Britany & Tyrone's small, family oriented, vow reaffirmation
Posted by Offbeat Elves · Real Weddings: Midwest US

The offbeat bride: Britany, recent college grad trying to get out of retail (and OBT member)

Her offbeat partner: Tyrone, workaholic and all around awesome guy

Location & date of wedding: Tippecanoe Place, South Bend, IN — 11.21.09

What made our wedding offbeat: We are offbeat in that we are an interracial couple and we were already married for over two years before we had our wedding ceremony.

We had gotten legally married on 8.24.08. We never had any type of "real" ceremony and decided it was time. It was something that was very important to us and I thought it was something that his kids needed to experience as well. He has two kids from a previous marriage.  They knew that "Dad is married to Britany" but actually witnessing it is totally different.

I hadn't been planning on getting a white or ivory dress, but when I found my dress on clearance for only $40 I just had to get it! It didn't fit quite right so my mother-in-law made some alterations to it and the end result was perfect! My aunt and I went out the day before the ceremony and picked out the flowers at a local grocery store. She worked her magic and made my bouquet and the other arrangements. She set everything up and took care of all the details.

Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge was money.

We had a very limited budget and it was very difficult to make this all happen! We never had a wedding due to lack of funds and I was totally adamant that it was going to happen this year.

Thanks to my mad bargain shopping skillz, and my dad and aunt chipping in, it all came together.

My favorite moment: My favorite moment was when we were saying our vows. It was so… amazing. I had never felt more loved by him than at that moment. It was like no one else was there except us.

I also really liked the time we spent taking pictures. While we were going around to different parts of the house, everyone kept looking at us and many came up and congratulated us. It was really nice!

My offbeat advice: In order to make your vision come true, you may have to cut back on some things.

Our guest list of sixty was cut back to twenty, including ourselves and his kids. so that we could have it at the location that we wanted. We also had to cut back on other costs in order to get our AMAZING photographer!

The most important thing to me was getting a great photographer. There was no compromising that. And let me tell you, Anya did such a fantastic job! I love her and I highly recommend her. She has a lot of talent and I'm so glad we had her capture our day!

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?:

• Dress – Prom Girl
• Shoes – Endless
• Cake – Adams Cake Shop
• Photographer – Anya Albonetti

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn: