The offbeat bride: Julie Ke, Sign Artist

Her offbeat partner: Jonny, Chef

Location & date of wedding: Forest House Lodge in Foresthill, CA on October 10th, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: I have never been the "wedding planning" kind of girl, and never thought too much about weddings until I met my Jonny Boy. We are both pretty offbeat in our daily lives, so it only made sense that we should plan a wedding that truly reflected our personalities.

Continue reading "Julie & Jonny's Glamorous Art Nouveau Costume Wedding Extravaganza" →

Y'all know I'm a sucker for reader photos, especially ones of my beautiful offbeat brides reading my book on their wedding days! Here's the latest, from OBT's gorgeous Stephanie R.

(Photo courtesy of Gearhart Photo)

After working on offbeatbride.com for almost two years now (and Offbeat Bride the book for another year before that!) I've started to see some definite trends in offbeat bride styles.

I mean yes: we're all doing our own thang, but there are definitely elements that seem to pop up repeatedly in offbeat weddings.

To celebrate this, I decided that this Halloween I would dress up as, well, YOU! I wanted to see how many offbeat bride trends I could pack into one outfit.

No one in Seattle will get this costume at all — "goth drag queen?" "weird mary poppins?" — but I don't care. I did it for y'all because I love your style.

SO, how many offbeat trends can you see in these shots? We'll start easy: Red wedding dress? Check. Actually a prom dress? Check. Purchased off eBay? Check!

Aww! This wedding photo just came to me from Christie (aka RedDress on the OBT) with a note saying:

————
Thank you Ariel for writing such an amazing book and starting such an amazing online community.

Much love,
Christie and Phill
xoxo

————

sniffle My offbeat brides are the best. sniff sniff

(Photo courtesy of ishootpeople.ca)

Members of the OBT already know Kat — she's one of my beloved moderators! Here's the full story on her awesome Solistice wedding

The offbeat bride: Kat, bookseller and OBT moderator

Her offbeat partner: James, writer

Location & date of wedding: My dad & step-mum's house, Lantzville, BC. June 21, 2008, Summer Solstice

What made our wedding offbeat: We managed to pull off a spectacular wedding with a very limited budget and a lot of help from our families and friends. Our visibly offbeat elements included my red dress and glittery Betsey Johnson shoes, the men's Converse shoes and skull ties, my bridesmen, our Buffy & Angel cake topper and our Handfasting.

The real offbeat aspect was that the wedding was 100% a reflection of the two of us. Having a handfasting was really important to me, and my non-Wiccan husband was totally into it. Our ceremony was officiated by two women and I was walked down the aisle by both my parents, elements that reflected our feminist values.

Continue reading "Kat & James' punk rock handfasting" →