coupleshot3The offbeat bride: Donelle (aka. OBT member “Donna“), Graphic Designer, Musician, and Professional Ice Cream Slinger at Baskin Robbins

Her offbeat partner: Adam, Creator of fine iPhone games such as The Battle of Pirate Bay

Location & date of wedding: Wedding at parent's backyard in Sacramento, CA. Reception at the Coloma Community Center in Sacramento, CA. — June 20th, 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: My first thought when I was proposed to was that I did NOT want to have just another white wedding. Yawn! I've been to those before, and I didn't want my guests to have to sit through yet another one. Then I stumbled across the wonderful Offbeat Bride website. It had never occured to me before that a wedding could be so creative and personal!

3789937550 7a52868d93 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)
Shrinky Dink hair clips and boutonnieres.
Shrinky Dink hair clips and boutonnieres.

The 8 bit wedding theme was inspired by my square blue sapphire engagement ring. The theme was perfect for us because Adam is a video game programmer and I'm a graphic designer who deals with pixels every day. Plus, classic 8-bit games were a big part of our childhoods.

We had a very modest budget of 6k, so we made pretty much everything ourselves. We used Shrinky Dinks to make the boutonnieres, corsages, jewelry, hair clips and cake topper. We used window paint to make the bouquets, and fabric paint for the pixel tie t-shirts. We even made our own cupcakes! (The night before, I got the bridesmaids hotel rooms with full kitchens and we stayed up all night making them!)

We basically kept the traditions we liked and customized the rest according to our interests and values.


The cake toppers
A bride & her bass.
A bride & her bass.

Our biggest challenge: Sure, doing everything ourselves was far from easy.
Sure, our budget got strained a little bit. Sure, it was stressful as all hell. (Very!)

I'd have to say that our biggest challenge was when a close friend emailed us, the night before, with an itemized list of reasons why he would not be attending the wedding. He also told us what we were doing wrong in our lives and that we should've hired a wedding planner. This, to put it lightly, was hard to deal with the friggin' night before the wedding!

We were mad, but ultimately decided to let it go and deal with it later, because we just wanted to be happy on our day, not resentful. So, we did just that. We enjoyed our day, and did not let that person's negativity ruin it. Then, as planned, we worked everything out with him after the wedding.

ceremony01My favorite moment: My favorite moment was when I walked out in my dress and saw 120 or so of our closest friends and family standing there, and Adam, with an outstretched arm, to walk me down the aisle. It's hard to describe, but all of that love condensed into a 600 sq. ft backyard is a magical feeling!

My offbeat advice: Doing everything yourself is a great way to save money, but I actually ended up spending way more than I anticipated! Craft supplies: they ain't cheap!

Still though, I will always be able to look back at the photos and see the personal diy touches that made the wedding so unique and very “Adam and Donelle!” And hey- it was still less expensive than buying the boring cookie cutter wedding stuff!

Oh! One more piece of advice: Ask for handmade gifts (in addition to, or instead of) your registry! In today's economy, people don't have a ton of money to spend on gifts anyway, and will jump at the opportunity to make you something! And what could be better than than receiving a piece of art that one of your friends made and proudly displaying it in your home? 🙂

Cupcakes with pixel heart guitar picks.Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

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