After doing a ton of wedding profiles, I started to notice a recent offbeat wedding trend. Apparently, Jessica McClintock has captured the hearts of offbeat brides this past season with her black and white wedding dresses.

Photos courtesy of Jessica McClintock. The floor length dress is called Jacqueline, style no. 54222 and the short dress is called Katie, style no. 54207.

With it's dramatic contrast between black and white  and vintage-style lace, it's like a classic wedding dress with a punk-rock edge. And it's easy to see why brides are having a love affair with these dresses. Of course, in true OBB style, each bride who wore this fabulous dress made completely her own…

Continue reading "Did Jessica McClintock create the perfect offbeat wedding dresses?" →

I just got this email from a reader named Katy, and thought I would share it as part of my Mailbag series…

Recently, I was looking through the offbeat photo pool and came across picture after picture of weddings with ideas I had been throwing around for a while. This cake picture especially caught my eye. Months and months ago I had found a picture of a cake almost exactly like that, the chocolate dripping down, and honestly I fell IN LOVE with it. On another site, I found that exact cake topper. Yep, exact. In my little wedding obsessed mind I had put them together and…VOILA! dream wedding cake! And here it was, at another wedding, another bride's dream wedding cake.

Now at first, I was a little disappointed, I'll admit. It's like my unique, offbeat bride bubble had burst. "But…but…how is my wedding supposed to be unique? I'd wanted that cake! I'd wanted to rent a photo booth! I'd wanted converse shoes! I'd wanted a black dress! Boo!"

But then I thought about it, and I smiled…

Continue reading "Trends vs. Super Awesome Ideas" →

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!

Lately, I've been noticing lots of short, colorful and playfully ruffled wedding dresses on offbeat brides. I'm guessing I'll be seeing even more in Spring 2009 weddings. Here are a couple recent examples:

For more info about the wedding on the left, over to Merge Weddings' flickr stream. For more info about the wedding on the right, head over to mi bell inc's gallery.

(Thanks to Rachel and Mel R for sending these in!)

Ok, so you've all heard of Trash The Dress, the photography fad of doing a shoot with the bride after the wedding where she destroys her wedding dress.

I posted very briefly months ago about why I didn't like TDD, but I realize that I actually didn't go into much depth there, and based on a discussion I recently had with a wedding photographer, I realized I probably should say more—

Continue reading "Why I'm not into Trash The Dress" →