom practiced in western Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries.
"Hand-fasting is actually the origin of the term 'tying the knot,'" he explained.
"To symbolize the coming together of the couple - and the symbol of the marriage - people would tie a ribbon or string over the couples' hands in a knot or braid."
During their ceremony, Panaligan said they had eight separate ribbons made of different materials and each ribbon had a blessing associated with it.
"We picked 10 different guests who came up and placed a ribbon around our hands and tied a knot. So we had eight ribbons tied around our hands. There wasn't a dry face. Everyone was crying."
The Panaligans' wedding featured all local vendors, including catering by chef Robin Wasicuna of Twin Pine Diner, performances by Quantum Tangle, dinner at the Dancing Moose Cafe and Woodyard Brewery and photography by Chasing Light Studio, to name a few. The couple even had teepees shipped from Montana and displayed at the Yellowknife Ski Club.
"Every single person that we've interacted with in Yellowknife has been so amazing and friendly and so welcoming," he said.
"In the mind of someone who lives in a city with four million people, and is the epicentre of gay culture, I was really concerned that a gay couple might not be accepted," he said.
"And in doing the research, we realized that it's completely false. Everybody has been so amazing ... I love Yellowknife! I think we are going to come for our anniversary."
The Game of Thrones costumes were a hit among the locals, Panaligan added.
On Saturday, the couple dressed in their costumes for a last photo shoot at the Woodyard Brewery, which drew a crowd.
"Everyone was talking about it. We didn't expect it to be such a hit and it was really fun," said Panaligan.
