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The Offbeat Bride: Kristi, pre-school teacher at a German Immersion pre-school and a previous example of why rainy day weddings = gorgeous weddings!
My Offbeat Partner: John, IT guy at a middle school
Location & date of wedding: Columbia Manor, Minneapolis, Minnesota — May 10th, 2008
What made our wedding offbeat: We really tried to make our wedding “us” in every way that we could and also fun!
We had a very limited budget- which worked out okay because I'm all about DIY or getting someone to do it for you for cheap!
I love color, and green is my favorite, so I suckered my sister into knitting my green shrug and my knit flowers (both turned out AMAZING!), my aunt into making my green jewelry, and my other aunt into making our polka dot cake. (I have an amazingly generous family.) We also had slave labor from Austria (a friend visiting for the wedding) to help with the poufs, which were pretty much EVERYWHERE we could put them, to add color.
My husband is a huge movie freak. Instead of table numbers, we used movies that are special to us. We also rented a projector to play a movie that he had made for the wedding featuring multiple John and Kristi's in each scene with a voice over interview of us answering fun questions written by the other (unfortunately we don't have it online to show off, but it was a big hit!). We then let the projector play visualizations and movie snippets (Temple of Doom, Back to the Future) for the rest of the night.
Our biggest challenge: Overall I think that the planning went pretty well. For the most part, our families let us do what we wanted. His mom really wanted us to get married in a church at first, but that wasn't going to happen, so we just tried to tell her respectfully that it went against what we wanted and compromised by letting her pick out a reading for the ceremony. She ended up picking a Bob Dylan lyric!
Other than that, having a limited budget was also challenging. As I mentioned before, we did most things DIY. Thank God for Craftster.org!! I made my veil and hair pieces. A friend did my hair and makeup. My sister knit and felted our bouquets and the bouts for the guys (who needs real flowers???). We rented sound equipment and set it up ourselves with a computer. My aunt made our cake. My brother in law and a friend took pictures. There was really only two things that we had to use “professionals” for — the officiant and catering.
My favorite moment: I love remembering our hand ceremony. It was similar to hand fasting, but without the whole fasting part (just holding). 🙂 Just looking into my husband's eyes and listening to what the judge was saying was amazing. Everything else disappeared and we just goofily grinned at each other.
My advice for other offbeat brides: Stick to your guns. Sometimes it's tough to hear that what you are doing isn't how someone else would do it (easy when it's just a stranger, not so easy when it's your mom, sister, best friend, mother in law, etc.).
Stay focused on your vision for the day and only change it if you want to.
Have some entertainment for your friends and family. We had a scrap booking area where people could dress up and take funny pictures. Everyone LOVED it! They were doing that all night instead of dancing!
Lastly — don't fear rain!! If it's raining, go out and enjoy it! It makes for super cute pictures!
Enough talk — here's the wedding porn:
Click the photo below to see all the shots from this wedding:
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