I am a totally offbeat bride wanna-be … completely trapped in a semi-traditional girl. Last week I sent out save the date cards. Awesome — designed using my Photoshop skills, picture of us, love it. Then came the mailing. I went to Target to buy a sharpie to write the addresses on the envelopes. I almost paid $12 for a pack of 15 Sharpies because I wanted the brown one. Why the brown one? Because it matches the wedding color scheme.

Sometimes I need to be saved from myself. Thanks for the site — it really helps me keep perspective sometimes and be true to who we are and what we want. From reminding myself that it’s much more sane to buy a $1 black sharpie to making me feel like it’s ok not to want to talk about my wedding 24/7, you’re doing wonders for us girls who haven’t quite crossed the “I’m wearing a red dress if I damn well please” line yet. So thank you for supporting my semi-independentness. — Les

P.S. I realize that purchasing a black sharpie over a brown one doesn’t make me an independent bride, but it shows me that I haven’t completely gone over to the dark side.

Les, you are so welcome for the inspiration and perspective. To me, offbeat isn’t a toggle switch — it’s not an are or aren’t. It’s not a contest. It’s all shades of grey and what’s important is thinking for yourself and making decisions based on your own beliefs and values instead of the defaults that are spoon-fed to brides everywhere. Regardless, this site is here to inspire and challenge all brides who need a little more offbeat in their lives … not just the red dress wearers.

There are lots of books for different sorts of nontraditional brides — indiebrides, anti-brides, offbeat brides … and now there’s a book for DIY brides!

I recently had the chance to interview Khris Cochran, author of The DIY Bride: 40 Fun Projects for Your Ultimate One-of-a-Kind Wedding and editor of diybride.com.

Keep reading for her take on the projects that didn’t make it into the book, how to overcome “DIY-er than thou” competitive issues, and what one project even the most enterprising of DIY brides should probably hire someone else to handle.

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So I was looking around your website, and I feel like sort of a poser even being here. I’m wearing a white dress and I have my bridesmaids wearing pink and although we’re not getting married in a church, our ceremony looks pretty traditional. Do you have any suggestions for how I can make my wedding more offbeat? —Jessica

I actually don’t, Jessica — because I don’t think your wedding needs to be more offbeat. It just needs to be honest and authentic, and if what you want is a white dress and a more traditional ceremony, I think that’s fucking awesome.

I’ve run into this a lot in talking to people about their weddings — the dirty flip-side of “my wedding is too weird” is “my wedding isn’t weird enough.” Both sentiments make me sad because YOUR WEDDING IS NOT A CONTEST.

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