Her Offbeat Partner: Zeb, farmer/produce marketer

Location & date of wedding: Byzantine Church, and church hall in DuBois, PA — May 30, 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: The wedding was a traditional Byzantine wedding which is somewhat offbeat even though its orthodox. Byzantine wedding in western PA; we warned people it would be just like the wedding in the move The Deerhunter.

My dress was gold and the bridesmaids wore white (a little backwards). And we bought simple sneakers for the bridal party to change into afterwards.

We saved a ton of money by doing everything ourselves. I had made paper flowers for the three flowergirls who wore handmade dresses by me, the bride. The groomsmen wore linen shirts and hemp pants with handmade rosemary boutineers made by me as well. We ordered beautiful handmade crowns from Etsy for our ceremony.

Homemade grape jelly favor. YUM!

The reception was catered completely by us (since we're organic farmers that had long been the plan). The favors were organic grape jelly that we had made the fall before. I asked my African drumming group to come and rock and they did! Everyone got up and danced. It was such a good time. My music-obsessed groom had the whole reception planned on his computer which we hooked up to an amp. Best reception music ever! Also we just asked specific friends to help with serving and bartending as their presents to us. It worked out perfectly.

I think thats about it, crammed into 229 words!

Our biggest challenge: It was the time constraint. We were determined to do everything ourselves but were also busy with moving and tying up loose ends with business/farming stuff so that we could relax on our honeymoon.

Thankfully our mothers both stepped in and helped us with creating the reception hall. We needed to have good conversation skills to make sure both our wants were met and that we weren't compromising too much. We made a list of things that were important for us to have and just worked around that. That made it easier to filter out time comsuming tasks that we didnt care about.

My favorite moment: Dancing with all my friends and family. During the drumming everything got heated up and everyone was on the floor. It was like being at a great concert with everyone i care about.

My advice for other offbeat brides: Don't be afraid to ask for help! It was my experience that my friends and family were enthusiastic about being involved. I only asked each person that helped to do one thing so that they were not overwhelmed. This helped me because I knew everything was covered and they were glad to have a task. Good communication with people went a long way that day!

Oh also if you know your specific colors check out after-Chrismas sales at craft stores. I got so much stuff to decorate with for a great price!

Enough talk — show me the Deerhunter wedding porn!:

To see the slide show, head to offbeatbride.com.

OBT member "Elisa" created some really unique looking wedding invitations with the use of a laser cutting machine.

We laser-cut the blue cardboard using our friend's thumbprint to access the zillion-dollar machinery at RMIT (for real! there's a gadget thingy attached to the machine that reads fingerprints! No access to the plebes!), and the orange paper is this weird transparent stuff that's heavier than tissue paper but still kind of see-through.

We just printed the info on some nice heavy-ish white-ish paper and stuck a rectangle of that on the inside, but I'm only posting a mock-up because I'm a luddite and can't figure out how to blur out our surnames etc.

Clearly, the bride herself acknowledges that this is not something everyone can just DIY, so I thought I'd do some research into how us "plebes" could get access to something this cool.

If you're super into the idea of DIYing your invites, Instructables.com has step-by-step instructions that show you how you can make your own laser cutter! This makes absolutely no sense to me, but some of you engineer-types out there might be able to pull this off.

For those of you that don't feel like getting all MacGyver on your wedding invitations, I found a company called The Hummingbird Card Co. in the UK. They offer a bespoke service to have your own custom design cut for your wedding invites. I also found Techno-Laser whom I didn't get in touch with, but it looks like they do custom work as well.

So get to lasering and then thank Elisa for the amazing invite inspiration!

We haven't gotten the 411 from the stripey bride that Ariel fell in love with last week YET — so here's another beautiful stripey bride profile, brought to you by her husband! (We love when the boys chime in.)

The Offbeat Groom: Lon, FileMaker Developer

His Offbeat Partner: Valarie Torres

Location & date of wedding: Great American Music Hall, San Francisco — October 12th, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: She's punk rock; I'm mope rock; we're both geeks. Our wedding party and guests were drawn from equal parts giant Mexican family and an extended bicycle messenger family.

