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:

Read the rest of this entry »

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?