Chelsie & Francesco’s steampunk wedding
The offbeat bride: Chelsie, Wildlife Biologist
Her offbeat partner: Francesco, Aerospace Engineer
Location & date of wedding: Dancing Horse Ranch in Paso Robles, Ca.
08 August 2008
What made our wedding offbeat: Our wedding theme was Steampunk (with a subtheme of Make New Friends!), our friend Kat officiated our wedding and we wrote our own ceremony. Also all of our “vendors” were friends! My make-up artist, the photographers, the DJ, the caterers — we all knew them and it seemed like there were no strangers at our wedding. It was wonderful to see everyone bringing their skills together to help out and contribute. Our wedding was much more about having fun than having rituals. I think that everyone there had a great time!
Our biggest challenge: Right before the wedding was about the begin we couldn’t get the speakers to work with the DJ’s equipment. I just said forget it and did the whole ceremony without our previously agonized over choreographed music. It went really well and thinking back on it I should have just decided early on to not have music!
My favorite moment: I have never been to a wedding before and when I walked out of the cabin across the lawn everyone stood up and waited for me. I didn’t know that was going to happen and that’s when it really hit me that I was getting married and everyone was here to celebrate it with me.
Francesco’s favorite moment was doing the hustle for our first dance! We started out with a slow song and then the DJ slowly mixed it into the hustle and we surprised everyone!
My offbeat advice: I would say figure out what is really important to you and spend your time working on those things. For me the flowers and music and make-up were not as important as organizing the food or making the programs and writing the ceremony — so I delegated those tasks to people who I knew would do a great job (much better than I would!). That relieved a lot of stress and worrying.
Enough talk — show me the wedding porn: Click the photo below to feast your eyes uponst this super stylish wedding and the friends who helped make it all happen!
PS: I love especially this shot of the bride checking her pocket watch.
Comments
12 responses to this entryTammara
September 5th, 2008 · 7:24 AM · #I love the bride’s dress! Smashing!
Elegant
September 5th, 2008 · 9:08 AM · #Hey….I made that hat for her! Gorgeous pics and excellent write-up.
kylieo o
September 5th, 2008 · 9:27 AM · #this was the best wedding i’ve ever attended. it was not overly choreographed so there was little stress, and everyone got to be spontaneous and have fun.
Kelli Ann
September 5th, 2008 · 10:03 AM · #Dude that’s so awesome!
@~>~~
Kai
September 5th, 2008 · 10:30 AM · #Yes, best wedding ever!!!
A great and fun crowd, so much fun to photograph!
And the “Make New Friends” theme definitley worked…
jennifer
September 5th, 2008 · 11:56 AM · #I’m loving the groom’s headwear!
Jessica
September 5th, 2008 · 12:15 PM · #ANOTHER STEAMPUNK WEDDING! Wonderful!
Brandi
September 5th, 2008 · 3:09 PM · #That is so insanely HOT HOT HOT. I love it.
Heather
September 5th, 2008 · 6:35 PM · #Love the dress and hat! Beautiful. The fact that they did the Hustle is awesome, and even more kick ass her doing that dance in that dress.
me
September 8th, 2008 · 10:20 AM · #I had a dream the other night that the CD player didn’t work for our outdoor music. Although I’d be really sad if something happened for the reception, I realized the ceremony wasn’t that big a deal — so this story helps validate my feeling! I’m still going to try to do music, but I won’t sweat it if something goes wrong.
Chelsie
September 8th, 2008 · 6:23 PM · #Thanks everyone for the great comments!
Elegant: I -LOVE- my hat and I wore it for 3 days straight after the wedding. I have a hat collection and it is my favorite one!
Kai
September 8th, 2008 · 8:41 PM · #I love everything about your day, and what a gorgeous dress! I saw a cake topper like yours on Etsy and fell head-over-heels, but we’re having cupcakes, so it was not needed =[