The offbeat bride: Maria Barletti, IT Project Manager (and Offbeat Bride lab rat!)

My offbeat groom: Kenneth Spence, Teacher

Location & date of wedding: Marylebone Registry office in London, and then the Chapel of Love and Loathe at Glastonbury Festival, in June 2004

What made our wedding offbeat: Well, to begin with there was just the two of us plus two witnesses. We started at the London registry office and then went to the Glastonbury Festival, where we spent our wedding night in a tent, surrounded by a sea of tents. We then had another ceremony at the festival, at the famous "chapel of love and loathe," which included transvestite nuns, Elvis-themed vows, and was filmed for the BBC.

Continue reading "Maria Barletti, the Glastonbury bride" →

The offbeat bride: Lisa Marie Grillos, Photographer (and Offbeat Bride lab rat!)

My offbeat groom: Stephen Grillos, poker player

Location & date of wedding: August 6, 2005; Ceremony: Pulgas Water Temple in Woodside, CA; Reception: My in-law's backyard in Atherton, CA

What made our wedding offbeat: Our wedding was a fun backyard bbq with all our closest family and friends there. We didn't think that spending a ridiculous amount of money on a wedding would make us any more married than if we spent less, so we saved a lot by doing DIY projects — invitations, programs, favors.

Continue reading "Lisa Marie Grillos' Bay Area backyard BBQ" →

The offbeat bride: Julie McAlee, Technical Writer (and Offbeat Bride lab rat!)

My offbeat groom: Angelo McAlee, Lifeguard Supervisor and Divemaster

Location & date of wedding: Underwater at Dry Rocks Reef, Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, Florida

What made our wedding offbeat: The most obvious thing that was offbeat about our wedding was that it was underwater. We met in a dive class, and after all of the diving we had done together, it seemed like the thing that expressed something very important to us both.

Continue reading "Julie McAlee's underwater wedding" →

The offbeat bride: Deana Weibel, assistant professor of anthropology (and Offbeat Bride lab rat!)

My offbeat groom: Glen, historian (independent scholar) and self-employed bookseller

Location & date of wedding: The Alumni House, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan. October 6, 2006.

What made our wedding offbeat: We had a subtle, spacey, moon-and-stars theme because my husband Glen is a cold war historian with expertise in the space race (and because we're both space geeks). We walked each other up the aisle, our only attendants were our two brothers (his was Best Man, mine was Man of Honor).

Continue reading "Deana Weibel's space geek wedding" →

The offbeat bride: Greta Christina, Writer (and Offbeat Bride lab rat!)

The other offbeat bride: Ingrid, nurse practitioner

Location & date of wedding: November 12, 2005 in San Francisco's Swedish American Hall in the Castro district

What made our wedding offbeat: 1. We encouraged all our guests to dress in festive/glamorous attire, including historical costumes. Boy howdy, did they take us up on it.

Continue reading "Greta Christina's agnostic commitment ceremony" →