We broke tradition starting with the rings. Her engagement ring, and the wedding bands, all have black diamonds.

Most aspects of the wedding were DIY, drawing from our personalities, and taking cues from the venue. Gocco printed invitations, programs, and napkins, hand dyed tulle skirt, centerpieces, table number photographs, seat assignment tickets, table plan — about the only thing we didn't make ourselves were the groomsmen's suits.

Bow ties, ascots, vests and satin were definitely out. We wanted punk rock; we wanted Reservoir Dogs. The guys wore suits with skinny ties, braces, and Chuck Tailors. As a nod to tradition, we all wore boutonnieres with hand crafted Mexican Milagros incorporated into them.

Devo cover band!!!

Music. Wedding procession came down the aisle to a string quartet version of "Don't Stop Believing"; Wedding Singer dorks. Our first dance was a re-enactment of the Jack Rabbit Slims Twist Contest from Pulp Fiction; Tarantino dorks. Mariachis played during the cocktail hour. However, we had a concert venue to take advantage of, and what's could be more geek than a Devo cover band? Three costume changes later (for the band), there was a full blown mosh pit.

A significant number of our guest arrived by bike, so we had valet bike parking at the door. Come time for us to make our exit, it was by tandem bicycle.

It was a memorable event that, a year later, people are still talking about.

Our biggest challenge: The dress. My bride found THE dress she wanted from a designer on Etsy. Before checking reviews, a check had been sent off. We ordered it over six months before the wedding. Weeks of waiting turned into months. Soon we were being contacted by other Etsy users asking if we'd received our merchandise.

This woman was apparently cashing a lot of checks, but not delivering goods. Several very pointed calls from me and several ranting voicemails from her later, we did receive the dress with corset.

The dress, however, was half my bride's size and, it was poorly constructed. Oh yeah, it was a week before the wedding. So, a very dear friend basically took the corset apart, altered, and rebuilt it. We ditched the skirt, purchasing a basic black one to replace it. A tulle skirt was dyed to match her shoes.

She was exceedingly happy with the result; however, seethingly angry at the Etsy seller who nearly ruined her wedding. What she wore down the aisle was a result of good friends and last minute ingenuity.

Lesson? Sites like Ebay and Etsy have user reviews for a reason — so that people can have confidence in the sellers. We were distracted by something shiny and neglected to check the reviews (or lack there of) before making a purchase. Lesson learned.

My favorite moment: My vows, definitely.

I rewrote the Monty Python Lumberjack sketch; "I'm a lumberjack, and I'm OK" became "I'm a geek in love, and I'm OK". My groomsmen filled the role of the Mounties, from the original, as the chorus.

My bride was completely surprised; she had no idea.

My offbeat groom advice: A lot of my advice is rhetoric, but worth repeating:

• If you're planning to go big, plan early and well in advance (a year and a half in our case).
• DIY and do it together. Not only does it save money, but doing things like making your own invitation and centerpieces gives you a sense of ownership in your wedding, as opposed to being in attendance. Involve your partner, but don't make it a chore.
• Stay sober!! You're gonna want to remember this day.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?:

• Etsy — Lots of handcrafted goodness to be found here. From Etsy sellers we got my bride's corset, veil, our boutonnieres, Milagros, and… I think that's it.
• Craigslist — The wedding forum specifically. We found our photographer through a recommendation here. You'll find lots of advice and once people have their weddings, you'll find items (like centerpieces) for sale here.
• Six Star Sales — This is where we got the ostrich feathers, vases, and lights for our centerpieces.
• The Great American Music Hall — the venue
• Tiny Water — the photography.

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn!:

To see the slide show, head to offbeatbride.com.

Her offbeat partner: Nova, Financial Processor

Location & date of wedding: Perth Town Hall, WA, Australia AND on the frozen Alta Lake, Rainbow Park, Whistler, BC, Canada — Perth: 15 Feb 2009, Whistler: 20 Feb 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: We had two wedding ceremonies, one in the peak of summer in our home town of Perth, Australia — which we called our "Unlawful Union" as gay marriage is not recognised over here — and one a few days later in Canada.

