Ang & Matt's low maintenance, low budget, DIY wedding

You might remember OBT member Ang from her series, "How to Broadcast your Wedding Live on the Web" (so far we're two posts in and have two more to go!). Here is Ang's beautiful wedding.

The Offbeat Bride: Ang, Bingo Chat Mod, Event Planner wanna-be (and OBT member Ang)

Her offbeat partner: Matt, Automotive Technician, Musician

Location & date of wedding: Bethany Covenant Church, Bedford, NH — 11/14/2009

What made our wedding offbeat: The main theme of this wedding was low maintenance. I wanted to ENJOY the wedding process, not be miserable and stressed the whole time. It was hard, but it happened! After that was the budget of $5,000. I know that other brides have done it on smaller budgets, but I was ecstatic with what we were able to accomplish.

Hand in hand with the budget was copious amounts of DIY/small business. The only vendors we used were our wonderful photographer and the people we ordered chicken tenders from, oh and my AMAZING jewelry. And hot on the trail of the chicken tenders, was how we bucked tradition.

OBT would call it the "Not so average bride". Yes, I wore a big poofy white dress, and we had cake, but there was no veil, no giving away of the bride, my bridesmaids didn't match in the slightest, the whole ceremony was about the joining of our families, a booze/dance free brunch reception in the church basement, no tossing of the bouquet/garter, and instead of a sweetheart table Matt and I were able to mingle with all our guests one on one.

Oh yeah, and our brunch consisted of French Toast, Bagels, Chicken Tenders, and Bagel Bites, all kept smoking hot by the awesome ladies of the church who volunteered their Saturday to help us out. Not to mention the whole thing was to be streamed live over the interwebs.

Our biggest challenge: Dealing with people. The wedding coordinator we had to use was very frustrating (this was only her second wedding). I had some relatives who sent emails that they wouldn't be coming to my weird wedding, and how shameful it was. The rain prevented us from using the classic convertible we bought as our escape vehicle.

Over it all I just repeated my mantra, "low maintenance." Even if none of the other stuff I'd been obsessing about for the past year makes it to the wedding, even if no one else shows up, at the end of the day I'm marrying my best friend and that's all that matters.

My favorite moment: This is so lame, but after the wedding was over, after we were in our awesome hotel, the photographers had left, Matt and I looked at each other and he said "We really should have brought some food with us." A few hours later, we went out for McDonalds, came back, and I curled up against him while we watched Mythbusters and fell asleep. At 7:30, when we woke up, Matt proclaimed us the worst newlyweds ever. But that cuddly moment was the most "husband and wife" I felt all day. All the dramas were gone, it was just us, and it was perfect.

Jazz hands!

My advice for other offbeat brides: EDIT EDIT EDIT!!!!! Ask the girls on OBT, I had SOOOOO many ideas of little details that I wanted to do. If I did end up doing them, they were in a severely different version that I planned at the beginning. Most of them I threw out completely. No favors, no welcome bags for the out of town guests, instead of a highly involved interactive artistic seating chart, we decided to just let people sit themselves. Those details that all the bridal blogs are constantly obsessing over are NOT worth your sanity. Seriously.

And on that note, for the love of God, please don't go overboard with the bridal blogs. This said from a girl who currently has over fifty on her RSS feed. While they're great for inspiration, they also have a tendency to make you doubt your own decisions, even to the point of hating your own wedding, because it will never be as awesome as the people in the blog. Screw them. Take what you need from them and move on. Seriously. That was THEIR day, focus on YOURS. [Editor's note: Ariel wrote a great post on this if you need more convincing: When to stop looking at wedding porn]

Stay tuned for this chalkboard DIY post!

Also, if you fall head over heels in love with something out of your price range, nine times out of ten, there is a way you can get it — either by smart shopping, bartering or DIY. OBT is a great resource for this kind of thing. All of my decor was DIY.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?:

• My jewelry Suite - By Nicola
• Blanks for Cufflinks - Annie Howes
• Dad's tie - Toy Breaker
• Photography - Kathy Mangum Photography

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn!: