Category Archive

family

Maria Lauren WEB Carly Bish Photography 424 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

The family altar: a low-maintenance yet highly-sweet family wedding ceremony

The “family altar” is a good way to involve your family if they have a hard time playing nicely together… or you want to give everyone an opportunity to shine without micromanaging… or if there are not enough short poems to satisfy everyone who will feel disappointed if they do not get a chance to talk at your wedding.

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How to tell your family that your wedding will be adults-only

I want to send an email to our family members letting them know that the wedding will be adults only. While I still can’t control the way anybody interprets the message, doing it this way at least allows us to control the words that they see/hear. This was really difficult to write, but here’s what I’ve come up with…

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Planning a wedding as a fatherless bride

Despite the joy and enthusiasm I felt about getting married, not having my dad there meant there was a shadow, which for me made wedding planning — especially some of the emotions and complexities — as if I were planning both a wedding and a funeral. Death and life. Beginnings and endings. Joy and grief. It was all wound up together in a giant ball of messy emotions.

How to deal with misbehaving guests & abusive relationships at your wedding

How to deal with misbehaving guests & abusive relationships at your wedding

My wedding was amazing… but for one guest. We’ll call her Cruella. When we got home from our honeymoon, I learned more about the “Cruella Sagas” — I was not the only person she got out of line with at the wedding. Looking back, I would have trusted my gut and handled the situation differently. Here’s the advice I would have given myself about dealing with a difficult wedding guest, having now been through it…

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Why my wedding isn’t about me, and it never was

Every time I come up with an idea, I get someone complaining how it is not suitable for them, always followed by “but it’s your day you should do what YOU want.” But my wedding isn’t about me, and I wish people would stop telling me that it is. Here’s why…

wedding stress mug on offbeat wed alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

Wedding stress: why is everyone stressed out but me?

I had an almost “Anti-Bridezilla” moment — “I don’t care which shade of teal they are! If I’m not dealing with wedding stress, why is everyone else stressing?!”