Whitney Lee Photography presents Joy & Alec's kid-friendly state park wedding

Here's another great offbeat wedding from Offbeat Advertiser Whitney Lee Photography. I asked Whitney's client, Joy, to tell us a little about her recent Texas wedding full of kids, games, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, and even a "Just Married" sign that the couple came bursting through!

Joy says: I went into this wedding with a couple of guiding principles: kid friendly, casual for comfort in a state park, and budget. First, my brother has 4 kids and there were 18 kids total on the guest list. As an elementary school teacher I have an understanding of how rough it can be to do anything when you have kids so I wanted to make the wedding fun for both kids and adults. My husband and I are both fairly goofy to boot so lots of our details reflected that.

I'm famous for saying, "do do do doot!" when I get excited about something so we provided kazoos for everyone and instructed the whole audience how to use them to give us a kazoo fanfare after the announcement of the first couple. Lots of people had a hard time figuring out how to use them - but it was so much fun!

We also created a large banner similar to a half time football player banner that read, "Just married" for us to run through after getting back to the reception from the ceremony site. Nobody had any idea what we were up to, and it was completely hysterical.

Even though we really didn't have a wedding party at all I had my nieces dress in outfits with petticoats similar to mine and they helped to hand out the kazoos and other favors (play-doh, personalized pencils, bubbles). My one year old nephew showed up in a leisure suit that his great grandmother had sewn for his dad in 1972. I think that was the only time that my mother actually cried at the wedding.

During the reception we had a children's age board game at each table as a centerpiece. Hungry, Hungry, Hippo was the most popular but labyrinth, Uno, Boggle, and Chinese Checkers were also popular. The tables were covered in white butcher paper that I spray painted through lace to make the paper look lacy. Each table was a different color so the whole reception was very colorful. Whitney decided to use one of those tables and some extra "lace paper" as a backdrop for some of our pictures, and those turned out fantastic!

I had a friend make a whole bunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that she then cut out with a heart shaped cookie cutter. I think just as many adults ended up eating them as kids."

Thanks so much to Joy for sharing her story with me … and for tons more photos about Joy & Alec's wedding, head over to Whitney's blog.

(Coming next month: a contest where you can win free wedding photography from Whitney Lee!)