COEUR d'ALENE - This wedding theme didn't exactly scream subtlety.

Guests clad as vampires and royalty congregated inside the Silver Lake Motel banquet room on Wednesday, some helping smear each other with blood.

Ghosts and zombie portraits draped the walls. Severed fingers and eyeballs were carefully festooned on the food table. A tombstone wedding cake was topped with a green Frankenstein bride and groom, locked in idyllic embrace.

One thing was clear enough, said Judy Rodgers, the mother of the groom.

The aim of the Halloween wedding for Steve Rodgers and Crystal Merrill was pure fun.

"They're just fun people. And as my son says, they've been married before, had nice, traditional weddings, and they didn't work. So this one's for fun," said the Coeur d'Alene woman, clad as a queen with tiara and purple cape. "I wasn't thrilled with it in the beginning, but it's turned out to be a lot of fun."

As guests collected, the Post Falls couple stayed in a back room, helping with each others' costumes.

They emerged as Frankenstein and his bride, complete with grisly scar and bolts for Steve. Crystal wore a tiara over her white-streaked hair.

The couple admitted they easily attracted attention anyway, him at 6 feet 8 inches, her at 5 feet tall.

"I didn't have to dress up too much for Frankenstein," Steve said with a grin. "I've got a lot of Frankenstein already."

The final touches were added before the procession took place. A fog machine turned on by the cluster of tombstones, the lights flicked off.

Steve's mother stood behind the lit-up altar, where she would officiate the wedding.

The speakers blasted a spooky voice warning that the story of Frankenstein "may shock you. It may horrify you."

Then came on the theme song to Austin Powers, and Crystal walked down the aisle with a beaming expression.

"OK, here's comes the scary part," Judy said as Crystal and Steve faced each other.

The ceremony was quick, painless. Gazing at each other with smiles, both promised to cherish one another, to have a relationship based on "strength, love and the fun of true friendship," as Judy stated with a smile.

Applause and the song "Say Hey" greeted the new Crystal and Steve Rodgers.

"Good," Steve said of his opinion of the whole ceremony, his bolts starting to wilt off. "Halloween is both of our favorite holidays."

They desired a less formal ceremony, he added, since this was Crystal's second wedding and his third.

"Third time's a charm," he said with a smile.

This was actually plan B, Steve confessed. His mother had objected to their initial plan to elope to Vegas and get married in drag.

"This was a compromise," he said.

An informal ceremony was also ideal for their limited funds right now, Crystal said, adding that the newlyweds will be focusing on their new freight company instead of honeymooning.

She has always loved Halloween, she said.

"I would always dress up with my sister and we'd go out," she said. "I can be whoever I want to be."

They have been dating for five years, she added. Crystal has three children, ages 13, 16 and 19, and Steve has two daughters, 15 and 21, she said.

The couple's height disparity doesn't really get in the way, Crystal said.

"It works out," she said. "Anything up high, he gets it, and anything down low, I get it for him."

Friends at the ceremony described the pair as outgoing and hard working.

"I think it's appropriate for who they are to celebrate this way," said Kathy Marshall, the partner of Steve's brother Ron.

Dressed in a ball cap, fake beard and with a stuffed squirrel pinned to her shoulder, Marshall was dressed as Ron, who couldn't make it to the ceremony.

"You should've seen me on the freeway. People as they were passing were saying, "hey!' and tapping on their windows,'" she said.

Of the ceremony, Marshall said, "It's definitely a new experience."

Prepared to settle into life with her own Frankenstein, Crystal said with a giggle that she was "still nervous" after the ceremony.

She knows what she'll tell their kids when they ask about the wedding day, she said.

"I'll tell 'em it was fun," she said.