Gabrielle & Andres’ “tattoo parlor meets tea at grandma’s house” wedding

The Offbeat Bride: Gabrielle, Artist/Art Teacher

Her Offbeat Partner: Andres, London Underground worker

Location & date of wedding: Ceremony at Islington Town Hall London, Reception at The Mildmay Workingmen's Club London UK — 11th April 2009

What made our wedding offbeat: Our wedding was DIY not just out of necessity due to the small budget, but because we wanted the wedding to be a true reflection of us. Our wedding was a mix match or a miss match of everything we like from tattoos to tea parties.

I made my bouquet out of fabric scraps and buttons. I made my own dress. I knitted cupcakes for table decorations. Stitched all the 20 reasons Andres' gave me as to why I should marry him. I painted a banner for the stage. We made all the food (with lots of help from family and friends). I made the bunting, the invites, my garter, my veil and Andres made the Cake toppers and the confetti. Most of the plates came from my mum who does house clearances for a living. The only things we bought were Andres' suit and Converse and my shoes and underwear. 
 I think even if money was no option we would still have done a lot of it ourselves as it felt like it was truly our day that way.

Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge was putting together a DIY wedding and working full time, in only 6 months. And we had to make sure that we still made time for each other to enjoy been engaged. In the months leading up to the wedding it felt like all we did was make stuff for the wedding and anytime spent together was spent wedding planning. There were times when I would be very stressed with everything. So we had to learn to take time out from all the chaos and spend quality time together. We were working to a deadline but if it did not get done it did not get done, what was important was us and our relationship the reason why we were doing all this in the first place.

My favorite moment: I have too many favorite moments to choose from its too hard to choose just one.
When I walked into the registry office and saw all the people I love gathered in one room, to when we were exchanging vows and Andres' bottom lip started to wobble. Or when I arrived at the reception and my two amazing friends were serving cups of tea to all the guests as they arrived. And our first dance to ‘All I Want is You' by Barry Louis Polisar are just a few of my favorite moments.

My advice for other offbeat brides: In an offbeat wedding it's often the small details and individual touches that become important in the planning and preparation of the big day. However what is important to you might not seem important to a helpful family member.

My advice would be that on the day you will be so happy and so wrapped up in everything that those smaller details that seemed so important in the days leading up to the wedding will no longer matter as you will be having a fantastic time. For example it was really important to me that guests ate off miss match vintage plates, I had enough plates for every guest to use two plates each, one for savory and one for sweet but we still managed to run out. Someone went and bought some white paper plates, one of my friends tried to hide them from me as she knew how important the vintage plates where but when I saw them I did not care, it was not important.

Why did I even care about this in the first place? Why was I stressing about all theses small details leading up to the wedding? I have no idea. I supposed its just easy to get wrapped up in the planning, but on the day the only thing that is important is that you have married the person you love and you are surrounded by people who love you.

Trust me you will not care what your guests eat off.

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