Just a little heads-up: I’ve run out of size Medium “Fuck Taffeta” tees. I have more on the way, but just know that if you place an order for a size medium, there will be about a week’s delay. [UPDATE 4/24: All sizes are back in stock!]

… Wait, what’s that you say? You don’t have a “Fuck Taffeta” tee?! Horrors! Get on it, girl! And have I mentioned that they make awesome gifts for the bad-ass bride in your life? It’s true. Every tradition-stomping engaged woman needs a profanity laced t-shirt declaring her disdain of formal fabrics.

Oh and remember that if you already have your own offbeat tee, I’d love to see you modeling it on Flickr.

(Thanks to miz_ginevra for the photo!)

I love this shot of my psychic day-cabbie friend Vera rocking her “Fuck Taffeta” offbeat t-shirt. She’s even got a coordinating apron! So adorable.

Even cuter is how Vera admitted that she had no idea what taffeta even was before buying the shirt. She’s not alone: familiarity with taffeta is seemes to be esoteric knowledge held primarily by those who obsessed over prom dresses in high school, and those who work in textiles/fashion. In the last year, I’ve met one man who was familiar with taffeta, and more than a few women who were like “taffy? feta cheese? what?”

Anyway, for those of you who have purchased offbeat t-shirts, I’d love to see you modeling them! You can either slap your photo on flickr and tag it “offbeat bride” or you can email your photo me.

(Thanks to Verabug for the photo!)

An offbeat bride in DC, has started an offbeat bride co-op aiming a cluster of like-minded women who can compare notes, support each other, and pool their resources, ala Susan Beal’s fabulous wedding co-op concept in my book. If you’re in DC and are interested in joining, check out the LJ community. And if you’re in a different city and want to organize something similar, let me know!

Well, what a delicious surprise! Looks like copies of Offbeat Bride are already being shipped out by Amazon, despite me thinking they weren’t going out until February. Awesome! So go! Buy! Tell the world!

Today is the day that Offbeat Bride is contractually due to my publisher, Seal Press. I FTPed the completed draft (all 60,000 words of it) last night. It was sort of anti-climactic. I had a few last minute tweaks to do before mailing it in, but they ended up taking all of about half an hour, and then I just sat there clicking around at various chapters trying to resist the urge to rewrite things. It’s fine, I kept reminding myself. It’s in good shape.

Still, after I sent it off I had a moment of standing in the living room and jumping up and down and waving my fists around and hollering “YAYAYAYAYAYAY!”

There were some questions after my last book post where I included a screenshot of the infamous Chapter Map about my process for how I wrote the book. If this kind of thing interests you, keep reading. If it makes your eyes roll back in your head, go look at some photos or something. I don’t mind.

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(… Oh! That pun! It kills!)

Even as I try to focus on finishing my book, I’m also in the early stages of pre-dev on my plans for the partner website. I am, after all, a web geek first and foremost … “author” is a new title compared to “blogger” and “total nerd.” I’ve got big plans, but for now here it is: OffbeatBride.com. Your future home of all things wedded, weird, and wonderful.

My book contract, originally uploaded by .Ariel.
… now all I have to do is finish writing the book! I’m a little over one third of the way through.

After 18 months of incubation and hard work on various permutations of proposals, I just sold my first book! Seal Press will release my trade paperback debut, a memoir/handbook chimera with a working title of And the Bride Wore A Hula Hoop, in January 2007. Hurrah!