The Pixels' Seattle wedding
Posted by Ariel · Real offbeat weddings

The offbeat bride: Ingo Pixel, Makeup Artist

My offbeat groom: Andy Pixel, Software Developer

Location & date of wedding: 7/14/07. Henry Art Gallery and Twilight Exit, Seattle.

What made our wedding offbeat: We tried everything we could to stay away from traditional wedding vendors and to involve our friends, family, and amazing network of talented and helpful individuals to make it all intimate and special.

Our wedding was in the sculpture court of the Henry Art Gallery at UW, and the reception was an all-night karaoke party at the Twilight Exit in the Central District, where we live. I had bright pink hair and wore my mother's wedding dress from 1968 which was been drastically modified by our friend Erin Skipley of Yoshimi Designs.

One of our best friends married us, the photographer, Jenny Jimenez is a friend, the owner of the Twilight Exit, the caterer, the karaoke DJ, the day-of coordinator, the driver, the videographer — they were all family and friends. By utilizing family and friends, we saved a great deal of money and it was incredibly personal and meaningful for us.

We also both changed our names to Pixel to celebrate our love for the fusion of art and technology. Our parents didn't really believe that we'd do it, but it's all legal now!

Our biggest challenge: The budget was definitely the most difficult hurdle. We spent probably half of what any other couple would have spent on a wedding this size, but it was still about twice what we'd originally planned. But is was worth it, we had a wedding that was quintessentially US, and that's all that matters. Debt is debt, it'll get paid eventually!

Making the wedding our own was really challenging as well. Not using traditional wedding vendors meant that we really didn't have anyone around who knew exactly how weddings work from beginning to end. We had to kind of make it up as we went along. Luckily my groom is really organized and was able to make many many lists of tasks and everything was done on time and gracefully.

— That said, we still have a stack of approximately 800 wedding invitations as the cheap printer we found was commercial and required a minimum order of 1000. I may just have to paper a room in them!

My favorite moment: The best moment was right after we read our vows; there was applause! I've never heard applause after vows, it was fantastic. We knew we had done everything right at that moment.

My offbeat advice: The best advice I can give is to make sure that you don't compromise your vision. This is YOUR day, make sure that it reflects who you and your groom are as people. The best compliments I got were people telling us that the wedding was so very US. That was the most important thing for us and we made sure that every detail of every moment was painting a picture of us.

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn: Meet the Pixels! Take your time with these photos, my friends. I had trouble picking my favorites — there are hundreds of amazing shots. Enough wedding porn for a month. Seriously.

Tell me all about your offbeat wedding!