Happy almost-Halloween! Today marks our final post in our month-long celebration of Halloween weddings.

The Offbeat Bride: Steff, Copywriter and Braille Transcriber

Her Offbeat Partner: James, Geo-technician, Armourer and heavy metal drummer

Location & date of wedding: Spookers, Kingseat Hospital Grounds, Kingseat, New Zealand — 1 November 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: James and I met on an archaeological excavation five years ago, when I happened to look over my shoulder and notice a really cute grey amorphous blob (I'm legally blind) wearing an identical Iron Maiden shirt to mine. It took two years swapping our favourite metal albums and me running away from him before we eventually started dating. When we decided to get married, everyone knew it wouldn't be the usual sort of white roses affair.

Continue reading "Steff & James' Viking Heavy Metal Halloween Wedding of Epicness" →

Gaze upon the greatness that is OBT member "Reenie's" geeky, silly, timely, comic book-style wedding invitation!

Continue reading "Amazing comic book style invitation" →

You saw the Twilight-esq wedding cupcake picture last week, and now here's the whole story behind that wedding

The offbeat bride: Dannette, Movie Sales Rep

Her offbeat partner: Nicholas, Cement Truck Driver

Location & date of wedding: Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Des Moines, Iowa — May 17th, 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: Nick and I met at his first gig in his new band that he was playing in, with my brother. We both love live music and have been to quite a few concerts together. He proposed to me at a concert front row and center! So I had to pull that in to our wedding.

Continue reading "Dannette & Nicholas' musically inspired wedding" →

When I get married, I am not planning on changing my name. Our families are not forward-thinking and are bound to assume I will take my future husband's last name. My family tends to give money/checks at weddings and I am concerned that they will write out checks to "Mr. and Mrs…" and we wont be able to deposit them. How do we let our families know that I'm keeping my name with out mentioning gifts on the invitation? -Ticia

Ah, the never-ending offbeat bride issue of last names. This specific issue's actually got an easy solution: there's no need to mention gifts or last names on the invitation. If you receive checks written out to "Mr. & Mrs. His Last Name," just have your then-husband sign the back of the checks to deposit them. When checks are written to two people, only one person needs to sign the back. Easy peasy.

But there's a larger issue, of course: letting your families know after the wedding that you're keeping your last name. That's got a relatively easy solution, too… thank you cards, which offer two opportunities to share the news:

• Your return address on the envelope should include both of your full names.
• Sign the cards with your full names — and you want to really drive the point home, draw a little arrow to your last name and note: Yep, I kept my last name!

Ultimately, it will likely still take your families a while to fully get it. But this will ensure that you've done your part to get the news out there.

Oh and PS: For those of you (brides, grooms, straight, gay, whoever) who are leaning towards changing your last names, I'm now partnering to offer offbeat name-changing kits.

Offbeat Bride Carolyn Cambell has a great spin the mustache wedding trend:

As she says:

When I was making the programs/fans, I didn't know what to put on the back, so I thought about what I wanted to see when I looked out at the crowd. Of course! My aunt with a mustache.

For more photos of Carolyn's "Schwartz + Campbell = Schwambell" wedding, head on over here.