Posts by Ariel Meadow Stallings

This is Offbeat Bride's archive of posts written by Ariel Meadow Stallings.

Author of Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides, Ariel acts as the publisher of all the Offbeat Empire websites. She lives, loves, and dorks out hard in Seattle, WA.

Most Recent Posts by Ariel Meadow Stallings

Those of you who read Offbeat Home have heard about my husband's scandalous love affair with Pinterest. He's been pinning like a fiend for the last six months, and he's got some stuff pinned that I thought might be of interest to Offbeat Grooms who are just starting down their process of "I think I don't want a tux, but then what DO I want?" Here, courtesy of my husband's Pinterest board, are a few ideas.

Whenever we feature a wedding profile where the bride was wearing Irregular Choice shoes (like this one!), commenters are always like OMG WUT. Irregular Choice shoes are OUT-THERE (to put it mildly) and if you're going for a more straightforward wedding ensemble, shoes like this can be the BLAMMO that to take your wedding outfit to the next level.

Offbeat Bride recently got a shout-out by Mercury News writer BARBARA ORTUTAY in her article, Google Docs, the perfect bridesmaid…

It's been a while since I did a skull-focused shoe round-up, and I know some of you are already scheming your Halloween 2012 weddings, so it's about damn time I got proactively ghoulish and focused on some skeletal shoes.

So, we've talked about How to tell your guests they don't get a +1. We've gone over 10 blunt-but-loving ways to tell people they're not invited to your wedding. But what happens when a non-guest takes it a step further, and actually RSVPs to your wedding? You know, the wedding you never invited them to?

Now that we're done with 2011, I thought I'd take a look back at the ENTIRE year's worth of affiliate sales, and see what you ladies love. See, here's how it works: when you click a link in one of my shoe posts, and then you buy something, I can see what you buy — I can't see WHO bought it, but even if you buy something I didn't link (ie, not a pair of shoes), I can see the sale. This means that while I may love shoes like this, I can see that y'all are a bit more fond of these. That's cool, man. We don't have to like the same things.

This in mind, I thought I'd share a few of of the styles that are most popular with Offbeat Brides. I've got shoes, a few dresses, and some random accessories like mustache necklaces and mushroom lamps.

So, you know how I can sorta spy on y'all's shopping habits? I certainly can't see who buys what, but I CAN see trends of what y'all like, based on what you buy after clicking links on Offbeat Bride.

Sometimes, I like to gather up this data in my arms (LIKE A HUG! A BIG DATA-RICH HUG!) and share it with y'all — these are wedding invitations that lots of y'all have been loving over the last few months. Today's invitations are all from Minted.com, but I can also see that a TON of you ordered custom invitations from Vistaprint. (Totally makes sense: Vistaprint is cheap and awesome.)

Anyway, less talking, more clicking and eye-boggling. Let's get inspired by each other's tastes — we've got mustaches, tractors, fireflies and 8-bit awesomness to gawk at!