Annie & Dan’s vegan geek chic wedding

This week at Offbeat Bride is meat- and dairy-free — it’s Vegan Week! Day 1 of Vegan Week bring us Annie & Dan’s vintage 50s wedding complete with vegan Italian food. Yum!

The offbeat bride: Annie, Blogger & Manager of Online Communications for In Defense of Animals

Her offbeat partner: Dan, Director of Outreach and Campaigns at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Location & date of wedding: Lynch Park, Boston, MA — July, 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: My husband and I have been vegan for 20+ years. We met when we were campaigners for PETA. We work at non-profits so we only had $6,000 to pay for our wedding. We were under budget and completely cruelty-free.

My dress was made of organza and satin and only cost $90 on eBay. The suits and ties were all vintage and synthetic — no wool or silk. Dan went with a vintage ring from the 1930s to skip any direct support of unethical diamonds or mining.

Since we are both Italian the food was a vegan take on classic Italian dishes. There was bread, olive oil and olives at the tables.

The flowers were organic. We had the wine for each table labeled as the table number and tins of French vegan candy for favors.

Our Invitations were made for us by our friend Josh Hooten over at Herbivore clothing.

We had a vintage — late 50s and 60s — theme to the style and music. We played a lot of Rat Pack, Rockabilly and Motown.

We couldn’t pick a best man or maid of honor — so we had four of each.

Tell us about the ceremony: We aren’t religious so we had a civil service performed by our friend. He talked about how marriage can’t be defined by a religion, politician or based on someone’s gender or sexual orientation. We had our ceremony at a park so we didn’t have to decorate. The flowers and stone pagoda by the ocean were beautiful.

Our biggest challenge: We had to plan the wedding remotely from Virginia. We couldn’t choose one Maid of Honor or Best Man so we had four of each and they were located all over the country. We used our website to send out “newsletters” and had a few conference calls to make sure things ran smoothly and were organized.

I also really wanted Princess Leia and Han Solo as caketoppers — it meant a lot to us. We tried out several different action figures to find the perfect ones.

My favorite moment:We had a long passionate first kiss. We kissed a lot the whole time.

Putting the rings on was incredibly exciting.

We’ve been together a long time and spent a lot of years apart, because we were campaigners. I was traveling back and forth from Europe and he was all over the US — to finally get married and be together was a dream come true.

My funniest moment: The speeches by the Maid of Honors and Best Men were pretty hilarious.

One of our Best Men talked about he always thought of Dan as Batman — a real life super hero who stands up for those who need him the most with his activism. He said he always worried Dan wouldn’t find someone who shared his passion — until Dan met me. He always knew Batman belonged with Wonder Woman.

Another Best Man talked about how he used to make fun of Dan for liking the movie League of Extraordinary Gentleman because that movie was so bad. Then he found out I owned that movie and knew Dan had found his soul mate

There was also the Blues Brothers Dance off to Soul Man.

Was there anything you were sure was going to be a total disaster that unexpectedly turned out great? We had people flying in from everywhere and I stressed out about their travel, but that worked out.

I was worried about the food because our caterer was new to making vegan food. She took my tips and our food turned out AWESOME! Everyone — vegan or not — loved the food!

My advice for offbeat brides: It is easy to get caterers to try out vegan products if you meet with them and show them how to use them and let them know what products to get. Our caterer was so good that she not only caught on, but bought books and researched herself. She did an awesome job with our completely vegan and organic menu that was also very cheap! She also set everything up in this gorgeous green layout that was so classy and clean looking.

What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding? It’s important to marry the right person. Some other people wouldn’t appreciate the research I did to make sure my shoes were appropriate for the era we were working with (late 50s and 60s) and that my veil looked like this one I saw Sophia Loren wear in 1963. They may not have appreciated the attention to detail, research and spreadsheets, but Dan did. When it is the right person, it isn’t work or weird; it’s fun.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

• Invitations: Josh Hooten at Herbivore Clothing
• Flowers: Audrey Flowers — Make sure you get Heather because she is amazing!
• Food: Gourmet Delights Catering — Roxanne kicked ass and was totally open to making everything vegan
• Music: Generations DJ Services — They made this event SO MUCH FUN!
• Dresses and Suits: All Vintage, David’s Bridal and Ebay

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn!