gratuitous art post: Orc Wedding Ceremony

On Tuesday, Vidyala posted her gorgeous imagining of what a Draenei wedding gown might look like. She ended her post with a question:

If you don’t like draenei (what’s wrong with you?) what do you think your favourite race would wear to their nuptials/racial equivalent?

I commented about the Tauren, of course — I think the Spring Robes from Noblegarden make a lovely wedding robe for a Tauren girl, especially if you imagine them being made out of a very soft, carefully tanned and bleached leather — with the hunting, the tanning, and the construction of the robe perhaps being things the bride would have done herself. For the groom, I think the Ceremonial Leather Harness would be an appropriate chestpiece. Again, I imagined him making it himself and adorning it with trophies from his own hunting. Then it occurred to me that I probably had this combination in my head because Kirina had already suggested it for a tropical or Troll themed wedding… but I still think it would be perfect for Tauren, too. I also think Tauren weddings would be likely to involve tokens or emblems of the participants’ clans or tribes in the form of headdresses, armbands, or bracelets. Perhaps each clan or tribe would have a unique and distinctive pattern of beading and other decorations for the groom’s chestpiece and the bodice of the bride’s robe.

Further on in the comments to Vidyala’s post, HittingStuff described what she thought her female Orc character might wear to her marriage ceremony. I began thinking about what an Orc wedding might involve, and when I came to the idea that perhaps there might be body paint, this idea grabbed me and ran away with my imagination.

I did originally intend for the bride and groom to be wearing long fur cloaks, too, but I didn’t remember that detail until I already had the drawings inked and colored >.<

As I thought about who might officiate at an Orc wedding, it seemed to me that it would probably be a tribal elder, who would probably be a Shaman — perhaps even a female one, as Orc society seems to have a strong matriarchal component (see Greatmother Geyah and Grandmatron Tekla).

Apparently Thrall got himself a mate in The Shattering novel, so maybe Christie Golden wrote up a scene that would be considered “canon” on the subject of Orcish marriage customs. Perhaps her ideas of what constitutes an Orc wedding ceremony would not have wierded out BTH the way these pictures did. He also thinks the groom’s grin in the last panel looks cheesy, whereas I was so pleased with myself for having drawn an Orc male and actually made him look cute.