Oh hai. I can haz hottie groomsmen breakdancing at reception, plz?

I wish we could have seen the bride break out HER moves, since the bride and groom are both professional dancers. Check out Steelo & Penelope’s wedding shots from Scott Robert Photography over here. I especially love this shot of the groom and his b-boy groomsmen:

I’m all a-twitter over the amazing photos and stories from the wedding of two members of the Offbeat Bride DC Wedding Co-op.

…The bride had a sword!

…The groom wooed her with a bowl of brownies he baked that morning!

…They did all their flowers themselves!

…The bride’s entrance was one of the most dramatically beautiful I’ve ever seen.

…The location (Adelphi Mill) was insanely gorgeous!

Basically, you should just go read the groom’s incredibly sweet post about the wedding. I’m going to go lose myself in the photos again, myself…

In the comments to this post about men changing their last names, I got this comment:

I don’t want to change my last name, and my fiance is pretty open to changing his. But he’s got 10 years of work under his belt with his name, and ffhe’ll be the first to admit - he works with a bunch of macho types who will probably not be so supportive. So he says, “Show me another man that has done this - let me talk to him, let me learn how he navigated these challenges.” … But I can’t find him a single one, except anecdotally. So where are the men who have taken their wives’ names? And how do I find them?!

I know a couple men who’ve taken their wives’ last names in two different ways (one got rid of his last name, the other hyphenated), so I pestered them for some answers:

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I positively adore this thread on the Offbeat Bride social network: What offbeat grooms are wanting to wear. Hint: it ain’t a tux!

… All too often non-traditional wedding planning falls along remarkably traditional gender lines, so it’s refreshing to see grooms who are so actively involved in envisioning their weddings. I wish there were so many more! We’re making progress, but it was depressing to me when I pitched my lit agent with the idea of doing an “Offbeat Groom” partner book, her answer was a simple: “No one buys books for grooms. Except brides. There’s just not a market for it.” Sad!

Kent, the offbeat groom who started the groom thread, even started an offbeat grooms social network.

I love feathery weddings, and that includes the groom’s lapels.

(photo from NYTimes)

Thanks to Brooklyn Bride for bringing this New York Times style feature to my attention.

Related: this feather bouquet, and this discussion of peacock-themed weddings.

Normally I leave this kind of thing to Riona at Godawful Wedding Crap, but I can’t help myself. With all due respect to Brooklyn Bride (a site I love), this t-shirt gives me about 10 different kinds of squicks … the sad groom and happy bride, the implications of dating as a game that men “lose” when they commit (because god knows there are no women out there who are total dating players completely skeeved out by marriage), the suggestion that brides are smug at snagging their hapless, gloomy grooms.

I totally get that this is just comedy, and I don’t want to seem like a humorless gender-warrior, but I guess on a certain level I just don’t quite understand why it’s funny … as a groom, do you want to be thought of as unhappy about your marriage? As a bride, do you want to be seen as “winning” some game that results in your frowny-face partner being stuck with you for the rest of your lives?

Yet another entry in the “groomsmen as bandmembers” photo series I’ve been working on.

I extra love that guy with the hawk in the back.

(Thanks to daleyhake[.com] for the photo!)

This morning I did an interview with The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC about husbands who assume their wives’ last names, as well as those who take on what I call “portmanteau names,” squishing two last names together (Andreas and I could have gone for “Fetzlings,” except for that it sounds ridiculous). I also revealed my hidden childhood bias against kids with hyphenated last names. You can listen to the segment below.

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I finished Offbeat Bride in just two sittings because I just couldn’t put it down. My only disappointment was that there weren’t any suggestions on how to handle being an offbeat bride with a traditional groom. How do you have an offbeat wedding without crossing the line? How to have a traditional ceremony that won’t make me feel like I’m at someone else’s wedding? —Becky

Becky, this is a great question, and absolutely a topic that should have been in the book! I lucked out by having a groom who’s wedding visions were as hallucinogenic as mine, but your situation is infinitely more common — just because two people are engaged doesn’t mean they’re somehow a brain-unit with matching Christmas sweaters and 100% aligned opinions.

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When researching Offbeat Bride, without a doubt the hottest topic among my labs rats was women changing their last names. One increasingly popular method of dealing with this feminist minefield is both the bride and the groom assuming a new last name. Seems to solve all the problems, right?

Well, turns out that in many states it’s significantly harder for husbands to change their last names. As in, hundreds of dollars harder. And now, one brave offbeat groom has teamed up with The American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California (ACLU/SC) to sue the state over a law that makes it easy-peasy for women to assume their husbands’ last names — but a pain in the ass for grooms to change their last names. Check it out:

As Michael Buday saw it, the road to matrimonial bliss was a nontraditional one that included taking on his wife’s last name, reports the Feminist Daily News Wire. Problem is, according to a lawsuit filed on his behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union, in California men are required to pay upward of $300, file a court petition and advertise their name change for a month in the local newspaper; a woman, in contrast, can change her name through marriage by simply paying a $50 to $80 filing fee. Buday also says he was ridiculed when he tried to legally take his wife’s last name at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Read more.

While trawling through the Offbeat Bride flickr group, I was struck by how some of the hipper “groom and his men” shots look more like band photos. When are these guys taking it on the road?

And then the question becomes, if these groomsmen were in a band, what would they play?

Hilarious: Men Don’t Care About Weddings? Groomzilla Is Hurt

The traditional wisdom remains that a groom (like a child) should be seen and not heard. Real men, the logic goes, don’t care about weddings. And that hurts Groomzilla — that makes him cry. But only on the inside. He doesn’t want to streak his self-tanning lotion.