Offbeat grooms, I hope you're wearing your diapers, because this one is going to make you shit your pants with jealousy: at Corbin & Louise's Forest Treehouse Zipline Unicycle Wedding, the groom entered via a zipline he built in his backyard:

(If you have a Facebook account, you can click the photo to view the full gallery)

But don't be fooled! The bride may have walked to the altar, but she got in some zipping too:

Here's the full story from the groom, Corbin:

Continue reading "Corbin & Louise's Forest Treehouse Zipline Unicycle Wedding" →

You may have seen this wedding before, now get the whole story behind this wonderful mash-up of Jewish tradition and offbeat Rockabilly style.

The Offbeat Bride: Emily, Web Master/Science writer (and OBT member Ellamie)

Her Offbeat Partner: Geoff, Teacher/Poet

Location & date of wedding: Valley Beth Shalom Temple, Encino, CA (I had my baby naming, my bat mitzvah and went to elementary school here) — May 25, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: First of all, we skipped most of the really formal photos of the bridal party and did them the day before in an amazing photo shoot. Way more fun to have two wedding dresses than just one!

Continue reading "Emily & Geoff's Jewish Rockabilly Wedding" →

I love that non-matching bridesmaids are becoming more popular in weddings these days … and this shot perfectly encapsulates it. Everyone's in green, everyone's lovely, and everyone's different. Photo by Toronto photographer Derek Wuenschirs.

To see more of Derek's photos from this wedding in Toronto (including a crazy-amazing bouquet), keep reading…

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This question actually came in as a comment on the post about Hannibal & Myshell's wedding video:

This brings a question that I've been wrestling with as a performer - if you or your beloved is a performer by trade, how much of the wedding is a "performance"? I feel like my guests are an audience and I worry that I'm not going to give them a good enough "show" -Leah

This is a great question, and one that I totally relate to. I hope I made it clear in my Authenticity vs. Attention post that this issue is one I wrestle with a lot. Little known Ariel Trivia: I started college as musical theater student on scholarship. I lasted one semester before bailing, but the when you spend your formative years singing and dancing, you can't ever really get rid of the jazz hands.

Continue reading "Planning a sincere-but-theatrical wedding" →

The Offbeat Bride: Rhiannon, Office Assistant and writer of unpublished fiction

Her Offbeat Partner: Erick, Apple Creative and Graphic Designer

Location & date of wedding: Historical Santa Monica Pier Carousel, Santa Monica, CA — 4/18/09

What made our wedding offbeat: The goal of our wedding was to have as much fun as possible. We didn't have a huge budget to blow on fancy dinners or decor and that didn't really suit us anyway so we decided to just have the most extravagant kids party possible.

Continue reading "Rhiannon & Erick's Santa Monica Pier Wedding" →

Allow me to introduce Jillian Venters, also known as The Lady of the Manners.

Jillian is the pre-eminent expert on goth etiquette. She runs gothic-charm-school.com and is the author of the book Gothic Charm School: An Essential Guide for Goths and Those Who Love Them.

Today she joins us with a guest post with etiquette tips for goths who've been invited to weddings both gothy and more white-dress-frothy … but her book includes a whole section dedicated to goth wedding etiquette for both guests and hosts.

If you're planning a gothic wedding of your own, Offbeat Bride and Gothic Charm School have teamed up to to give away both a signed copy of Jillina's book AND a print of the custom "gothy wedding" artwork that's in the book. Details at the end of the post!

Goth Wedding Tips, by Jillian Venters

October is always filled with gothy (and even non-gothy) couples getting married. And before any of you start making off-hand remarks about what a cliché it is, goths getting married on Halloween, hee hee hee, oh how spooky; firstly, that’s the Lady of the Manners’ own wedding anniversary you’re chortling at there, and secondly, it’s no more of a cliché than other couples getting married in June (Midsummer anyone?). It really isn’t — in fact; there isn’t any month that doesn’t have some sort of cliché stigma for weddings. The Lady of the Manners is going to stop herself before she wanders down that tangent much further, and get back to the topic at hand. Yes, there are weddings in October. Gothy and non-gothy themed weddings, each of which has its own set of unique etiquette concerns.

Continue reading "Goth wedding etiquette, by Jillian Venters" →