Jessi & Dan's small queer thrifty hippie wedding

Jessi & Dan will head the third day of Pride Week. Jessi is a bi-woman and Dan is a transman. So they had a civil union in a beautiful garden and threw a killer celebration afterward! -Coco

The offbeat bride: Jessi, Nonprofit Development

Her offbeat partner: Dan, Baker

Location & date of wedding: The Temple Gardens, Sayen House & Gardens (public nonprofit park), Hamilton, NJ — May 18, 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: Dan and I are a nontraditional couple. I'm a bi woman, he's a trans man, I'm almost a foot taller than he is, and we're Unitarian Universalist hippies and activists who color outside the lines. We had a New Jersey civil union, which is separate-but-NOT-equal to a legal marriage, but we still call ourselves "married" and "husband and wife."

We had two Best Women and no Best Man. We "marched" down the aisle together as bride and groom, facing our guests by walking towards them instead of entering from the back (as a "feminist/queer equality" walk). We had our wedding outdoors at a public park, followed by a reception at our church, the LGBT-friendly Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing. Most people get married at a church and have a reception somewhere else: we did it backwards.

Also… we got married on a Monday!

Everything for our wedding (except the clothes) was DIY. We made our own invitations using a paper-making kit we found at Goodwill, blank cardstock, and ribbons from a dollar store. The invitations included an RSVP post card that asked people to list any food allergies, requirements or preferences (vegan, vegetarian, kosher, gluten-free, etc.). Two books, Offbeat Bride and The DIY Wedding: Celebrate Your Day Your Way, were my major sources of inspiration!

To go along with the invitations I created a website called Married on a Monday, mostly to give people decent driving directions and a THOROUGH primer in trans etiquette. We wanted to give people an idea of what to expect from our weird wedding and to answer the most frequently asked questions (like "Why the **** are you getting married on a MONDAY?"). We also put our "gift registry" on there, encouraging people to give us fair-trade or used items instead of new or expensive things.

While the thirty people we invited are our closest friends and family, I wanted to make it clear to everybody involved that attending our wedding meant following our rules about queer etiquette. It was also very important to me that everyone who wasn't invited knew exactly WHY they weren't invited:

a) We're queer, and we didn't want any haters there who wouldn't respect us or our friends;
b) We're introverts who don't make much money – hence the need for a small, inexpensive wedding;
c) We'd rather take pride in stuff we did on our own than spend tens of thousands of dollars to put on a big show to meet other people's expectations;
and
d) We had no plans to follow traditional etiquette about who was invited from the "bride's side" and the "groom's side."

We didn't care that, by not inviting, we might offend the the people who would probably offend us. We wanted everyone to feel comfortable! So, unfortunately, most of our blood-relatives and extended-family-members missed out. We queers create our own families when the ones who are supposed to love and accept us… don't.

Dan and I self-catered EVERYTHING, beverages and booze included. We made our own homemade wedding cake. Dan decorated our cake with vegan butter cream icing and professional tools at his workplace on the day of the wedding. Our friends helped out in many roles: one coworker's husband took professional photos; one of our Best Women played guitar; the other Best Woman managed the "gift registry"; and at the reception five friends heated and set up the food while another friend entertained everyone waiting to eat with the piano.

All costs included, we spent less than $3,000 on our wedding and honeymoon (which we spent at home with the phones turned off, taking day trips). It was awesome. I loved my "small queer thrifty hippie wedding."

Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge was planning how to deal with our relatives and co-workers who might react to "this civil union business" (as my Dad, still uncomfortable, referred to it) or to the fact that the groom and one of the Maids of Honor are transgender. Dan and I are "out" and open about ourselves, but that doesn't mean everyone who "knows" us, knows he's a female-to-male (FTM) transsexual man and I'm bi.

My favorite moment: My favorite parts were the song Julie wrote, that Dan and I "marched up the aisle" to; the Unitarian Universalist candle-lighting ceremony with my mom and Dan's friend-who's-like-a-mom, Cathy, that symbolized our families' and friends' acceptance and welcoming of our union; the cake-cutting and cake-eating; and creating our wedding website to go with the invitation, because it gave me the opportunity to set rules for guests about trans etiquette and to be open about who Dan and I - and our friends - are.

My funniest moment: When we kissed after being declared "husband and wife," and someone in the crowd shouted at the top of their lungs, "WOOHOO!"

When it was revealed to everyone that, underneath my traditional white wedding dress, I was wearing black running sneakers, knee-high rainbow-star-striped socks, and a dollar-store garter belt. Also, I took it off myself when no one was looking and handed it to Dan. When everyone realized this, they made me put it back on to "pretend" he was removing it the traditional way. It was so funny.

My advice for offbeat brides: Do your own thing and don't worry about offending other people. If you don't want someone at your wedding, because they're going to say or do something stupid to hurt you and ruin your day, just don't invite them. If you're shy or introverted like my husband and I are, don't guilt yourself into inviting many more people than you would really want. I have no regrets about keeping our guest list to thirty people.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

• Dress: I bought my dress from my high school [ex] boyfriend's mom's bridal shop in historic Bridgeton, NJ.

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn!