Nina & Alistair’s Old American West, Deadwood-Inspired Wedding

The offbeat bride: Nina Lovelace

Her offbeat partner: Alastair McLellan, journalist

Location & date of wedding: Marylebone Town Hall (civil service) in London, England and Amadeus Centre (reception) in Maida Vale, London on November 1st, 2008

What made our wedding offbeat: I'm not sure how many brides-to-be base their look on a 19th Century tart with a heart … but that was my heart's desire!

We love the HBO TV show Deadwood, and I particularly love the dresses worn by one of the show's leading ladies, Joanie (feminine and business-like). I knew as soon as we decided to get married that was the look and atmosphere for me. Luckily my squeeze Alastair felt the same about the show and the clothes, so we had our inspiration early on.

A few other things that made our wedding ours:

• Our plan to make our guests the main part of the decoration of our wedding by asking them to dress in style and 99% did and did us proud. It meant everything else could be very simple.

• Our idea for ‘Wedding marshals' instead of best men/women; our two marshals had badges and one a plastic gun!
• Our cute-as-a-button flowergirl, Lana, dressed in a traditional calico prairie dress
• Our ‘country' wedding tattoos instead of rings
• My beautiful Ovation guitar Alastair bought me instead of an engagement ring
• Singing and playing that guitar with Alastair in a temporary band of our friends at our wedding reception
• Our wedding cupcakes were made from an American red velvet recipe by my amazingly talented sister-in-law Marian.
• Our CD favours that doubled up as table place names
• Managing to book one of the UK's leading country singers who we know on the London circuit, Alan Tyler, to play live

Our biggest challenge: The biggest challenge was probably getting our temporary band together to practice. They were all busy people but still found the time to be organised and get together with us and practice a 4 song set. I can't thank them enough… it was the icing on the cake for a great day.

Also I think trying to get people to understand the theme. The website we set up helped enormously with that however. The proof was that everyone looked amazing!

My favorite moment: So many – but it has to be when we were playing in the band. Halfway through one of our songs, we looked at each other and grinned like idiots.

My offbeat advice: Don't be afraid to ask people to dress up. It know it drove some of our guests mad looking for an outfit but everyone loved the overall effect in the end.

Enough talk — show me that wedding porn: Click on the picture below to see stunning photos from Nina and Alistair's Old West Deadwood-Inspired Wedding!

About the Author: Offbeat Weditors

@offbeatbride @offbeatwed

Working tirelessly to bring you stimulating content day after day, the Offbeat Wed editors will not sleep until you've gotten your offbeat fix.