Offbeat Bride | Vendors & shopping

The average American wedding costs over $25,000 — which is completely insane. I encourage brides to find innovative, thoughtful ways to reduce their bridal budgets, and if you do choose to spend money, spend it on independent vendors and thoughtfully-made merch.

Still looking for your northwest wedding photographer? —

Seattle offbeat photographer Jenny Jimenez (remember her?) still has openings for 2008 weddings in the Pacific Northwest!

Designer Erin Blankley offers wonderfully weird custom wedding invitations as part of her burgeoning design firm, Corndog Industries. Erin’s past custom work is full of inspiring designs like Ouija Board-influenced invites you see here, plus even wilder stuff like coffin-themed and Van Halen rocker invitations. She’s got gentler designs too, of course.

Corndog Industries offers three tiers of pricing options, and is offering a special promotion to offbeat brides with free guest addressed envelope printing with Price Packages A or B. That’s 100-200 smackers off, easy! Just mention Offbeat Bride when you get in touch to take advantage of the discount.

If your tastes run toward the elvish, fairy, medieval, celtic or renaissance styles, you pretty much can’t do better than Rivendell Bridal. The gowns ain’t cheap, but the inspiration is free!

DIY wedding favors —

If you’re looking for favor boxes, personalized ribbons or monogram labels for your diy wedding favors, check out Beau-coup Wedding Favors.

Garter flask holders —

For those of you who love the unity cocktail idea, you must check out these Juliette Garter Flask Holders.

The “Altar your thinking” shirts are here! They look great, and I’m especially excited about the plus size/men’s tees, which are big, but not boxy.

I shipped all the preorders via USPS on Friday. They should be arriving on your doorsteps later this week, except for those of you in Canada … who are at the whim of customs. Ug.

If you missed your chance to get a pre-order, never fear! The shirts are available for order and quick ship right over here.

PS: When y’all get your tees, I want to see pictures! Take a shot of you wearing your shirt and upload it to the Offbeat Bride photo pool. I’d love to feature photos of real offbeat brides in their shirts on the store page.

Etsy’s handmade wedding series —

Etsy.com has a series of features about how weddings + etsy.com = luv (via etsy weddings)

There’s been talk about wedding ring workshops before on offbeatbride.com (remember how Elaina did a workshop to make her wedding ring?) and for those of you who have been intrigued by the idea, keep reading!

Wedding ring workshops happen all over the US and in two UK locations, and here’s how it works: you take a day with a master jeweler who gives you one-on-one guidance through the process of designing, fabricating, and finishing your truly unique wedding rings. I’ve always been a big proponent of custom rings, but actually making the rings your damn self!? It don’t get much more DIY than that!

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