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The Offbeat Bride: Logan, Chef and Prototype Builder
Her offbeat partner: Gary, Bartender and Model Designer for LEGOLAND
Date and location of wedding: Friend's house in San Diego, CA — June 6, 2015
Our offbeat wedding at a glance:
Our theme was just “Logan & Gary.” We run a local supper club and are sorta famous for having a super quirky house packed with trinkets and cheeky touches, so we wanted to make sure that our personalities were represented. We wanted everyone to remember why they were there every time their eyes rested on something. That said, as a couple who is in their 30s and funded the event ourselves, we cut and pasted all the elements we wanted to make the day ours. We wanted to not only represent ourselves, but all the incredibly talented people in our lives.
We had three caterers (as a chef, food had to be impeccable and full of heart) and a bar stocked with homemade wine, local beer, and house barrel-aged cocktails. We hired a falcon ring bearer. I wore a custom-made floral wedding gown that I helped design. Being sized out of all straight-sized gowns I liked was an emotional roller coaster with an incredibly positive outcome, and I would recommend looking into a two-piece option for a busty bride. We designed a skirt + bodysuit, and it was perfect.
Our programs were barf bags, we had karaoke at our reception, and we had our guests sit on the ground for the ceremony on blankets. We didn't have colors, and our decor was tinged with maps. The garland, table runners and sign (“LOGAN & GARY, FUCK YEAH”) that hung behind us were all made of them.
Tell us about the ceremony:
We are very into music so we decided to forgo all the standards and put our own in. When we first met, I gave Gary a mix tape that has since become the soundtrack to our lives, so we interjected as many of those songs into the ceremony as we could. The pre-processional song was “These Days” by Nico, processional was “Heartbeats” by Jose Gonzales, bridal march was “First Day Of My Life” by Bright Eyes.
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I wrote the ceremony, as we are not religious and also practicing poly, so a lot of the traditional wording didn't apply. The Offbeat Bride posts on writing a ceremony were INVALUABLE. At one point I had all the posts printed and spread across my desk.
We were married by our ex-con fishmonger and our rings were flown down the aisle by a falcon to my husband's gloved arm. Our recessional song was “Do You Realize?” by The Flaming Lips, followed by “Give A Little Love” by Noah & The Whale.
We collected blankets to lay on the lawn for seating. I was nervous about this decision, as I had never seen it done before and anything I read online was very negative toward this idea…but it was wonderful. It looked incredible and had the perfect, unstuffy vibe. Our guests had an unobstructed view of the ocean behind us. We also made the controversial decision to open the bar pre-ceremony (I tricked our guests by quoting the start time as 30 minutes earlier than planned), and it was such a good call.
Tell us about your reception:
Our reception was so fun. We had a cocktail (well, wine and beer hour since they drank all the cocktails) hour with our favorite foods: Rabbit Rillettes, Chicken Liver Pate, and Spam Musubi (one of our caterers operates a small scale rabbit/chicken farm). We also had a sushi bar which was generously gifted by an epic local restaurant (Wrench & Rodent Seabasstropub).
Cocktail hour music was all '50s and '60s doo wop. We sat down for dinner, which was all family-style, beautiful, local, organic ingredients to accompany the whole roast pig from a local farm. The guests ate off vintage mismatched settings, etched glassware, and silver flatware we had thrifted. Dessert was Peach and Berry Cobbler with fruit grown on the venue's grounds.
Our dinner playlist was the remainder of the mix tape music, and our first dance was to “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes. “All My Friends” by LCD Soundsystem was the perfect kickoff to the epic dance party where EVERYONE was dancing, even our family members! Our dance party was made even more awesome when we started karaoke. Our favorite performance was one of my bridesmen who sung the theme to Family Matters completely from memory. Our last song of the night was “Love You ‘Til The End” by The Pogues, and we took off in a vintage Ford to our after party at the Red Fox Room, a piano bar that is connected to the Lafayette Hotel, where we and our guests were staying.
What was your most important lesson learned?
We plan events as a hobby, and this proved to be mostly a benefit to us. We had a clear vision, and a ton of amazing vendor friends. If there's one thing we have learned in our lives together, it's that if you surround yourself with people who you admire and respect, work hard to live up to those standards. Through the help and support of our talented friends, we were able to have a $100k wedding with a $25k budget.
As for challenges, the hardest part was about three months prior when we came out to our families as poly and myself as queer. It was a much more difficult and challenging thing to maneuver than we thought it would be. Things are getting better every day, and we hope that it will be normalized for them soon, because our poly family is incredible.
Vendors
- Other vendors:
- Wine Making Shop: Curds & Wine
- Photography: Jennifer Dery Photography
- Dress: Fables By Barrie and Isha Webb
- Graphics: Haven Page Design
- Flowers: Florabella
- Hair and makeup: Glam On The Run
- Hotel: Lafayette Hotel & Swim Club
About the Author: Offbeat Editors
Working tirelessly to bring you stimulating content day after day, the Offbeat Empire's editors will not sleep until you've gotten your offbeat fix.
I love everything about this wedding! It just feels so warm and genuine. I wish I was your friend!
Yassss! Seeing more poly practicing posts makes me so happy! Your wedding seemed incredibly lovely all on its own, but that made my day. Also: brides with tattoos, succinct signs, …… my “love it” list is getting too long!
Thank you so much! We had a blast. We did it OUR way.
