Photos by ERIC BRADY The Roanoke Times

Suzan Buchanan and Ralph Scialpi got married Saturday at Fishburn Park in Roanoke. They met at The Coffee Pot roadhouse, which is nearby.

Ralph Scialpi (left) has his picture taken with his new sister-in-law Crystal Corbett as Sherry Lamb (back right) and Brad Hopkins (right) look on.

Even conventional weddings can scare the hair off a black cat.

Bridesmaids' gowns tend toward terrifying. Anxious grooms resemble zombies.

And the parents of the bride can turn ghostly pale contemplating the tab.

At 2 p.m. on Halloween 2009, Roanoke residents Suzan Buchanan, 35, and Ralph Scialpi, 48, were married in Fishburn Park in a Pagan and Wiccan handfasting ceremony.

The bride wore black. As did the groom and the mother of the bride and many more in the small circle of friends and family. But others wore devilish red, purple and a host of Halloween hues.

Wendy Friedel, an ordained high priestess, conducted the ceremony. Ultimately, it was no scarier than a much more typical wedding.

Aside from the Vikings, vampires and sole Valkyrie in attendance. Aside from a Cleopatra, a Spiderella, a lean man with a jet-black Mohawk and the somewhat unusual vows Buchanan lifted from Pearl Jam's "Indifference," the wedding looked a lot stranger than it was.

Friedel spoke of love and commitment, of trust, love and forbearance. The groom kissed the bride. The bride tossed her bouquet. Buchanan took Scialpi as her last name. Guests and family members lifted the hems of capes and satiny gowns to scurry through fallen leaves to click digital cameras.

Buchanan's two sisters and her mother, Betty Buchanan of Tazewell, said that Suzan Buchanan's decision to throw a Halloween wedding surprised them not one bit.

"It's unusual, but it's Suzan," said Betty Buchanan. "She's always had a mind of her own. Everything has to be different. Everything has to be unusual."

And that's been true ever since her youngest daughter's earliest years growing up in Tazewell, she said.

"Her dad died when I was six months pregnant with her," Betty Buchanan said. "Her sisters and I spoiled her."

She laughed, "I suppose that's why she is the way she is."

Suzan Buchanan's first husband would not go along with a Halloween wedding, which might have been a bad omen.

But this time, after a six-month courtship and June engagement, Buchanan, costumed as Living Dead Girl, and Scialpi, as Rob Zombie, tied the knot, and Scialpi sounded afterward like a happy man.

Of the ceremony, he said, "It was very cool. I liked it."

Scialpi, a native of Queens, N.Y., is a warehouse worker, a musician and body piercer. Buchanan works as a unit secretary at Lewis-Gale Medical Center. Many of the friends at her wedding work there, too, including Sherry Lamb, 34, who came as Cleopatra.

Lamb's escort, Brad Hopkins, 36, was Scialpi's best man and came elegantly attired as a vampire.

Hopkins said he and Scialpi do their "own version of Heavy Metal karaoke."

In fact, a karaoke night at The Coffee Pot roadhouse on Brambleton Avenue brought Scialpi and Buchanan together. He saw her on stage singing a Guns N' Roses song and felt smitten.

"She sang me a little ditty and I was jelly," Scialpi said. "It just clicked."