"Sea monster hair" inspired Alex & Greg's peacock fairy tale wedding

The Offbeat Bride: Alex, Domestic Violence Advocate and MSW Student (and Offbeat Bride Tribe member)

Her offbeat partner: Greg, Sr. Pharmacy Technician and college student

Date and location of wedding: The Vinoy, St. Petersburg, FL – — February 28, 2015

Our offbeat wedding at a glance:

Greg pretty much gave me free license to be my silly, dramatic self and run with it. I asked him his priorities several times and he would make jokes about that as long as I showed up he didn’t care about anything else. So, I ran with it and realized this avant-garde peacock fairy tale.

For almost the entirety of our relationship I have been wearing my hair in a "sea monster" type coloring consisting of blues, greens, and purples. I asked Greg how he felt about those colors being our wedding colors and he gave me the go ahead. I felt calling the theme "sea monster" wouldn't really describe the classiness of the event we were creating, so we decided to call it “peacock." The more we looked at the peacock colors, the more we got into the concept of "peacock" as a theme. Plus the theme resulted in our guests getting really in to the color scheme.

My something borrowed is the beautiful amethyst and diamond pendant that my mom stranded in to a three-strand pearl necklace that she made for me. My mom took on a lot of tasks. She also ended up finishing my Swarovski-encrusted wedges and making a lot of bracelets as favors.

Tell us about your ceremony:

I walked down the aisle with both parents to the Phantom of the Opera main theme played by a string quartet. I felt that my mom had as much a part as my dad in raising me and I wanted to honor both of them.

We had two readings, the first was done by my younger brother, “Superbly Situated” by Robert Herschon. The second was done by a very close friend of my mother and long term friend of the family who I have known my whole life. She read Maya Angelou’s “Touched By An Angel."

While looking in to unity ceremonies, nothing really stuck out to me until I found out about Unity in Glass through Offbeat Bride so we ended up using them. We haven’t gotten our piece yet but are really looking forward to it. Our string quartet played The Cure’s “Lovesong” during this bit of our ceremony.

One funny moment was that Greg put on my wedding band backwards so it pinched me pretty bad and I had to adjust it. I also didn’t know where to stand as I’ve never attended anyone else’s wedding and we didn’t do a rehearsal… whoops.

Tell us about your reception:

Being a more introverted couple, we decided to do a late morning ceremony followed by a lunch reception. This gave us the opportunity to go out to dinner ourselves with the bonus that fewer people expected us to dance as we aren't really dancers. That said, we knew we had to have something for our guests to do, so we rented a photo booth. At one point my younger brother borrowed a prop of the Viking hat and wore it for most of the reception until the man running the photo booth reclaimed it when he was packing up.

We served miso teriyaki grouper with baby bok choy and kimchi slaw as our entrée. Our cake was two flavors baked by the Vinoy’s in-house pastry chef as we couldn’t decide. The top and bottom tier was amaretto raspberry swirl with white chocolate mousse, and the middle tier was rum cake with amaretto mousse, both were finished in Italian buttercream icing.

What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding? Any other advice for Offbeat Bride readers?

The biggest challenge that I'm still working on getting over is losing our ceremony site to rain. In hindsight, I wish I would have made a plan to get umbrellas and weather the storm as even wet, our ceremony site was much nicer than the back-up space. However, we are in the process of working with the venue and our photographer to go back and get pictures with the ceremony site around the time of our one-year anniversary.

Related Post 9 tips for a disability-friendly wedding (…especially when you're not visibly disabled)

Unless I'm moving around none of my disabilities are particularly visible. However amongst our guests we had lots of friends and relatives with health issues... Read more

Also, as a disabled person with a chronic condition, I was really not prepared for how demanding the reception and everything else would be on my body. I ended up kicking off my beautiful shoes right before walking down the aisle, which is why I’m carrying my dress in several pictures.

Vendors

• Photography: Brian C. Idocks Photographics
• Bride's Hair: Anne Burke with JCON
• Bride's Makeup: Hoch
• Unity Ceremony: Unity In Glass
• Flowers & Centerpieces: Braun's Fine Flowers
• Linens & Chair Covers: Everlasting Event Rentals
• String Quartet: Strings Attached
• Photo booth: Excellent! Entertainment
• Uplighting: Bay Stage Live
• Venue: The Vinoy
• Dress: The Dressing Room
• Tux: Sacino's Formal Wear
• Rings: Helzberg Diamonds
• Honeymoon Travel Agent: A-Aron's Travel
• Hair color and extensions: Cassandra Bradshaw with Star Booty Salon

This post features Offbeat Vendors! Check out their vendor listing to see how they cater to Offbeat Brides:

• Unity in Glass