Seriously, your wedding looked amazing! My partner and I may not be poly, but as a couple of queers, we can appreciate that love is love ;]
You’re a gorgeous couple!
This wedding is giving me all the feels.
Hi Ariel! Any reason the whole photoseries didn’t get posted as the requisite Wedding Porn? Also working on getting that barf bag post going. Honestly I was SHOCKED that the internets couldn’t find anyone else who had done it before. Can’t wait to see other people use it!!!!
You mean the slideshow at the end? Flickr’s support for embedded slideshows has been totally shitting the bed for the past few months, AND they don’t work well on mobile (which means half our readers can’t see them anyway), so we’ve stopped doing them.
Did you have specific pics you wished had been included? If you link ’em, we can add ’em to the post!
That’s ok! I am super stoked on the pics you chose. I had a hard time whittling down to 100, but I’m sure that’s normal and a testament to our amaze photog! If anyone wants, I can post a link to the photo gallery.
I’d love to see the photo gallery!
Here’s the photo gallery! https://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/sets/72157654162208023
Ermagawd, yassss! I just went through your photos. All the lovely details. Your wedding jewelry! Your gorgeous family. Seriously, the three of you are hawt. The pic of your husband and your partner gave me all of the feelings. Thanks for sharing! I can only hope that my wedding is half as fun as your day seemed to be.
The newlyweds and their guests looks so happy for each other. And that great venue fits their cheery attitude, love it all!:)
Thank you so much! Of our 160 guests, only about 25 of them were family (we both have small families and we love them!). Our friends are so awesome and supportive.
Falcon ring bearer.
Falcon. Ring bearer.
FALCON RING BEARER.
ERMAGERSH, EEEEEEEEEEEEE! <3
I need more details! I need all the details! YOU CAN HIRE FALCONS? FALCONS TO DO YOUR BIDDING???
brb, dying.
Check out the comment thread below for more info on the falconers we brought in to help us out. It was the number one thing that our guests were talking about the next day!
What a gorgeous wedding! Logan your dress is amazing and I’m loving the colorful blankets for guest seating during the ceremony. The real kicker though is those programs! Wondering if you’d be open to sharing where/how you got them printed as we’ve been thinking/searching high and low for a non traditional program idea and this just takes the cake. Please let me know if you wouldn’t mind the idea being recycled! 🙂
Absolutely! I actually worked with my rad graphics girl listed above (havenpagedesign.com) to design them, and I printed them on white bags from Michaels on my home printer. It took all day feeding them through 4 or 5 at a time but definitely saved us a ton of money. We also considered printing on stickers and hand applying them if the printer didn’t want to cooperate.
Logan, we will be emailing you about doing a full DIY post on the barf bags. WE ARE OBSESSED.
Like, screaming “YAAAAAAS”-obsessed.
Yay! Stoked! I’m also happy to share anything else I can!
What you can’t see in the picture of the “courtesy bags” is the back side of the program which was printed with this image:
Thanks so much Logan. Wishing you two a lifetime of happiness
Can the source of the falcon ringbearer be included in the vendor list? Please? 🙂
The falcon was provided by the wonderful people at Sky Falconry: http://www.skyfalconry.com/
How much did it cost you to use the falcon?? I would die if we got to use one at our wedding…
It cost us a little over $800 but I think it varies depending on location/travel time. That included the falconers hanging out during cocktail hour to chat with our guests and show off a couple of their birds. Worth every penny!
Congratulations on such an amazingly kick ass wedding! On a side note, the bride and groom and partner are smokin’!
Aww, thank you! I am one lucky-ass lady.
This wedding is amazing!!! Love so many aspects (all the pins!!!)
Could you elaborate more on your choice to get guests to sit on the rugs on the ground for the ceremony?
We’d been considering a similar, picnic-style set up but are concerned about grumps from older folks (but were thinking of having limted seating at the back/around the edge for special/especially old people)
Clare, I did that exact set up: blankets in front for the able, a couple rows of seating in back of anyone who needed. Worked great!
Clare, we had benches at our tables for the reception, so it was easy to shuttle a few over. We also made sure to warn people in the invitation (and also request no kids!) using the following wording.
“There will be picnic blanket seating for the ceremony, please dress accordingly: Garden Party Attire, with lawn friendly shoes. A light sweater may be desired.
-We request an adults-only event. If this is impossible, please respect a child-free ceremony and attend later for the reception at 7:00.”
…which was nice because the people who were concerned had a chance to let us know in advance. Also if your reception and ceremony are not in the same location, giving people advance notice will let you know how many benches to rent (ours were about $20 each, far cheaper than the equivalent number of chairs-to-asses). We also budgeted about 6 people per blanket and that worked out pretty well.
Thanks for your responses ladies (Ariel, I must have missed that bit in the book!). Once again thanks for sharing your wedding Logan-I love seeing the variety of celebrations here in offbeat bride but its also great to see a wedding so close to what had invisioned for your own (though we’ll be having kids at ours, going for a family reunion vibe)
This wedding looks amazing! And I totally love her dress and the fact that she totally rocked it.
Mmm, this thread is some years old, but I’ll try my luck :-). I was very happy to read that the karaoke worked well for you! Can you tell me a bit more about it? It sounds like you mixed it with the dancing, right? Was it non-stop karaoke then or did you have certain time-slots for it? Did you pre-select songs? I love the idea of having karaoke at our wedding but as you can see I’m a bit fearful of how to make it work. 🙂