wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 1 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)
Photos by leah rae photography

The offbeat bride: Andy – Graphic/Web Designer

Her offbeat partner: Jeff – Graphic/Web Designer

Location and date of wedding: The ceremony was held outside in Forest Heights Park. The reception was held at the Shaw Conference Centre in Edmonton, AB — 08.08.09

wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 2 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

What made our wedding offbeat:
Our wedding ended up being exactly what I had imagined — fun, causal, bright, design oriented, and full of our favorite people all wrapped into one day!

A few of the highlights were:

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  • Our short and sweet, twelve minute long, wedding ceremony. We wrote out the entire ceremony ourselves with help from ideas found online to ensure it was fun, a bit God-y but not too God-y, and most importantly, represented us totally.
  • The tacky “Just Married” sign, complete with rattling cans, that we put on the back of my wheelchair for walking back down the aisle.

    wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 11 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

  • Our lemonade stand complete with a big lemonade sign as well as my favourite mom-made lemon squares.
  • The t-shirts our lovely (and possibly slightly lazy) ushers made with our faces on them and huge arrows pointing to which side of the ceremony was who's.

    wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 6 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride) wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 5 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

  • Our wedding party attire — the girls all designed different dresses but they were made with the same material. The guys dressed fairly casual opting for no dress jackets and wearing checkered vans. Their ties were also made out of the same material as the green from the bridesmaid's dresses which tied everything together perfectly.

    wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 12 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride) wheelchair wedding as seen on offbeat bride 2 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

  • Our entrance song into the reception which was the songs that Jeff wrote for the stickman engagement music video…
  • The jumbo cupcake we had atop the cupcake tower!
  • Using decals as the wall decor around the room and behind the head table.

wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 13 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge was probably the granny smith apple green. Green is in but not that exact shade and so it was hard finding everything to match. Luckily between us and our friends we were able to make everything come together.

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My husband and I are both graphic designers, so we were able to design all the stationery from the invitations to the table numbers to the huge seating chart board and have the theme and color tied together in all the designs.

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For the textiles the apple green seemed impossible to find! Luckily I had my lovely bridesmaid Teira who is a sewer extraordinare! We found, with great difficulty, enough of the exact green material (I have never bought so much material ever) to make 120 napkins, four table runners, and a bunch of matching throw pillows for the black couches in the lounge area. Thank you Teira!

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Lastly, the decals. They were the best idea I had! I found it was equally hard to find modern, colourful, unique backdrops in our exact colors — but our walls were so bare, we needed to do something. The decal idea worked out perfectly though. They're not too expensive, a bit of work but not crazy, they come right off, you can get them in custom colors, and they made a huge impact.

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My favorite moment: Walking down the aisle after saying “I do!”

wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 10 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

We danced to Must Have Done Something Right down the aisle, I had a tacky “Just Married” sign on the back of my wheelchair, and at the end of the aisle we had a pause and were able to enjoy each others company for a minute or two before the flock of family and friends came. It was a small but great moment!

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My offbeat advice: Blogs are your best friend! There are so many great wedding blogs out there, and they're the best places for wedding ideas, support, everything. Seriously, just put down the wedding magazine, all that's in there are ads and super expensive weddings. Instead, just search a little for great blogs, like this one, and you can find so many more ideas that will be more “you” — real weddings and real people, support and other brides to talk to, and also free!

wheelchair wedding on offbeat bride 4 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?:

Enough talk — show me the wedding pics!

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