I recently did an interview with Kimi Kline on Seattle’s JACKfm 96.5, and we talked about wedding porn, the relativity of what “offbeat” means, bachelor party spelunking, and forgetting your vows. The conversation is now available as a podcast, so take a listen.

I have an interview airing Monday on Northwest Afternoon, a local afternoon talk show. The show is on between 3 and 4pm, and I’m not sure at what point my segment will air. Norah Vincent will be on the show too, however, so it’s worth watching the whole thing.

The real question is, who can get the segment onto youtube first? A free book to the tivo geek who makes the magic happen!

A few months ago I won a charity auction to have my book reviewed by the Seattle’s snarkiest alt-weekly, The Stranger. The review published today, and it’s a win/win … the article is wonderful and I got to donate to Northwest Harvest! Plus, it was fun. Furthermore, one of my favorite Stranger writers, Cienna Madrid, wrote the piece. Is that four wins? Whatever. Here’s a quote:

Offbeat Bride is the perfect book for engaged couples who are grappling with how to buck tradition, bypass the formidable Wedding Industry, and design their own weddings. For such couples, Offbeat Bride is more than a go-to guide; it is a godsend. (Or goddess-send. Or mystical-universal-life-force-connected-to-the-great-mother-earth-send.)

Stallings is a relentless researcher and clever type A who has explored every avenue ending in wedding bells, interviewed every other offbeat bride she could shake a charming stick at, and has the good heart to pass on her smarts so that other brides aching to break from tradition may profit from her knowledge. Stallings doesn’t just pave new bridal paths, she gives couples the tools to forge their own.

Read the whole review.

Offbeat Bride is taking Central Oregon media by storm! The Eugene Weekly published a great article about the book today, which emphasizes my obsession with all things geeky and web-interactive:

The book itself is not glossy, but Stallings’ interactive website (www.offbeatbride.com) and her Flickr group (www.flickr.com/groups/offbeatbride/), where other “offbeat” brides can upload photos, take advantage of the whole Web 2.0 thing.

Read the whole piece!

The article also includes this quote:

“Entering into this event-planning process makes people who are really pretty traditional feel like complete freaks,” [Stallings] says.”

Dude, this is a key surprise for me when researching the book. Brides planning weddings that to my eye seems pretty straight-forward and traditional still found themselves battling over even the tiniest deviations from the norm. I’m reminded of one bride who was having a Catholic wedding, but wanted to have “Moon River” as her processional music. MOON RIVER, people. This is not a wild tune. But her idea was met with keen resistance because it wasn’t “Pachelbel’s Canon.” Pretty remarkable.

(Oh and I love that the Eugene Weekly included a picture of Lisa Marie Grillos, one of my bridal lab rats who I interviewed for the book!)

So you know how the backs of books sometimes have blurbs from esteemed authors saying why you should really buy THIS book, the one in your hands, because they have read it and they like it? I have some of those blurbs! It’s so exciting to have my book written about by women I so deeply respect. SQUEE!

“Offbeat Bride should be required reading for every couple struggling to create a wedding that uniquely reflects who they are. With wisdom and humor, Ariel Meadow Stallings reminds you that you need not buy into the wedding industrial complex in order to have a kick-ass celebration.”
—Lori Leibovich, founder and editor of Indiebride.com

“A wedding book that won’t make you puke. Whatever your idea of nontraditional may be, Offbeat Bride is here to tell you that it’s all gonna be okay.”

—Wendy McClure, columnist for BUST magazine and author of I’m Not the New Me

Finally, a wedding guide that doesn’t assume you’ve been waiting your whole life to act out tulle-swathed princess fantasies. Stallings deftly shows independent women how to embrace their inner bride without losing themselves in the process.”
—Hana Schank, author of A More Perfect Union: How I Survived the Happiest Day of My Life

“Here’s one book the wedding industrial complex doesn’t want you to read! Offbeat brides aren’t just creative and thrifty (though they’re often both)—they’re taking weddings back and reinventing them in the ways that matter most.”
—Kamy Wicoff, author of I Do but I Don’t: Walking Down the Aisle without Losing Your Mind

Looks like the Brits have taken notice of Offbeat Bride. The book was mentioned in an article called And the bride wore hotpants.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brooke Warner, my book’s editor, was recently interviewed by Mediabistro.com. You have to be a paying member to read the whole piece but here’s a tiny selection from it that mentions my book:

You’ve edited many memoirs, including Lea Aschkenas’s Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island and Sarah Katherine Lewis’s Indecent: How I Make It and Fake It as a Girl for Hire. Some of them, like Spike Gillespie’s Pissed Off: On Women and Anger and Ariel Meadow Stallings’s Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides, use memoir as their starting point to explore larger cultural issues. What makes a given memoir right for Seal? Are any topics off-limits (such as ones you’ve already covered)?

Seal does a lot of hybrid memoirs. All of these books you list are memoirs, and yet Es Cuba is a travel book, Indecent is about sex work, Pissed Off is about anger, and Offbeat Bride is a nontraditional how-to book. You’re right on when you say that memoir is the launching point. It’s more than that, though, because it’s generally the thread that carries the entire book. The reason we have so many of these types of books is because we publish women’s issues and we are fans of sustained narrative (and believe that many women readers are, too). We do not do prescriptive books, so the hybrid genre is a way for us to provide something deeper — a lesson, insight, relating — to our readers without bullet points and ten-step strategies.

I guess my pre-publication press push has officially begun: I’ll be on KUOW today around 1:30 (Seattle-time) talking about offbeat brides navigating their ways through the Wedding Industrial Complex. You can listen online via their website if you want.