Katlin & Vadim's Star Trek Jewish wedding in a garden • Offbeat Wed (was Offbeat Bride)

The Offbeat Bride: Katlin, Student Midwife

Her offbeat partner: Vadim, High School Biology Teacher

Date and location of wedding: Japanese Friendship Gardens and Irish Cultural Center, Phoenix, AZ — April 29, 2014

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: Vadim and I are huge Trekkies and met at a dinner party where he announced that he was a Trekkie. We decided that our wedding should be Star Trek-themed. All of the wedding party and even the clergy wore Starfleet uniforms. My mother-in-law even came dressed as Lwaxana Troi!

We kept our money local and used local small businesses. Our photographer was a family friend who was getting her start. Our florist was a mom and pop shop. Our caterer was a three-woman business. And our baker was a sister pair who ran a small vegan bake shop. We held it in a non-profit garden and a public educational hall, honoring my Japanese step-family and my Irish heritage.

Tell us about the ceremony:
For our ceremony, though it looked Star Trek-themed, it was actually a traditional Conservadox Jewish ceremony. We included the badeken (veiling), a ketubah (contract), and a chuppah (I made the cover, Vadim built the canopy and our florist decorated it). We circled each other, sang some songs in Hebrew, and it was, for all intents and purposes, a pretty standard Jewish ceremony.

Our biggest challenge:
Our biggest challenge was that, during the planning process, we were both forced to re-evaluate and re-define our family relationships. I did not invite most of my biological family and the ones I did invite were unable to come. It forced me to take a hard look at what it meant to be a family and to ask my chosen family to be that for me. I was lucky because as soon as I asked them to be my family, they stepped right into the roles and I felt whole again.

For Vadim, it was difficult as his family had insisted prior to the wedding that they were not going to participate at all because our offbeat wedding was an embarrassment to their family. He was forced to rely on previously strained relationships (those of his step-father and step-brother) more than his father and father's family for support, causing those previously strained relationships to start mending.

My funniest moment:
I would have to say that the funniest moment was when the Rabbi inserted the Stardate of the wedding into the ceremony wording. We had no idea he was doing that and it caused a lot of laughter.

My favorite moment:
One of the most meaningful moments in the ceremony was my (chosen) dad officiating. He was there to give me the daughter blessings and to walk me down the aisle to my betrothed. I cried every time he spoke to me during the ceremony.

For Vadim, one of the most meaningful moments was holding my hands under the chuppah. For him, it was a moment he could become grounded in and it made him feel like everything was right in the universe.