Today is our 4th wedding Anniversary! To celebrate, I thought I would share a few outtakes from our wedding photos.

This one totally looks like we’re engaged in some hot conjugal buttsecks. Look, I’m all braced against a tree and everything! It’s allowed! We’re married now!

The bride took the crazytrain express to weddingtown and will eat your soul! When I make faces like this, it’s usually because I think I’m being funny. How terribly wrong I am.

Me and my duct-taped boobs pushing Dre on the swing. The boobs totally distract me here.

Who wants to caption these photos in the comments?

Expect less blog posts than usual for the coming week — things are a little crazy at the Offbeat HQ what with my birthday tomorrow, and a trip to Montana to meet my nephew and attend my brother-in-law’s backyard wedding. As always, the OBT is here to keep you company while I’m gone.

Just a quick note to let you all know that Altar Your Thinking tees are back up to full stock in both gray/lilac and bad-ass black. Oh, and extra bonus: I’ve even got black shirts in men’s XXL now, for my big teddy bear offbeat grooms! You can get yours here in the offbeat store. I’m thinking this may be the last order I place for a while (even with pre-orders, it got expensive!), so get ‘em while you can.

Also, I love y’all’s stories about how wearing your shirts to vendor meetings and (like Kat Mountain here) to the bridal salon!

Damn! Here I thought my t-shirt stock would last a few months … but I’m already sold out of three sizes of the Altar Your Thinking tees!

But never you fear, ladies. I placed my order today and in a couple weeks, I should be fully restocked with black shirts in Men’s XL (and XXL!) and Women’s XL, and then grey shirts in M and L. Whew!

PS: special thanks to my lovely models, Crystal and blue_cowgrrrl. Remember, if you’ve got an Altar Your Thinking tee, post a shot of you rocking that shit in the Flickr pool!

Hey, ladies! So me and my black dress will be on the Today Show tomorrow sometime between 10am and 10:30am. It’s a super brief appearance and I won’t be talking about Offbeat Bride, but if you want to find out what my next book might be about, it’s worth tuning in!

Lotsa love to you ‘n’ your beloved from me ‘n’ mine!
xo,
Ariel

Happy new years, everyone! It was exactly one year ago today that I officially unveiled (har har) this website. And what a crazy fucking year it’s been.

I spent the first half of 2006 aggressively promoting the hell out of my book the traditional ways, with readings all over the country and lots of press with radio interviews, newspaper articles, and tv appearances. It was really REALLY exhausting, often demoralizing, and didn’t seem to do much for book sales, honestly. I mean, the book did fine … but not great.

The second half of the year I focused exclusively on promoting the book via this website and not only did book sales markedly improve, but I started making money from offbeat advertisements! Yay. That makes the entrepreneur in me happy. Traffic has gone from 8,000 visits in January 2007 to over 60,000 in December 2007. DAMN! You could draw all sorts of conclusions from this (mainstream media dead? print being eclipsed by web? elvis still alive?) but I’ll just say that I’m happy it’s working out. Thanks to each of you for being a part of that working out-ness!

With a year of content on the site now, I know it’s easy for things to get lost in the archives … and with there being a whole new wave of freshly engaged offbeat brides for 2008, I’m going to start occasionally linking to older posts that I think have stood the test of time, just as a way to keep older stuff fresh in the minds of newer brides and to keep from having to repeat myself.

Also, incidentally, today is Andreas and my “real” anniversary. We don’t really celebrate our wedding anniversary but we’re all about our “kissaversary,” which was New Years Day, 1998. WOOHOO! That baby wearing the pink wig? That was me the first night I kissed Andreas.

Merry Christmas from all of us here at offbeatbride.com.
Which, er, would be just me. And Indie Rock Santa!