The offbeat bride: Clarissa (OBT Member)
Her offbeat partner: Joseph
Location & date of wedding: Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA — July 16, 2010
What made our wedding offbeat: The Harlem renaissance was about edgy art and music, so our wedding had everything including:
A naked sushi lady (because I lived in Japan during college).
Hungry hungry hippos games.
Wedding Crashers, the movie, playing on a flat screen and Cold Stone ice cream.
And a ceremony in the museum’s movie theater with a movie. We wanted to catch our guests off guard!
Tell us about the ceremony: We had our ceremony in the movie theater and played a movie before I walked down the aisle. Then we had a water ceremony instead of a sand [ceremony]. We mixed two colors into water to make orange to symbolize our separate personalities becoming one. We also have the same birthday so the movie theater’s star-twinkling celing had a lot of meaning for us as we got married on our birthday.
My funniest moment: The Who Wears the Pants game we played to figure out who was gonna wear the pants in the marriage. All the women were all over the place stealing yellow balls from Joseph’s pants and putting them in mine.
My favorite moment: The wedding cake. The cake was a kid’s bounce house built on top of the Bible and our marriage counseling book — to represent the foundation we are building our life together on.
What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding? Give vendors more creative freedom and they will deliver higher quality products!!
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
- Photographer: The Image Is Found
- Planner: Thomas Builife
- Videographer: Moder 8 Films
Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!
24 responses to “Clarissa & Joseph’s Modern Harlem Renaissance Wedding”
Oh my gosh, I just saw the video and you two are the cutest couple I’ve ever seen! Congrats!
Btw, Clarissa, your husband is a total hottie! 🙂
Wow what a wedding… It looks like everyone had a great time and everyone looks great too. Congrats to the couple!!!
Your wedding was beautiful…everything was so elegant! A question: did you have trouble getting vendors to take you at your word when you gave them creative license?
Um, naked sushi lady and cornbread…. why was I not invited to this totally kick ass wedding? I love that you made a statement about the marriage (instead of just a theme for your wedding) with the cake and that you clearly went all out to have a wicked party. You both look beautiful!
Rock On San Diego!!!! It looks like every one was having a BLAST!!!! Congrats to you both!!!
wow, looked beautiful and fun! congrats!
Love! This all looks beautiful, classy and fun! Love your green petticoat – same color as my dress 🙂
I LOVE the cake and the meaning behind it. So cute and special. And getting married on your shared birthday?!?! Awesome! Congrats on the marriage and beautiful wedding.
GORGEOUS wedding! I love the colors, decor, games…everything! Congratulations to you both. : )
Awesome wedding! I was super confused about the sushi girl till I checked out your entire wedding. It looks incredible! Congratulations.
What a fabulous, fun, personalized wedding. Love it!
Looks like everyone had a blast! Who wears the pants made me laugh.
That sparkling ceiling is gorgeous!
the amount of details that have such special meaning for you both… it kinda made me well up to be honest… [pms anyone?!!] that cake is especially cool. and yay for getting married on your birthday – i’ll be doing that in under 3 weeks time! – i only hope we can look half as hot as you two!! xx
Beautiful (both the bride and groom). I love her dress. And the sushi looks delish. Thanks for sharing your special day.
What a classy affair! I really like the green accents and all the little touches that were put into the wedding. Also, the “who wears the pants” game, which had to be a lot of fun!
That is. The classiest. Coolest. Most put-together event. I have ever seen. You two looked like you had so much fun! Amazing, truly!
Wow what an incredible dress! It looks like it was made just for you. You look amazing and so happy. The venue is just brilliant. It looks like a million stars are on the roof.
What is the tradition behind the naked woman? I’m confused. Is that how sushi is served in Japan? It seems a bit derogatory to women.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyotaimori
this might explain it a bit..
Smokin hot couple, awesome modern flowers and glitz…every little detail is just awesome. Looks absolutely flawless and so well put together. What a beautiful day to remember! And I loved seeing the small, fun, less serious details like hungry hippos and bouncy castle cake (even though it has a more serious meaning!)
I absolutely love everything about this wedding. Everyone looks like they are having so much fun! Congratulations to you both!
This looked like a wonderful wedding! Thank you for the advice on trusting the vendors with their advice and creativity.
what a FANTASTIC cake idea. that is AWESOME! i also really really love your theme and how you worked it. how great!
how do you even find a naked sushi lady?
Amazing wedding…I love all the symbolism and your shoes are to die for!
Gorgeous! Loved the wonderful cake and the bride’s beautiful dress.