I love this shot of OBT member Emily and her husband Michael doing a little light reading at their wedding in September. Emily captioned this shot Offbeat Bride: Don't Get Married Without It!

I'm sorry, but some of the stuff on Offbeat Bride is just too weird. Some of the wedding shoes? Ugly. Some of the real offbeat weddings? Kinda tacky. I love Offbeat Bride, but sometimes I just don't get you guys. -Anonymous.

Thanks for bringing this up, Anonymous. And you know what? You're totally right. I don't like everything we feature on Offbeat Bride either — and that's by design.

This website isn't about dictating one vision of taste or aesthetics upon my readers. Sure, we feature wedding trends when we start to notice Offbeat Brides getting obsessed with a particular vision. But part of why I continue to run Offbeat Bride is because it's an excuse to get exposed to a whole big wide range of cultures and styles and people and design outside my daily experience.

If everything on Offbeat Bride was just a reflection of my personal tastes, we'd never see any rockabillies or goths or steampunks or church weddings. OBB would be all West Coast neo-tribal forest weddings like these ones. (Love 'em — but yawn!)

If Offbeat Bride was all about Megan's personal preferences, it'd be all beach weddings, star wars couples, and gamer geeks.

So I say: bring on the "too weird"! Bring on the ugly-to-some-people! Bring on the kinda-tacky-to-some-people! Because our tastes are all different, and when some bride halfway across the globe dares to share her vision with the world and I get exposed to something new and beautiful and amazing and magical … we all win.

Here's another round of reader Q&As! Not wedding advice, and not stuff covered by my FAQ … just questions from you!

If you were to mentor other businesswomen – what would your pearls of wisdom be? -Jac

My biggest business advice would be to always recognize the folks who inspired you. All's fair in love and biz, and there are very few truly new ideas — the key is to acknowledge and respect the folks who came before you.

Continue reading "Advice for indie biz women, and offbeat bride + the mainstream media = ???" →

How did you manage to attract the initial OBBs who have been so eager to share their stories with you? -Monica H.

When I first started researching my book in 2005, I did what most journalists do: I put a call out to my network of writing colleagues across the country to see who had great stories to share. I'd followed a few stories on the Kvetch boards on Indiebride and contacted those folks directly. A couple of the brides featured in the book were people I knew personally, but most of them are stories that I found through research and networking.

When I launched the website in January 2007, the profiles were originally just my way to give a bit more background on the brides featured in the book. I quickly realized that there were other folks who might want to share their stories and set up the questionnaire so that blog readers could submit their weddings.

These days, there are so many weddings submitted that there's no way I could feature them all … even with Megan posting four or five a week!

Do you ever get tired of talking about weddings? -Karolynn

Continue reading "Where did the original OBBs come from, has my relationship changed post-wedding, and do I ever get sick of weddings?" →

This is my new regular feature where I answer questions from readers. Not wedding advice questions (I do that over here) but personal questions, blogging questions, etc. Let's dive in…

Do you have any pics of yourself and Andre [sic] re-using wedding stuff? (Like your outfit?) -Corinne

I swear Andreas wore his sleeveless tux jacket to a friend's wedding, but I can't find any photos … but my wedding corset has gotten a ton of re-use! Here's my mom rocking it while she gets ready for her wedding:

Continue reading "Rewearing wedding outfits, blogger time management, and raving" →