Wedding Celebration

The Offbeat Bride: Dorie, Teacher

Her offbeat partner: Justin, Construction Worker

Date and location of wedding: Steep Rock Preservation, Washington, Connecticut — July 3, 2011

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: Justin and I dreamed of eloping, but I, like most brides-to-be, was quite nervous about offending our friends and family. So when it came time to actually plan out our wedding, we began to brainstorm ideas on how to elope and make it out alive.

Wedding Celebration

We finally decided on creating an elopement music video. The idea was to create a video that showed us out on a date and slowly dropped clues that something bigger was about to happen culminating with our elopement. We contacted a good friend at Matley Productions who was able to make it happen.

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We decided on eloping to Steep Rock Preserve, one of our favorite date spots. The best part about eloping here is now we go here often on dates and get to relive the happiest day of our lives.

Once the video was produced, we announced our marriage by sitting down with our friends and family members, one by one, and showing them our music video. As we did, we turned on our webcam and recorded their reactions (which we turned into a reaction montage, the perfect wedding keepsake).

Wedding celebration.

The friends and family we couldn't see in person were sent invitations to a wedding that directed them to a website with the video posted. A year later, we had a post-elopement celebration.

Here is the music video:

And here is the reaction montage!

Tell us about the ceremony: We are both from different faiths, so we thought finding a reading would be difficult. We ultimately decided on the Bible verse 1 John 4:7: “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”

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Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge was not spilling the beans of our marriage while we were waiting for our video to be produced. We overcame it by flaunting our secret without totally giving it away!

LOLWUT!
LOLWUT!

My favorite moment: I think so many people are afraid to elope because they worry how others will react. The best part of our elopement, by far, was the reactions from our friends and family. As you can see in the video, everyone was so happy and not a single person reacted negatively.

If nothing else, I hope that our elopement reaction video can help dispel the myth that all friends and family will all be offended if they are not invited to your wedding, and that you can soften the blow if you're careful.

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My funniest moment: Despite the fact that we wrote our own vows, when it came time to recite them, we both messed up and couldn't stop laughing. Thankfully our videographers did some great editing, so the final video looks like we recited them without a hitch.

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Was there anything you were sure was going to be a total disaster that unexpectedly turned out great? Jumping into the river. I had never jumped into that river before and I thought I would hit my head on a rock and drown. It turned out to be my favorite part of the whole thing!

Wedding celebration.

Wedding celebration.

My advice for Offbeat Brides: When struggling with decisions, get support and encouragement from like-minded people. If none of your friends and family can support your decisions, seek out some people on wedding blogs or discussion boards, like the Offbeat Bride Tribe, to see how they handled the situations.

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