The brides with their fathers. I love this.

We invited 300 friends and family members to witness our union at the Perth Town Hall, and we had a wonderful friend as our (unlawful) celebrant. We rounded off the celebrations with a cocktail reception in the Town Hall, followed by drinking and dancing at the Court Hotel (our local gay bar).

Although this was our "formal" wedding, we only included the parts of traditional weddings that we were interested in…

We didn't have a proper wedding party, just ourselves and a best friend each. We both walked down the aisle with our fathers, and then we gave a rose to our mothers to include and acknowledge their involvement. We didn't have a sit-down reception and dancing, but we had plenty of food and drinks and a chance for all our guests to chat and mingle. There was no bouquet or garter toss, but we did have a few short speeches.

A few days later we flew to Canada to have a legally recognised outdoor wedding ceremony in the snow on Lake Alta in Rainbow Park, Whistler. This was attended by the two of us, our celebrant and two witnesses (her husband and friend) and their two dogs.

Our biggest challenge: Our venue cancelled on us six months before the wedding, after we had already sent out our Save the Dates. Suddenly we had to start our entire planning process from the beginning, as we couldn't find another venue that fitted our original theme of "outdoor modern casual Japanese." After driving around for countless hours looking for another park and reception venue we eventually decided to move the whole function to the Perth Town Hall. This changed the structure and feel of our ceremony, it became a lot more formal in parts, but ended up being lovely (and more comfortable for our guests, as the air conditioning was a comfort on a very hot day). It also allowed us to invite more guests as we didn't have to worry about transport and parking restrictions.

It was a huge challenge to move on from the original vision that we had planned for our wedding. I was so disappointed that the wedding I had been planning for over twelve months wasn't going to happen. I dealt with the disappointment by realising that the wedding should be more about us affirming and celebrating our love and committment rather than the trimmings, so I was able to start again with a new concept.

My favorite moment: The biggest thing I have taken away from the wedding was the huge amount of support and encouragement we had from our guests. Despite the fact that our wedding was not legal, and also in spite of the fact that commitment ceremonies are often not regarded highly ("why settle for something substandard to marriage?"), we had hundreds of people turn up to witness our love and commitment.

My favourite moment would have been the point where I walked up the stairs to meet Nova who was waiting at the top. She looked beautiful, and remembering the expression on her face still brings tears of happiness to my eyes.

My offbeat advice: Delegate! Even if you are planning and doing almost everything yourself, on the day of you are not going to have time to make sure everything is running smoothly, so put people in charge of tasks.

I had a very good friend who was willing to be our Event Manager. He coordinated with the caretaker of the Town Hall, made sure the person in charge of the music knew what was going on, was the "go-to" person for all our vendors, and made sure that things went smoothly. He did an outstanding job, I don't remember anyone hassling me with questions about what was going to happen.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links? We decided that we each wanted to have a unique outfit that suited our personal styles, without needing to match or be too coordinated. We decided to keep a common colour through our outfits for aesthetics, and had them designed and made by our friends, Ellen and Ken. They are both experienced bridal and wedding designers, and the experience was wonderful. The final outfits were exactly what we wanted, and we received a lot of compliments on them.

Jo's Outfit

• Dress: Custom made by Ellen Walker (Perth)
• Veil: Fascinators.net (Qld)
• Shoes: Etnies
• Flowers: Olga's Florist (Perth)

Nova's Outfit

• Outfit: Custom made by Ken Gensrich (Perth)
• Hairpiece: PlaywithHair (Perth)

General

• Hair: Cass from Wildilocks (Perth & Melbourne)
• Makeup: MAC Cosmetics (Myer Perth)
• Cupcakes: Hearts & Arrows (Perth)
• Catering: Acclaimed Catering
• Wine: Little River Winery, Lancaster Wines & Charlie's Estate (Swan Valley, WA)
• Tickets/Invitations: Heatseeker (Perth)
• Rings: Bentleigh Jewellers (Melbourne)

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn!:

To see the slide show, head to offbeatbride.com.

