You've already gotten the full scoop on OBT member Jess' fabulous colored crinoline wedding dress, now get the entire scoop on the wedding itself!

The Offbeat Bride: Jess, Experiential Educator

Her Offbeat Partner: Sean, Organic Foods Data King

Location & date of wedding: Artists for Humanity, South Boston, MA — May 2, 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: I am a Jewish educator and my husband is of Irish descent and was raised in the Catholic Faith. We wanted to honor and celebrate our heritage, while at the same time express our free thinking personalities. We had a Jewish Lay Leader and a family friend who is a former Pastor co-officiate our service, which we wrote ourselves, but honored every tradition that we could.

Continue reading "Jess & Sean's Irish-Jewish tradition-meets-offbeat 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" →

If you're looking for the perfect green/recycled wedding invitations for your eco wedding, you must go check out the custom handmade 100% recycled paper, invitations, thank you notes, and guest books from Indiana's super-green indie-biz, Twisted Limb Paperworks.

It's hard to beat Twisted Limb's eco-pedigree: their textured papers are made using recycled office paper, grass cuttings, organically grown ferns, and water recycled. They work out of a carbon neutral facility near Bloomington, Indiana in a woodland studio. Over a fifth of their profits are donated to environmental and community groups. Added bonus: I kind of want to be best friends with the whole staff!

All Twisted Limb's invitation styles are offered in three forms–DIY Kit, You Assemble, and Fully Assembled. They have a ton of wedding invitation options (they claim "literally four trillion combinations!") and also do other wedding stuff like guestbooks, favors, programs and menus.

Not only are they greener than green, but they explain, "We acknowledge with reverence and revelry every celebration of love and commitment and enjoy working with both straight and same sex couples." They also have a whole section of their website dedicated to great green wedding ideas.

So if you want your wedding invitations to be sustainable and eco-friendly, and crafted by sweet, eco-friendly artisans in Indiana instead of malnourished child-slaves in some factory somewhere in Asia … get thee to Twisted Limb Paperworks!

The offbeat bride: Lea, Artist

Her offbeat partner: Mike, Structural Engineer

Location & date of wedding: Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in Chicago, IL on May 23rd, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: A friend of ours, a wonderful fantasy writer, officiated with an incredible speech (which can be found here). Mike's family is very Lutheran, and mine is very Jewish, so we managed to put a ceremony together that summed up both of our beliefs without actually offending anybody.

Continue reading "Lea & Mike's big laid-back Jewish/Lutheran budget wedding" →

Who says you can't have your traditional ceremony cake and eat your offbeat wedding too? Emily and Geoff Kagan-Trenchard had a relatively traditional Jewish ceremony…

And then made a big transformation for the bridal posse photo shoot…

Lots of photos on Flickr over here, and even MORE over here. Oh and for all you colorful crinoline fans, be sure to check out this shot!

(PS: All photography by Axel Koester.)