The offbeat bride: Annalise, Makeup Artist

Her offbeat partner: Adam, Carpenter

Location & date of wedding: Minneapolis, MN, November 3, 2007

What made our wedding offbeat: People loved to remark that our wedding was “our big, fat, vintage, native-american, Dia de los Muertos wedding.”

We got married in a Native American church, using the traditions such as smudging, a water ceremony, and a quilt ceremony with our elders, and my husband spent some time in the teepee with our elders before the ceremony.

We also managed to fit it in with our favorite holiday, Dia de los Muertos, and my love of all things vintage into it.

We had a live band, a Mexican food buffet, cupcakes in five flavors, and we rented a local VFW and decor was bare bones. And because no one REALLY wants a tulle-wrapped sack of jordan almonds, our favors were sugar skulls, which we made ourselves with over 100 lbs. of sugar and frosting and Lady of Guadalupe candles. It was completely true to the spirit of Dia de los Muertos, even in doing a mariachi cover song for our first dance.

Our biggest challenge: I don’t know that we had one challenge that would stick out as being the biggest. I think that overall, it was just getting people to listen to us about what we were doing. His family is heavy on the traditional side, and my family knows that I only march to my own drum. Yet, people still gave us a hard time about not making our wedding more fancy, traditional or materialistic. We tried to remember that the goal of the weekend was to emerge married. And we did.

My favorite moment: There are three moments that stick out in my mind:

The first was when Adam and I were each on the corner of the brick wall, waiting to see one another for the first time. We were holding hands, waiting for the moment, and he spontaneously pulled my hand up and kissed it. Just as he did, the cathedral bells across the street started ringing.

The second was hearing our vows. We wrote them ourselves. Seeing him be moved by my words and feeling moved by his was something I’ll never forget.

Lastly, it was hearing four of our church elders offer prayers to the four directions in our honor. They are two couples we hope to emulate in our marriage. Hearing their words of wisdom and their love for us, in the place of so many family members moved us both greatly.

Don’t TRY to make your wedding different. Just go with what suits you both, and what is personal for you.

My offbeat advice: So many people forget that marriage is a privilege, and not a right. As such, they get caught up in the details of “bigger” and “better” and “different” to the point that “offbeat” nowadays is almost anything traditional. Don’t TRY to make your wedding different. Don’t TRY to be creative. Just go with what suits you both, and what is personal for you. The difference will come out tenfold if you do not try too hard.

Don’t get caught up in a theme to the point that every detail has to match.

Stick to your guns. At first I was polite and when met with criticism I would reply, “That’s a great idea, I’ll keep that in mind”, so as not to commit to anything. It worked. And when people didn’t like it, I remembered that it was my wedding, not theirs and I politely reminded them of that.

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn: Gorgeous photos of a wedding full of meaning.