Her mother-in-law phoned when she received the wedding invitation to tell her that she doesn't want to send the RSVP back… because it's too cute.

Now she's worried this will be a trend. And I think she haz every right to be worried!!!

Her Offbeat Partner: Chris, Grad Student, Theatrical Design and Technology Specializing in Lighting Design

Location & date of wedding: Clyde H. Wells Fine Arts Center Theatre, Stephenville, TX. Our undergrad theatre where we met! — December 20th, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: First and foremost we had our wedding in the theatre in which we met at college. We were both theatre majors. We got married on the stage where we first met! We didn't want "theatre" to be our theme, but the place was very important to us.

Awesome pink ribbon veil & matching pink converse!

I had a personal theme throughout the wedding. Many things had sewing references. I am a costumer so the cake had buttons, the bouts had buttons, my viel was made of ribbon (thanks Ariel!).

We cut corners left and right, but still had a very classy affair. We stuck to our budget! We spent under $7,000 on our wedding — well under the local average.

We chose to have a friend ordained online to marry us. Which made our families FREAK. But we aren't practicing any religion currently, so we felt it hypocritical to have a religious wedding.

The boys with their sandals.

My husband was very involved with the wedding. He had an opinion! He did the lighting design for the ceremony. He chose his attire and he insisted on wearing sandals (therefore all the grooms"men" wore Sandals). He chose all the quotes for the cupcakes. He even saw pictures of my dress before the wedding. He wouldn't let me try it on for him however.

He had a groomslady, our friend Sonya. I had a bridesman, my good friend Josh. We couldn't imagine it any other way! We wrote the whole ceremony ourselves. We called it the "script." We insisted that David (friend/officiant) never use the words "man" and "women" when refering to marriage. We don't believe that, so why say it!

Our biggest challenge: One of the biggest challenges was distance. We are both attending grad school in Southern Mississippi. We insisted on having the wedding back in Texas, where most of our family is, where we met, and where we eventually want to live! Due to the over 500 mile distance we had some serious troubles with planning.

We relied so much on our mothers for help. His mother made the cake and coordinated with my mother on reception decor. My mother did the invites, decor, and lots and lots of rentals!

Neither of us really like Christmas, so having a wedding so close to Christmas was kind of a challenge. After three or more suggestions for BIG Christmas Trees, people finally realized we were not having a Christmas wedding!

My favorite moment: Our reading was my absolute favorite. A good friend of ours, Bethany, read a poem — "To Love is Not to Possess," by James Kavanaugh — that we found and decided was perfect.

We also had what we called a "Vow of Support" from our parents and guests. The officiant asked that our parents take the new in-law and love them as their own. Then he asked that guests, "Will you encourage Bailey and Chris in their love?" Will you support them in their choice of one another? And will you continue to stand beside them, yet not between them?"

It was amazing to have all those people there and for them to actually vocalize their support and excitement for us!

My advice for other offbeat brides: Seriously reconsider a caterer! If you are going to serve food, people want it to be good food. Chris and I have been to lots of weddings where people catered themselves and the food literally got left on the back burner! Yes they are all here to support you, but they want good food in their bellies too!

We found a caterer/friend of a friend who provided a three meat BBQ plate with beans and salad for $9 a plate! If you shop around you can find good deals!

Which also reminds me: USE (in a nice way of course) your family and friends. If they offer to help, that means they want to!

The DIY bouts.

Our friends and family contributed to the catering, flowers, officiant, photography, cake, DJ, bartenders and the day of coordinator. She is a friend from college and she loves weddings. She took care of the lobby display and made sure things ran smoothly as possible. Between her and the DJ everything went off really well!

Chris would like to add this piece of what he is calling "man advice":
Bottled beer over keg! At the end of the night you dont have to worry about floating a keg, you just load the left over bottles into the back of someone's car and party the next three nights — well we did anyway!

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?:

• Wedding Rings from Titanium Knights
• Save the Dates from Magnetstreet.com
• Wine from D'Vine Wine

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn!:

To see the slide show, head to offbeatbride.com.

