We haven't gotten the 411 from the stripey bride that Ariel fell in love with last week YET — so here's another beautiful stripey bride profile, brought to you by her husband! (We love when the boys chime in.)

The Offbeat Groom: Lon, FileMaker Developer

His Offbeat Partner: Valarie Torres

Location & date of wedding: Great American Music Hall, San Francisco — October 12th, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: She's punk rock; I'm mope rock; we're both geeks. Our wedding party and guests were drawn from equal parts giant Mexican family and an extended bicycle messenger family.

Continue reading "Valarie & Lon's bike messengers meet Mexican familia wedding" →

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" →

I am planning on designing our STDs, invitations, and thank you cards myself. Do you have advice on great design or desktop publishing software? I have MS Publisher, but have never been that happy with it (should I give it another try?). Any recommendations for invitation designing software would be most appreciated. -Amelia

Great question, Amelia. I decided to bring in an expert to tackle answering this one — Aerin, whose wedding y'all saw here, and who designs wedding invitations (and wedding website templates!) as Royal Steamline. Take it away, Aerin!

First off, I love your DIY attitude! Whether it's because of the rotten economy or because you want to add a personal touch, I support anyone who uses the tools at hand to bring their wedding to life. Invitations can really set the tone for your wedding (they're the first thing your guests see, right?) and it's not surprising that many brides and grooms want to have an active hand in this important first step.

Before I address your question about recommendations, let's talk definitions and uses…

Continue reading "What software should I use to design my DIY wedding invitations?" →

Here's a great DIY alternative for Save The Date cards:

To our closest family and friends… from Alina Adam on Vimeo.

Alina says:

We distributed the video mostly by email (can you say majorly budget friendly?) and then sent a few people DVDs if they didn't have email. Feedback was really positive (I was actually told it was "cuter than puppies and kittens") and it was a ton of fun to make.

What do sentient fur-covered bipeds, native to the moon of Endor, have to do with weddings? Probably nothing, until OBT member Melissa designed these incredible accordion fold wedding invitations…

outside:

inside:

Ewoks & wedding rings! How can you not love it!? These just warmed my little Star Wars nerd heart. To read more about Melissa's invitations OBT member can check out her wedding planning update here.

And just because I love Star Wars, good photography and things that are sparkly, I'll leave you with this picture taken by Melissa…

"A rock? These little bears are nuts."