Stephanie & Davyd's Really Big Vegan Party

The Offbeat Bride: Stephanie, sustainability nerd

Her Offbeat Partner: Davyd, engineer

Location & date of wedding: BFF's parents' backyard, Caversham, Western Australia — April 5th, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: I'm a mostly-Chinese Australian, and Davyd's a somewhat-English Australian, and we're both vegans. We wanted our wedding to reflect who we are and where we came from (to be a fusion wedding, if you will), but also to be fun and memorable. We played cricket and croquet straight after-wards, and banned black and white colours from our guests whilst trying to get them to wear hats and fascinators. In the weeks before, all planning was referred to as prep for the 'really big party,' and that's what it was!

I wore a red cheongsam, and had pieces of a traditional Malay headpiece in my hair. The flowers were red and yellow orchids, strung like ribbons on ferns, and were designed and created by our friend Linda.

We got married on a private estate in Caversham, over looking the river, and had a marquee set up there so everything took place in the one location. We had a cricket set and a croquet set available, so our guests could entertain themselves whilst we posed for photos. This worked great until one of the guests hit the cricket ball on the roof of the house, but made for a lot of laughter!

The wedding party playing cricket.

There were some things we did very traditionally, but in our own style. The eight course Chinese banquet was 100% vegan, and about 40% gluten-free, and dessert was completely both!

A lot of what we did was done by us or friends. We did hire the marquee and the suits, and engage a local vegetarian Nonya restaurant for the provision of the banquet. But the wedding cupcakes and table decorations (paper penguins and cranes) were made by us and an army of wonderful friends in the week before. And the location was my BFF's parents' estate. On the day the serving, decoration and cleaning was all done by the aforementioned friends, and the sound equipment was provided by another friend. Two amazing friends E + A were our photographers, and we're still happy with the decision to not pay a lot of money for professional wedding photographers.

Our biggest challenge: Catering for a vegan, gluten-free, Chinese wedding banquet. For a while my mum and I thought we'd have to cook it all ourselves, which we felt we were capable of doing, but I'm glad we didn't! The sacrifice we made was that the banquet was not in the end 100% gluten-free. We approached a local vegetarian Nonya restaurant that doesn't use egg at all, and had them cater 100% vegan.

My favorite moment: There were many highlights, but my favourite sequence of moments (for quantity) was when my cousin kept smsing me his review of each course. After the banquet was over, he started fighting with his sister-in-law over who got to take the kapitan leftovers home!

My advice for other offbeat brides: Ask your friends and family for whatever help their expertise can provide — but suss out beforehand what they think of "non-traditional" weddings. It wasn't until well into the process that I discovered how many of our friends had issues with various elements of straying from the path of foofy white dress, "you may now kiss the bride," etc. (We kissed each other)

Enough talk — here's the "really big party" porn: