A Wedding of All Time by Anika H. '26, MEng '27
I walked Tim the beaver down the aisle
(late post cuz i got hosed with final projects and then graduation and then moveout :p)
It was a fine and beautiful day. The birds were chirping, the bells were ringing, and two beavers madly in love were wed. The audience was shedding tears of joy and cheering as Bernoulli pulled Tim into a deep kiss, made no less passionate by the strangely angled teeth on the fursuits. When I wished for my dreams to become reality, this is not quite what I had in mind, but I’m certainly not complaining.
you may now kiss the bride.
Here is the video evidence: https://youtu.be/ZfFotA_QDS4
Timestamps:
00:48 Flower girl!
02:10 Tim approaches the altar
03:26 Bernoulli approaches the altar
04:12 Petey begins his speech
08:02 Wedding vows
09:01 On no the dog
10:57 Exchange of rings
11:35 Petey declares them beaver and beaver
11:58 You may kiss the bride
12:36 Clown music begins
The Planning
A bunch of my friends on Beast (2E) planned this event for CPW over the course of two months. We were hoping this could be an official MIT event, so we asked the Admissions Office if this could be a thing. They thought about it for a bit, talked to Caltech’s admissions office, and then decided it was a bit too strange to officially sanction a gay furry wedding (which is completely fair, we were kinda expecting this anyway), so we registered this as a student-run event. The deFlorez Fund for humor gave us some amount of funding, so we went ahead and bought cake, a wedding arch and the beaver suits.
Tim had a bridal veil sewn to the top of his head, and Bernoulli got a dentist appointment, a nose job, and an eyelid surgery. The teeth on Bernoulli’s fursuit were a thin strip of fabric that curled outward like a mustache, so I replaced it with two small stuffed rectangles to give it some more volume. It still stuck out a bit, but it looked much better than before. I replaced the nose with a larger piece of plastic, and sewed the eyebrows (? eyelids?) higher so he didn’t look perpetually sad. Bernoulli’s suit lacked fingers as well, so we had to make a small and a large ring for the ring exchange.
the rings in question
The People
Our volunteers for the bride and bride, Jonny and Cristian were to be shoved into the Tim and Bernoulli costumes respectively. They knew what they were getting into, literally. Both the fursuits were hot and stuffy with limited range of vision, which meant they had to be guided around to not crash into things. They practiced the dip and the kiss by mashing the heads of the fursuits together and princess carried each other across the Beast lounge.
We had a volunteer orchestra to play wedding music, a flower girl, and a brave volunteer in a dog costume as the ring bearer. I’m not entirely sure where she got the dog costume or how she got the idea, but she was fully committed to the bit, practicing walking on all fours, picking up the rings with her teeth, and making the ears flap as she walked. I couldn’t tell if she regretted this after watching the video. Her mind works in mysterious ways.
the dog walker and the ring dog in position
Because we were skilled in the art of persuasion and were extremely convincing (we begged and pleaded), Petey got drafted into being the wedding officiant. He’s already officiated five weddings before, so he’s got plenty of experience.
I was to walk Tim down the aisle, and the Beast GRA, Katherine, who was responsible for naming Bernoulli, was to walk him down the aisle.
The Wedding Day
On the day of, we got the balloon arch set up, a small array of chairs in front for the orchestra. While I was busy trying to free myself from the CPW events that morning, Jonny and Cristian linked arms and frolicked down the infinite corridor in their beaver costumes through crowds of gawking prefrosh and confused parents, doing a great job of advertising the event in the meantime. I got into my fanciest suit and went downstairs with Jonny, waiting for the cue. The orchestra started playing Pachbel’s Canon, Ming sprinkled the aisles of the EC courtyard with flower petals, and Asa gave us the green light to head out the door.
We decided beforehand that it was best to act as serious as possible, but I have a terrible poker face, and was trying really hard not to laugh as I walked a giant beaver furry to a balloon arch altar as father of the bride.
the corners of my mouth were twitching from trying to look as serious as possible
Petey wrote a speech (It starts at about 4:12 in the video) and it’s got an absolute banger of an opening line: “Dearly beaver-loved, we are gathered here to-gay to knock down the dams separating these two log-crossed enemies to lovers and celebrate them as they covalently bond”. I only gave him a little bit of lore and background information, but it was the finest of literature I’ve had the pleasure to behold, and my words can’t do him justice so you should watch it in the video. What’s crazy is that it was entirely written by him and edited by two other admissions officers without a single student touching the document.
When it was time to exchange rings, Kath got walked out on a leash, holding the rings. The massive hoard of prefrosh watching and recording seemed to love it, but from the front row, I could see the fear in Petey’s eyes in fully realizing what he had gotten himself into.
Because it was heard to speak from inside the fursuits, Petey read the vows and they nodded in approval. The bride pulled the bride into a kiss, and then proceeded to fall over when Stacy pulled the veil a little too hard. They wiggled on the ground like worms trying to get up as the orchestra played clown music.
The Epilogue
The wedding afterparty happened back on Beast with cake and snacks. To my horror, the wedding planners were already discussing whether Tim and Bernoulli should have a baby or have a divorce. I protested that it was too soon given that we weren’t even done eating the rest of the wedding cake. Jonny and Cristian messed around in the fursuits a bit more, and the rest of the evening was a blur because we were all pretty tired by the end.
i think jonny shoved a squishmallow up his shirt but im not entirely sure what’s happening anymore
Later, Ming was talking to a grad student recently and he said something along the lines of “I was leaving the Muddy (a pub) buzzed and saw the two beavers and thought I was hallucinating, and it didn’t help that I was with a Russian international PhD student and had to try and explain wtf we were seeing.” Occasionally I still wonder what I would have thought about this institution if the beaver wedding was my first impression of MIT.
MINCE had a cake picnic, where 30 bakers each baked a cake for people to try, and one of them was of Tim and Bernoulli getting married on top of a log cake. It got the most votes for the creative category and tasted great as well.
two beavers on a log cake
Huge thanks to the DeFlorez fund for humor, Beast and the organizers, the orchestra, Petey, the CPW chairs, and everybody else involved in making this wedding happen.