Jessica & Jeffrey's guerilla wedding • Offbeat Wed (was Offbeat Bride)

The offbeat bride: Jessica Wilson, student, crafter, dreamer and baker of cupcakes

My offbeat groom: Jeffrey Stephens, museum lackey, artist, tinkerer and propeller maker

Location & date of wedding: March 2, 20005 at the William Mulholland Memorial Fountain in Los Angeles

What made our wedding offbeat: We bucked tradition, saved a fortune, peeved our friends and had a BLAST!

Mr. A-go-go & I thought and thought and thought about what to do for the shindig — we waffled between hitting the county registrars office and doing a Pee-Wee's Playhouse tribute (we even found someone to get ordained and marry us as Jambi!). We ended up holding a guerrilla wedding at the famous fountain in our hood where wedding parties take their group photos every weekend.

We sent out postcards two weeks before and scheduled a meet up on our second anniversary — which also happened to be Dr. Seuss' birthday! People showed up, we took pictures jumping off the fountain and my brother married us. We then held a tail gate drive back to our place where we had a huge order of Thai appetizers to feed the hungry. Cupcakes were consumed, dancing was had and the guest book scrap book was signed. When the rain came down we headed out to the photobooth for our official nuptial portraits!

Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge was to throw a party for ourselves under a teeny tiny budget while pleasing our friends at the same time. Everybody had input and opinions and many did not like how we were planning it. It was hard to ignore the voices and go through with our plan. We lost confidence at times but in the end everyone enjoyed themselves — especially us. We managed the whole thing from the postcard sending to the actual event with hardly any stress at all!

My favorite moment: We weren't going to do vows, we were just going to thank everyone for joining us and celebrating but then the mister pulled out a piece of paper and waxed all kinds of poetic on our friends and us and of me and when my eyes welled up I noticed everyone else's eyes were wet also. It was humbling and simply beautiful. I truly felt loved by many at that moment.

My offbeat advice: Plan you wedding for you! It goes so fast and things can get so hectic — if you spend all your time trying to please everyone or freaking out about tiny details you won't remember the good stuff. Go with your gut and you'll find your face hurting from all the smiling you've done all day!