DSCF1665 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)While perusing the Offbeat Bride Tribe, as I do, I realized how often I come upon brides using pins as creative ways to personalize their weddings.

Tribesmaid Reenie (of comic book style wedding invite fame) explained that she's DIYing the boutenniers for the guys, and has accented them with cool/nerdy pins, like the “Saving the Princess since 1985” boutonniere pictured here.

And it struck me that pins are definitely becoming a full-on offbeat trend…

I thought of Shablis' wedding and the “Don't Panic” button that she wore on her wedding dress.

And at Shannon's wedding the couple wore “bride” and “groom” buttons. They even bought a button maker and made unique buttons for their guests to wear, like “Mother of the Bride,” etc. for family members and phrases like “How YOU doin'?” and “Bouquet Dodger” or “I'm A Little Drunk” for the guests.

alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)
Photo courtesy of Button Empire

Then there are these adorable “I'd rather be smooching…” buttons from Button Empire's Etsy shop. De Anne and Warren (of “The Hitchening” fame) actually exchanged those buttons instead of ring at their ceremony!

Or you can go the less nerdy route with the simplistic but equally adorable “I ♥ My Wife” and “I ♥ My Husband” buttons! You know… just in case people weren't totally convinced by that whole “wedding” thing.

Your guests can also have fun with buttons. Ariel even mentioned a creative use of them as place settings, in Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides

Wedding "Placecards"
The groom created a photo-personalized button for each guest and set them at the dinner tables to show us where to sit. We all wore our buttons the way you would wear a candidate's pin. VOTE DOUG AND SUSAN! Since the groom is politically active, it made perfect sense.

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In the same vain are these “team Justin” and “team Sarah” pins that were both a great way to celebrate your alliance with either the bride or the groom and were used as favors.

Our Sea Shepherd wedding pins.
Our Sea Shepherd wedding pins.
We even gave away buttons as extra favors at our wedding. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society was nice enough to send over a box of them for free when we told them that we were using our wedding as a soap box for the anti-shark finning cause.

Whether you're wearing these as wedding accessories, exchanging them instead of rings, using them as place cards, giving them away as favors, or promoting a cause, I thought I'd do ya'll a little favor and find some buttons that actually correspond with a lot of your favorite theme weddings!

Perfect for a gamer geek wedding are these Old School Nintendo Buttons:
Mario

These Alice in Wonderland pins would be fun for an Alice in Wonderland themed wedding:

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Wear your favorite Star Wars character pin during a Star Wars wedding anyone?:

Star Wars pins

Rock ‘n Roll weddings and musically inspired couples could accent their weddings with these Beatles pins. My favorites are the ones with lyrics about love:

And in the end… come together All you need is love Love is a flower

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Comments on Wedding pins and buttons personalize the heck out of your wedding day

  1. We both wore the formal pins from our co-ed literary/greek society, and encouraged our college friends (about 60% of the guests) to wear them too! T-kun also got to wear his special "president's pin" which had diamonds and emeralds on it. It was a way to celebrate the group that brought us together.

  2. I loved the buttons that we passed out as favors on our big day – they were a SMASH HIT with our guests. I had a vendor from Etsy make them for us, using my design. We also ended up using them as part of each boutonniere for the groomsmen, groom himself, and the dads. They worked out SO well! Here's a link to my blog post detailing the buttons: http://handmade-wedding.blogspot.com/2009/08/itsy

  3. We used buttons as favors too! I have a button maker and they took no time at all. Each one said something different that started with "I love you more than (and insert random thing we love here)"

    They were great conversation starters and since each thing was about us, it was really personal!

    Some of our favorites were:

    I love you more than Chewbacca
    I love you more than Obama
    I love you more than road trips
    I love you more than slippers
    I love you more than comedy folk duos from New Zealand
    I love you more than cotton candy

    and heres a photo of them at the place settings.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/rockonsara/404695164

  4. We actually did put our rings on one another at the ceremony, but the big exchange was the pins. I say WHY NOT DO BOTH. I had my cake and I ate it too. 😛

  5. We are totally planning to get a bunch of buttons in lieu of boutonnieres/corsages for the crew that's helping us out on our wedding day. Such titles include "Senyor Sangria" (in charge of keeping an eye on the Sangria/Wine levels), "The Intersect" (for my coordinator/Chuck-fan friend who's detail girl for the day of), and "iPod Ninja" (friend who's crafting the iPod list). The Spaniard (my fiancé) had some custom buttons done up for a bachelor party in May, and man were they popular!

  6. Great post. FH and I have a button machine to make buttons for local bands so about 5 minutes after he proposed we knew there would be buttons at our wedding.

  7. This is a fantastic idea that adds a personal touch to the wedding!! And who doesn't love badges?!

  8. So fantastic. They look like they would make excellent personalized favors for guests. Wish I could go back an include custom buttons at my wedding.

  9. for favors, we are planning on purchasing animals from Heifer International in honor of our guests, then making buttons with the different animals on them for our guests to take with them. Marrying an old punk means marrying into a buttonmaking machine!

  10. My sister is doing these for her wedding too – using guest's names and a one-to-two-word description of each guest for combined placenames and conversation starters (eg, "Sue – Involuntary Insomniac" for a new mother, and "Lisa – littlest sister" etc). We were just cutting out all the paper circles last night!

  11. I love the button/pin idea. So far my FH and I are both wearing the purple grape soda button from “UP” during the ceremony and reception…..still thinking about fun things for everyone else!

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