Just over two years ago on Nov. 10, physics teacher Seth Berkeley decided with his then fiancé that they would get married. The two went to the courthouse in downtown Harrisonburg and had the ceremony by themselves without letting any friends or family know.

“My wife and I have known each other for eight years. I did the stupid thing where I didn’t really think that she cared for me for a long time, and then decided that thinking that when she told me otherwise was a dumb thing to think,” Berkeley said. “So we started dating and then we got to talking about it and we thought, ‘Why are we doing this dating thing? We’ve known each other for eight years and we’ve done all of this dating stuff.’ We just didn’t do it formally. One day we were talking about it and we came to the conclusion that we were going to get married and why wait?”

Family members were a bit surprised after hearing the news that Berkeley had just been married and took a little offense in not being a part of the ceremony.

“On a Tuesday afternoon after school, we went to the courthouse downtown, just the two of us, got our marriage license, had the ceremony. We didn’t tell anybody, including our families, which it turns out caused a little strain among family members that they didn’t know about it. We are still planning on having a ceremony at this point, but it’s not actually our top priority,” Berkeley said.

Berkeley’s parents took the news a bit lighter than expected knowing the private nature of their son.

“My parents both laughed. I have always been a fairly private person so they weren’t terribly surprised and were happy for us. Her parents took a little more getting used to the idea that they hadn’t been told, but we’re in a better place than we were in that short time after we told them,” Berkeley said.

Berkeley married on a Tuesday night, which is a school night for high school teachers. Students did not take long to find out his secret from the night before.

“I was in my second block and I had put on my wedding ring, but still hadn’t told anybody and one of my students was like, ‘Mr. Berkeley, did you get married?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, yesterday after school,’ and it spread from there,” Berkeley said.

Berkeley is someone who believes that you should do whatever it is that you enjoy or want to do despite what other people think. In addition to getting married in a less traditional way, Berkeley has taken up the hobby of medieval sword fighting with his wife since this past summer.

“It’s one of those things where I know that if someone is watching me, I know I look incredibly dumb doing it, but I’m having a whole heck of a lot of fun doing it so I don’t care at all,” Berkeley said.

Through his love of Star Wars, Berkeley found a sword fighting class that is located in Luray, VA.

“[I got involved] kind of indirectly. Both my wife and I are huge Star Wars fans and over the summer there was a sale on lightsabers by a company that we had been following so we got those,” Berkeley said. “We were talking about it saying, ‘It would be cool if we actually knew how to use these’, so I started searching online for lightsaber stuff and came across this thing called HEMA, Historical European Martial Arts, and realized that there is a group in Luray that meets every week to learn how to sword fight. I called them up and said, ‘What do I have to do to start doing this?’ and [they told me to] basically show up and pay for the class. I’ve been doing it ever since the summer.”

Every year when a new class of students comes into physics, Berkeley tells them about his background. Part of his background is being a self-proclaimed nerd who is proud of who he is.

“I have always been of the opinion that you should do the things that you enjoy, and the things I enjoy happen to be reading and video games and stuff like that which are traditionally nerdy things,” Berkeley said. “I have a degree in chemistry and I teach physics. Yeah, I’m a nerd and I am okay with that. Be who you are and embrace who you are.”