Sabrina & Paul’s artsy caver wedding weekend

After yesterday's post about cave weddings, I got so many emails asking for more information about Sabrina's cave wedding, that I figured I better post her profile right away!

The offbeat bride: Sabrina – Graphic Designer

Her offbeat partner: Paul – NASA Meteorologist/Computer Scientist

Location & date of wedding: Stephen's Gap Cave, Woodville, AL (basically in the boonies!) 5.1.08

What made our wedding offbeat: First off, I designed and we printed our own wedding invitations on my 1924 Chandler and Price letterpress (Paul did all the typesetting). We did all the decor ourselves: the decorations, the favors, the flowers, I designed the cake, etc.

Then our wedding was really a weekend's worth. May 1st (Thurs) Paul and I got married in a cave – Stephen's Gap Cave. Our entire wedding party hiked for 45 minutes with all of their fancy clothes (including a rented tux for Paul) slung over their backs and got changed in the cave. We had a fantastic ceremony, and then went out for pizza, and later went to the reception site to start decorating.

Friday (May 2nd) all our guests arrived and we had a fun cave trip (to Tumbling Rock Cave) for family and friends who were interested. Then a family dinner that night at the Lowe Mill – an old textile mill (basically a replacement for our rehearsal dinner).

Saturday (May 3rd) we went back to the Mill had a geocaching event in the morning followed by the actual reception party that afternoon/evening, where we had everyone come casual (like jeans and shirts) — including us! We bought a bunch of toys for the kids, and eventually the adults played with them too. I made a pinata and everyone got a whack at it! We had no schedule for the reception — there was no first dance or tossing of the garter or anything — and we used iTunes playlists and our stereo from home as the DJ.

Our biggest challenge: All the time it took to get ready for the event was a big challenge. And, since we did it all ourselves, printing the invitations and fabricating the decorations and favors took a HUGE amount of time! And we had to remember to sleep and go to work in there somewhere.

My favorite moment: Getting to wear my caving boots under my pretty dress in the cave and just seeing Paul and everyone around us being so happy and enjoying themselves!

My offbeat advice: Think about splitting up your actual wedding day from your reception. I think that was the best thing we decided. The wedding was such a beautifully calm and relaxing day with ONLY the wedding. We didn't feel rushed and didn't HAVE to be anywhere. We had our wedding day on Thursday and our reception party on Saturday and it was awesome!

Enough talk — show me the wedding porn: There are a few Flickr photos to see of the wedding over here. But I also recommend you head over to Sabrina's wedding blog for TONS more photos and wedding details. Oh, and press the play button beneath this little video for a feel of what it might have felt like down in that cave:

About the Author: Offbeat Weditors

@offbeatbride @offbeatwed

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