Xbox Nerds Desirai Labrada and John Henry Have A Halo-Style Wedding

Desirai Labrada (29) and John Henry (27) have been gaming since they were kids.  Desirai remembered how exciting and colorful Super Mario Brothers, the 8-bit version was when she was 5-years old.  Desirai used to wake up an hour early for school so that she could play Super Mario.  Since Halo: Combat Evolved came with the original Xbox, Desirai became addicted to that game.  Since Halo was four player, she always had friends come over and play it.

“I met John totally by chance — he’d let a roommate play on his gamer tag while he was away, and when he came back, there were friends on his list that he didn’t recognize so he sent out messages to them asking where he’d met them. One of them was me, and my gamertag caught his interest,” stated Desirai. “He asked if we could play some time and we ended up playing on a day-to-day basis. He lived in Florida and I was in New York.”

That was in December 2004 and then they started spending a lot of time on the phone in February.  They started dating in mid-March and then met in person in April.  For college, Desirai wanted to attend Full Sail University in Florida to study digital media and John helped her out.  Desirai had to move back to New York after graduation for family reasons, but couldn’t take being so far away from John.  Both of them did not want to give up on each other.

John proposed in a restaurant and they both knew that they wanted a Halo-styled wedding since that is how they met.  There would be subtle Halo touches in the wedding.  The orchestra would play the Halo theme song and tables would be named after Halo maps.  The Master Chief performed the ceremony and John wore a Halo tie.

“After the reception we had a bride-versus-groom Halo tournament in place of the first dance. To keep with the theme, I wanted to find a creative way to give away the bouquet and garter. So the guys and girls fought each other in a slayer match for them. I liked the idea of people having to earn the garter or bouquet instead of just reaching up and catching it. Who won? John did…by two kills.”

[via GreenPixels, Photo via RF Photography]

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