If your tastes run toward the elvish, fairy, medieval, celtic or renaissance styles, you pretty much can’t do better than Rivendell Bridal. The gowns ain’t cheap, but the inspiration is free!

One of my favorite things about running this website is exposure to fabulous freaks I might otherwise not encounter. I mean, I know all about my brand of weird (left coast second gen hippie/retired raver/etc) but it’s such a treat to see other delicious flavors of non-traditional.

Case in point: Siouxzi Rodeman and Alan Donnelly’s Steampunk wedding in Chicago. (Some of you may remember Siouxzi — she’s the one who had that nightmare run-in at Macy’s a few months ago.)

I was aware of Steampunk as a literary genre, but only just barely and not as a full-blown lifestyle/fashion thang. Consider me now educated and inspired.

I completely fell in love with neo-victorian aesthetic once I started poking around in Siouxzi’s wedding photos — her wedding hat! The custom ties for the bridesmaids and groomsmen! The cakes! The minister’s monoggle! All the brass and the corsetry and the gears and springs! What an awesome visual treat.

The fact that Souxzi was able to organize this stunning, stylish wedding in three months (while also grieving her mother’s recent passing) is totally mind-boggling and is a sharp ruler on the knuckles of anyone who says you can’t plan a wedding in less than six months. Congratulations, Souxzi!

But oh, there’s more. So much more …

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The offbeat bride: Marie-Eve, graphic designer

My offbeat groom: Vincent, maître d’hôtel

Location & date of wedding: Manoir des Érables’s gardens, in Montmagny (a little city in the province of Québec, Canada) June 16, 2007

What made our wedding offbeat: We wanted to get married only if it was to be in our way. We wanted something simple and fun. We enrolled my aunt Lucie to be our “minister” and we wrote the whole ceremony together, with vows speaking of chicken soup and gigs we attended through the years.

“I want it to be FUN, not PERFECT” was my mantra

We choose our readings from children books and Beatles songs and wrote a special one for our family members. We also had a few of my sister’s friends playing some wonderful live music: we walked in on “Here comes the Sun” and run out on “All you need is Love.”

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Holy hell. My brain almost exploded from the gorgeousness and sheer amazatude of Aly and Elroi’s stunning wedding in Atlanta. Let’s start with their wedsite, which has one of my favorite wedding party pages of all time. The descriptions are hilarious and I love the ushers’ hand signal discussion.

Then there’s the wedding photography, which was done by Our Labor and Love and must have cost a fortune because it’s stunning. Sadly, the online gallery is built from flash, so I can’t directly link to individual photos, but go look at them all and check out the bridesmaids’ hair (love the feathers!) and the amazing portraits of the couple, and the ceremony photos and and and … oh my god.

Just spend a while looking at all the pictures — they’ll take a while to load because the galleries are huge. You’ll be inspired by Aly’s handmade blue dress, and the bad-ass wedding party, Elroi’s smile, and the officiant, and the bird-topped cake that matches the bride’s dress, the vegetarian menu, and and and…! Just go. Just go look. It’s one of the most beautiful weddings I’ve ever seen, gay or straight.

Also, check out Aly’s write-up on Kvetch. I got all misty. And then there’s this article about the whole shebang, which was documented by a television crew for a reality show on Logo.

The offbeat bride: Ginevra, Six Apart-er

My offbeat groom: Alex, dj/student/tutor

Location & date of wedding: May 28, 2007 in a backyard … in Paia, Maui

What made our wedding offbeat: We wanted to have a small wedding that reflected not just who we were as people and as a couple, but how much our family and friends meant to us by dragging them halfway across the world.

We decided on Hawaii because we both grew up in DC, lived in San Francisco for a long time, and have settled in Boston — there was no way everyone wasn’t going to have to travel someplace, so why not to paradise?

Plus, being a destination wedding kept what I call Drunk Aunt Edna incidents to a minimum. Everyone who attended was someone we wanted to be there.

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