I attended a wonderfully offbeat union of two hearts this past weekend. Held at the San Francisco Zoo, this ceremony had a live acoustic cover of “Still Alive” to greet guests, a musical playlist powered by an iPod and “Rock Band” as a main attraction.

Karen Chu, artist at 1UP, and Patrick Joynt, associate console editor at GameSpy, married on a particularly windy Saturday evening in the Bay Area, and yours truly was present for the celebratory festivities.

I’ve known both Karen and Patrick for several years, and this event was a long time coming. I also knew their wedding was to be anything but ordinary.

I never expected I’d be singing The Ramones‘ “Blitzkrieg Bop” in front of a bunch of my good friends’ family members that I’d never met before. But I did it anyway.

“Rock Band” wasn’t turned on until after Karen and Patrick had their first dance as a married couple. There was a very good reason for that, too. Once “Rock Band” went on, the entire audience was hooked. The centers of attention played first, though, joined by Game Life editor Chris Kohler for OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again.”

For the record, I hope Kohler doesn’t sing in a real band.

I kid, Chris, I kid! (But seriously…)

The “Rock Band” setup wasn’t perfect, though, which was only half the game’s fault. There is no party mode in “Rock Band,” which means there’s no way to avoid a lot of game-over moments when wedding-goers fail to get through a song or even play their part well. I’ve always felt there should be a way to turn off the failing mechanics in “Rock Band,” and the wedding made that especially poignant when kids started playing.

I didn’t blame kids for jumping on the game. They just wanted to bang on the drums and have some fun. But it’s a little frustrating when everyone is playing along just fine and someone who doesn’t know how to play keeps failing the entire band.

That’s not the kid’s fault, it’s “Rock Band”’s. Next patch, Harmonix, can you let me turn off your game over screen? For my sanity?

Eventually, they had to turn off “Rock Band” to make people pay attention to an announcement. There was a mad rush to play the moment it was over.

The wedding was a who’s who of the San Francisco gaming community, though mainly journalists. The majority of the gamers came from the house of Ziff Davis, but you also had Gamasutra features editor Christian Nutt, Ubisoft PR girl Cindy Lum, Double Fine programmer Anna Kipnis, former GameSpot editor Brad Shoemaker and many others whom I’ve likely forgotten.

And did I mention that Karen rick rolled her own wedding?

Good luck you two!