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The offbeat bride: Trisha, Optician (and Tribe member)

Her offbeat partner: Matthew, Software designer

Date and location of wedding: The Monday Club, San Luis Obispo, CA. It was built in the 1930s and designed by Julia Morgan, the designer of Hearst Castle. — February 19, 2012

Our offbeat wedding at a glance:
We started by deciding what about other weddings we liked and didn't like, and figuring out what we could add to make our wedding reflect us.

Color was an important addition, and not just one color, but lots!

We both love vintage design, especially WWII era, so that was a theme for us.

sdfkl 050912 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

We also did lots of DIY. My amazing bridesmaid, Alexis, spent probably hundreds of hours with me gluing paper flowers, rolling magazine pages, spray painting various garage sale finds, and sewing dresses. We made all the bridesmaid dresses, invitations, hair accessories, bouquets, centerpieces, and I baked and decorated the cake.

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Instead of a DJ, as a gift, my grandmother got us a jukebox. A full-sized jukebox! We used it as the sound system for the reception, and set up our own playlists for the whole wedding. It now lives in our kitchen.

We took some traditions and tweaked them to fit our personalities better. I've never liked the tradition of the garter removal and toss, so instead of that, Matthew tossed a talking stuffed Chewbacca wearing a garter. Since that was such a cool prize for the guys, the bouquet I tossed included a Sephora gift card for the girls, and the tosses were for anyone who wanted to participate, not just single guys and girls.

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Matthew also designed photo booth software, and we set up a DIY photo booth area with lots of fun props and a printer that automatically printed the pictures. This turned out to be a huge hit. People had so much fun with it, and going through the pictures the day after the wedding was so much fun.

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Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge was keeping everything organized and on time. Neither of us are very organized, and we decided a few months before the wedding to hire a day-of coordinator. This turned out to be a very good thing. She helped us set the timeline for the day, helped keep our plans and thoughts in order, and made sure everything ran smoothly while we were busy on the wedding day.

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My favorite moment: The ceremony was very meaningful because our officiant was a dear friend of ours, and he customized the ceremony for us. He ended the ceremony with “where they're going, they don't need roads,” and we walked away to the Back to the Future theme (my all-time favorite movie).

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My funniest moment: During the ring portion of the ceremony, Matt kept trying to put the ring on my right hand. I had to correct him and tell him it was the other hand. Then, when it was time for me to put the ring on his finger, he pointed to his finger and said, “this one.”

There was also an impromptu breakdancing competition between all the kids at the reception.

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Was there anything you were sure was going to be a total disaster that unexpectedly turned out great? I was really stressing about the music in the weeks leading up to the wedding. I was worried about having enough music, and that the music we were choosing would be entertaining to everyone because I tend to have really random taste in music. Everything turned out fine though, and everyone had a lot of fun at the reception.

The Cake

alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)
A Month of Mixbooks:
As part of our partnership with Mixbook, this couple has been given a free wedding photo book to show off their wedding photos. We'll be featuring some of these Offbeat Bride Mixbooks in a few weeks!

My advice for Offbeat Brides: The most important advice I have for other DIY weddings is to decide early what you really want to do yourself. Figure out what things are most important for you to DIY, and set dates for when they need to be done. Have backup plans for the other things, so if you don't have time to do them yourself, you're not scrambling at the end. We made sure to have all the crafts finished by two weeks before the wedding, so during that last week I could focus on the cake and nothing else since the cake was one of the most important things I wanted to do myself.

Another piece of advice for brides and grooms who wear glasses: if you wear photochromic lenses (the ones that turn dark outside) and you are planning on wearing your glasses for photos, get some clear lenses with anti-reflective coating made for the wedding, even if you are taking photos inside. This way, you will be able to see your eyes in the photos much better.

0093_5Dii-20120219-0159What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding? If you had asked me this question before the wedding, I would have thought my answer would have been, “don't try to do too much yourself,” but I'm actually really glad we did it the way we did. Doing as much DIY as we did made the wedding all that much more personal, and saved us a lot of money. I also think it was important for me to keep busy in the weeks leading to the wedding. It distracted me from the whole “center of attention” thing with which I have a lot of trouble. I didn't have a lot of downtime to think and get myself freaked out, and I think that was a really good thing.

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