Christie & Phill's Red Dress Nature Wedding

The offbeat bride: Christie, Social Worker (aka RedDress on the OBT)

My offbeat partner: Phill, Marketing Student & Sith Lord

Location & date of wedding: Verona, Ontario, Canada in my Mum's 150 acre backyard. - October 12th, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: We knew before anything else that we wanted our wedding to be our way and made a vow to not budge one inch on anything… and we didn't! And you know what? People loved it! and we didn't compromise even once. No one died, no one suffered. No one even complained.

Our attire ended up a very Victorian, goth, steam-punkish somethingerother. It happened completely by accident and we planned our outfits separately, yet they matched to a T!

My three piece outfit consisted of a bridesmaids dress, a custom corset and a custom caped shrug (made lovingly by my maid of honor Amanda.) I spent less then $500 for the whole thing. Also my Fluevog Grand Nationals, my dream boots, were hiding underneath.

Phill wanted to wear a kilt from day one. His family tartan was the inspiration for our colour palette. His frock coat was custom made and his New Rocks looked kick-ass. His mohawk was of course the cherry on the cupcake…and the red matched my dress perfectly.

Our vows were very personal and very funny. Most people probably had no idea what we were talking about. Example vow topics include; zombies, UFC fighters, getting sick-juice, leaving the knife in the peanut butter and being a jerk. They were so very us.

Almost everything in the entire wedding was DIY and handmade. Found items and reusable was a major theme.

We wanted to express our love for nature and fall, without falling (ha ha ha) into the "Fall Theme Wedding" category.

And no one even missed the wedding cake, because our "Rockaberry" truffles were too damned good!

…The massive candy buffet didn't hurt either.

you might remember Christie from a previous post… click the picture to see what I mean

Our biggest challenge: Finding a photographer. Our photos came second only to the actual act of getting married. We wanted someone who could really capture us, our day, our friends our life in a way that really gave an honest reflection. We looked at sooooo many terrible websites, with boring, bland and typical wedding pictures. We honestly were very worried that we were not going to find a good photographer.

Then we finally found Jeremy Ashley at ishootpeople.ca and then we had to beg him to do our wedding. It took some convincing and some negotiations, but we hooked him and not only did we get the best photos ever, Jeremy even had a great time and is still raving about the wedding and especially the food.

Oh, and our wonderful photographer was not within our wonderful budget. BUT he was perfect and the pictures were so important to us that we did what we needed to to get him. We cut corners in other wedding areas, dropped a few things and received a very generous early wedding gift from a friend and got the photographer of our dreams. Prioritizing was key in this situation for us.

My favorite moment: Phill is very nervous when speaking in front of a group. So he tends to whisper. When saying his vows, pretty much only the wedding party and I could hear him. But when it came to the part where he was supposed to say "I do," he yelled (and I mean yelled), "OH FUCK YEAH!" And everyone burst out laughing. It was great.

There was so much laughter our entire wedding day. It definitly started during the ceremony.

My offbeat advice: If you really want to have your wedding, your way, tell people that. Announce it! Never shut up about it. Make the nay-sayers afraid to "give advice". And stick to your guns. No giving in! If people think they can push you around, they will. Do you really want to be pushed around about your wedding? (Take it from us, people will not die if you get your way!)

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn:
Click the photo below to see all the amazing shots from this magic-pants red dress wedding…