Offbeat Bride may not be in bookstores for another month, but offbeatbride.com simply can’t wait another day. So, I’m decreeing 2007 The Year Of The Offbeat Bride and unveiling the website.

There’s a lot here — the requisite book information, but also what I hope will become a pretty robust batch of content, including this blog, an advice column, wedding porn, bride profiles, vendor profiles and links, and a bazillion other ideas that I’m scheming.

There are still some kinks being worked out (ug, I see the typo in the header image, and there are some navigation and design tweaks coming, and of course I’m still proofing copy all over the place) but I’d love your feedback. Everything work the way you expect? Anything broken? Pipe up!

Very special thanks and adoration to both my designer Carol Chapman and my ever-helpful webmaster, producer, and coder extreme J.M. Dodd.

(Cross-posted on Electrolicious)

If you’re looking for incredibly bad-ass, one-of-a-kind wedding invitations, then holy fuck, you owe it to yourself to commission Seattle artist Ellen Forney.

Ellen is a balls-to-the-wall graphic artist whose awesome comics have appeared in The Stranger and the LA Weekly and a bazillion other publications. You may have seen her book, I Love Led Zepplin, at bookstores.

Anyway, Ellen does these custom wedding invites that were voted “Hippest Invitations” by Seattle Bride Magazine last year. And as she says, “Cool enough for you and your friends, and elegant enough for your great-aunt.”

Custom work from an established artist isn’t cheap — rates start at $300 for a portrait and go up from there. But get this: Offbeat Brides get a 5% discount! Just let Ellen know you found her here.

So, if your invitations are going to be one of your big ticket items (and you want to support an awesome independent artist), Ellen should definitely be at the top of your list. Check her out.

The offbeat bride: Phyllis Fletcher, radio journalist (and Offbeat Bride lab rat!)

Her offbeat groom: Josh Knisely

Location & date of wedding: A friend’s backyard in Seattle, WA; September 2005

What made our wedding offbeat: We fed people before and after the ceremony — something that’s not offbeat if you’re Jewish! We aren’t, but we like the tradition of food first. So we borrowed it. Otherwise, our wedding was offbeat mainly because of things we *didn’t* do. No: aisle-walking, bridesmaids, wedding colors, printed program, ceremonial music, or poetry. No “now is when we dance” dancing; no assigned seating, cake-cutting, bouquet-tossing, party favors, or choreographed exit. What’s left, then? Everything else you have at a party! With a short and heartfelt civil ceremony between the appetizers and the barbecue.

Keep reading »

As an offbeat bride I come from an offbeat family, yet I have been amazed at the expectations that have come up from both sides of our families. How do I manage the expectations of so many family members, while still keeping the vision of our own, unique wedding intact? -Summer Pierre

Isn’t that so weird, how even the most nontraditional of families still have expectations about what a wedding should and shouldn’t be? Suddenly hippie mothers are hurt because you’re not wearing grandmother’s veil, and hip uncles reveal that while they might seem like a non-practicing Jews, they’re actually mortified that you’re making your chuppa out of PVC.

It can skew both ways, too: I spoke to a UK bride named Sabrina who told me that her free spirited mother was mortified (AGHAST!) at the prospect of her daughter having bridesmaids.

I wanted a wedding party, which caused absolute havoc in my untraditional family. My mother kept screeching “Bridesmaids? BRIDESMAIDS?” like I’d suggested roasting babies over an open fire. But I wanted to get married with these women around me; they’re part of who I am.

Keep reading »

Thanks to Ami LeBlanc for sending me this gorgeous photo set of Lucid & Eenor’s wedding in the Bay Area. Everything looks amazing, from the bride and groom’s stunning outfits, to the flower girl, to the tantalizing buffet. And tellingly, it looks like the guests were loving it.

Somehow, that’s always the cherry on top for me: sure the bride and groom will look lovely in their wedding photos. They’ve had a lot of time to prep and look their best. But do the guests look happy? Does there seem to be a genuine sense of joy in the air? To sound like the old raver I am, does the wedding have a good vibe? That’s the sign of a true offbeat wedding. Yay for Lucid and Eenor!

It’s not often that I see something wedding-related on theknot.com that I actually like. For the most part, the site runs too traditional for my tastes — although it does have some useful tools that even the most offbeat of brides can use. That said, I about fell out of my snooty-chair when I came across Kameo Brown’s amazing profile. Her photos are gorgeous and the event looks stunning. I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised — the bride is a photographer and clearly has an amazing eye for the details.

Although the wedding seems like it definitely was not a low-budget affair, there are some inspiring decorative and conceptual elements that are great for brainstormers. And I absolutely loved the Kammeo’s quote: “Entering my thirties, the idea of being a ‘little princess’ didn’t appeal to me as much as being ‘Queen’ for the day.” And omg, did she ever achieve it. Stunning!

According to Amazon, 40% of the people who view the Offbeat Bride page end up buying a Mr. Bento.
(Thanks to Patty for pointing this out to me!)

I’ve been chewing over publishing trends, the Dooce suit, my own book coming out in a few months, and the emails I’ve gotten with book questions … this is to say, chewing over bloggers becoming authors. I’m hardly an expert on the subject other than my own personal experiences (my book and Columbia Publishing Course), but still … I’ve got some thought about bloggers becoming non-fiction authors. (Fiction is a whole different beast that I know nothing about.)

Keep reading »