Oh you Austin brides. I'm still so jealous of your access to long-time Offbeat Bride sponsor, Whitney Lee Photography. Whitney recently sent me these photos of Leah & Evan (and baby Ada's!) Chinese/Jewish wedding, and I'm just blown out.

You've got to see these shots of the breastfeeding bride, elegantly non-matching bridesmaids, and all the details…

As usual, clicky the photos to see more!

Leah gave birth to her daughter Ada a few months before the wedding, and her daughter was very much a part of the wedding and ceremony.

I've talked about the concept of non-matching bridesmaids a lot on Offbeat Bride, and I love the way that it was done at this wedding:

And of course, the shoes — wedding flats, in keeping with my theme today.

And yay for interfaith weddings! I love seeing the Chinese groom hoisted up in a chair during the hora dance:

But what about the origami cake? And the tulips? And the chopsticks? To bask in the detail shots, you'll need to head over to Whitney Lee's blog.

And if you're in Austin? Don't make me haul my 8-months pregnant butt down their to make you book Whitney for your wedding!

Photo submitted to Offbeat Bride Pool, courtesy of photographer Laura Nikisher

I'm very much looking forward to telling y'all much much more about this supremely stylish Halloween wedding in New Orleans. As soon as Danielle submits her bride profile. (HINT HINT HINT.)

For now, let us all bow down and pay homage to the photos, courtesy of Laura Nikisher:

To see the slide show, head to offbeatbride.com.

Last week, I heard from several readers who were like, "Yeah sure cute — but what about those of us who want to wear flats?" While I make a point to include flats in every batch of shoes I feature, as someone who can't walk in a heel over 2 inches, I got nothing but love for the ladies who want to rock the flats on their wedding day.

And so, without further ado, here's my collection of lovely low wedding flats that will make you feel 10 feet tall:

"Saving the Princess since 1985"

While perusing the OBT, as I do, I often come upon brides using pins as creative ways to personalize their weddings. OBT member "Reenie" (of "comic book style wedding invite" fame) posted in her wedding update that she's DIYing the boutenniers for the guys and has accented them with cool/nerdy pins [see right]. And it struck me that pins are definitely becoming a full on offbeat trend…

I thought of Shablis' wedding and the "Don't Panic" button that she wore on her wedding dress. And at Shannon's wedding the couple wore "bride" and "groom" buttons. They even bought a button maker and made unique buttons for their guests to wear, like "Mother of the Bride," etc. for family members and phrases like "How YOU doin'?" and "Bouquet Dodger" or "I'm A Little Drunk" for the guests.

Photo courtesy of Button Empire

Then there are the OBT members that found the adorable "I'd rather be smooching…" buttons from Button Empire's Etsy shop. OBT member "Deanderthal" and her husband (of "The Hitchening" fame) actually exchanged these buttons instead of ring at their ceremony! Or you can go the less nerdy route with the simplistic but equally adorable "I ♥ My Wife" and "I ♥ My Husband" buttons! You know… just in case people weren't totally convinced by that whole "wedding" thing.

Your guests can also have fun with buttons. As Ariel even mentioned a creative use of them as place settings, in her book Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides…

Buttons as table place cards.

"The groom created a photo-personalized button for each guest and set them at the dinner tables to show us where to sit. We all wore our buttons the way you would wear a candidate's pin. VOTE DOUG AND SUSAN! Since the groom is politically active, it made perfect sense."

In the same vain are these "team Justin" and "team Sarah" pins that were both a great way to celebrate your alliance with either the bride or the groom and were used as favors.

Our Sea Shepherd wedding pins.

Whether you're wearing these as wedding accessories, exchanging them instead of rings, using them as place cards, giving them away as favors, or promoting a cause, I thought I'd do ya'll a little favor and find some buttons that actually correspond with a lot of your favorite theme weddings!

Perfect for a gamer geek wedding are these Old School Nintendo Buttons:

These Alice in Wonderland pins would be fun for an Alice in Wonderland themed wedding:

Wear your favorite Star Wars character pin during a Star Wars wedding anyone?:

Rock 'n Roll weddings and musically inspired couples could accent their weddings with these Beatles pins. My favorites are the ones with lyrics about love: