LISBON – As the sun set on Halloween night, witches and pirates, a bloody corpse and a ghost, an angel, a flower, a queen and a scarecrow (among others) assembled in the gathering darkness.

Lord Dracula stood in shadow, under a tree, waiting for his bride.

“Repeat after me. I, Dartmouth Robinson…” Durham Town Clerk Shannon Plourde, dressed as a witch, said to the vampire. Robinson, 36, of Lisbon repeated his vows to his bride, a witch named Allyson Tarling, 38, also of Lisbon, dressed in a black gown and a black lace veil and clutching a bouquet of black roses in her hands.

The way he figures it, Robinson is safe forever from the fate that keeps most shaking for decades. He’ll never, ever forget his wedding anniversary.

“I picked a date that I knew I wouldn’t forget,” said Robinson before the wedding. The two only met a couple months ago, but knew it was love almost from the moment they met, said Tarling.

“It was just one of those things where you knew that this was the guy,” she said. “I loved his sense of humor. I have two boys from a previous marriage, and he just seemed to fit right in. About a week after we met, he moved in. I just knew.”

It was the same for Robinson, he said. “When I first met her, I just felt real comfortable with her, and couldn’t wait to see her again,” he said. “And I just love being with her. I’m always happy with her. It just makes me feel good.”

Robinson proposed two weeks ago, Tarling said, by setting a box on her knee one day and asking her to “see if this fits.” She couldn’t even open the box for a full five minutes, she said – tearful, shocked, happy.

But neither cried on Halloween. “I’m too happy,” Tarling said after the wedding.

“I was surprised,” Tarling’s mom, Penney Jones, said, speaking of the wedding date. “At first she said ‘we’re having a Halloween party, ya know, at 5:30 on Wednesday.'” recalled Jones. “She said ‘I’m coming as a bride and he’s coming as a groom.’ I said ‘that sounds like fun.’ She said ‘We’re getting married.’ It was a big surprise.”

The original plan was to get married in the spring, Robinson said. But talking it over at the grocery store on Friday, he suggested Halloween.

“We decided (on a date) about four days ago,” said Tarling. “We were just kidding at first but when we got home all of a sudden we were like, ‘We may as well.'”

“His reasoning was he’d never forget his anniversary,” Tarling said, laughing.

Planning a wedding in what wound up being about two days was a little bit hellish, laughed maid-of-honor Jennifer Brand, dressed in witch’s garb. “No, it’s been crazy. It really has. I’ve got three kids and she’s got two, and between bringing the kids to school and getting decorations, our costumes, it’s been crazy. We just got our costumes the day before yesterday. (We looked in) Lisbon, Lewiston, Auburn, Brunswick and Portland. It was hectic. Very hectic.”

By Halloween night though, the hectic-ness was under control. As the bride prepared to walk down the aisle, Reese Robinson, 7, sat in some leaves in a pirate’s getup, complete with a hat decorated with skull and crossbones. It was cool that his dad was getting married on Halloween, he said.

Tarling’s two sons Aaron Boyington, 13, and Nicholas Tarling, 10, walked with her down the aisle along with their cousin, 13-year-old Tyler Dery. Two of Brand’s daughters, 5-year-old Skylar and 3-year-old Abby, dropped leaves on the ground, and then the ceremony began.

Joyce Wittemore, Robinson’s mom, said, “They’ve been waiting for each other and just finally met.”