Jenn & Skip's Vintage Western Wedding

Offbeat Bride: Jenn, photographer

Her Offbeat Partner: Skip, welder

Location & date of wedding: Cabin in the mountains of Pigeon Forge, TN — 7/11/09

What made our wedding offbeat: We did almost the entire thing DIY including making our own cakes (+ M.O.H. made cupcakes). I (the bride) made: invitations, my veil & fascinator, my bouquet, boutonnières, brides cake, decorations, signs. Skip (the groom) made the groom's cake, & helped with decorations and signs. Bridesmaids made their own fascinators.

We had help from other friends including, my friend Amber who got ordained & performed our ceremony. Other friends made the food, did my hair, & took video of the ceremony for us. We didn't hire anyone we didn't know!

Instead of renting a traditional event space, we rented a cabin for the weekend and invited our wedding party to stay in the cabin with us.

I am obsessed with themed things, so naturally the wedding had to have a theme. Our overall theme was "vintage vacation." From there we had mini-themes inside the big one. The brides cake and cupcakes were woodland (to go with the mountains). The suggested attire was western. The groomsmen and Dads wore western shirts. The bridesmaids wore headpieces and carried fans, saloon girl style. Both the bride and groom wore cowboy boots (which we already owned)… the groom also had spurs, the hat, the whole shebang! Our favors were vacation & western themed, as well as our decorations, popcorn & candy bar.

We had a lot of things to do during the reception, including games (horseshoes & cornhole) which we opted for instead of dancing. We also had a group game in which guests raced to eat donuts on strings without their hands — it was hilarious! We had two photo stations — one a "wanted" photo stand-in, and one photo-op with hay, a saddle, and a "happy trails" sign. Our popcorn bar was full of flavors like apple pie, cotton candy, & peanut butter and jelly to name a few.

Our biggest challenge: Having so much to do ourselves was a big challenge and having it all out of town from where we live made it harder. We packed the truck and trailer full of stuff to take up there, and hadn't seen our cabin space in a year. Hoping the candles wouldn't melt, hoping the cakes made it, hoping nothing broke, hoping the car would make it there (we broke down on our way), etc.

There were many things we just had to hope for the best on.

My favorite moment: There were so many! One of my favorites was when the photographer surprised us towards the end of the reception with a slide show of images he had taken from the prep work the night before up until a few minutes before he showed it. My husband and I stood there together in perfect weather, surrounded by our friends and family viewing our amazing images and were able to relax at that point knowing that all of our hard work was worth it and everything turned out fantastic.

My advice to other brides: Parents, or older generations sometimes don't understand the offbeat wedding, or anything that is nontraditional. I think it helps them to show them examples that "traditional" isn't really the norm anymore and it can still be beautiful and amazing.

Also, DON'T plan your wedding or make decisions based on anyone else other than you and your partner.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?: Photographer, PWP Studio

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn:

Oh, here it is!