Katie & Jesse’s outdoor Halloween shindig

Get your candy out because it's Halloween Week! We've got zombies, ghosts, and gore in our weddings. Here we have a singing groom, lots of spray paint, and an adorable father of the bride.

The Offbeat Bride: Katie, Crazy Cat Lady

Her offbeat partner: Jesse, BAMF

Date and location of wedding: Fairview Grange in Port Angeles, WA — October 29, 2011

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: We had our wedding the weekend before Halloween, and the reception was basically a Halloween party, minus everyone in costumes (except one of the groomsmen who put on Frankenstein makeup during the reception). We're not especially formal or traditional about anything we do, so we went for a more laid-back party.

We had pizza, cupcakes, a candy buffet, and plenty of alcohol. Our good friends (including my maid of honor and one of Jesse's groomsmen) are in a band, and they played most of the reception for us. We danced to the Time Warp and songs about zombies. Our colors were purple, lime green, pumpkin orange, black, and charcoal gray, and I wore a charcoal dress instead of white.

Tell us about the ceremony: Jesse played “Nothing Else Matters” on his acoustic guitar as he walked down the aisle with his mama, and kept playing as everyone else walked down. My teenage niece was the ring bearer and carried the rings on a baby pumpkin. Our good friend Tabitha officiated and we wrote our own vows:

I, Jesse, choose you, Katie, as my best friend and my love for life.
I promise to always squish spiders for you, to never tire of playing Super Mario Brothers over and over again with you, to keep buying you stuffed animals no matter how old you are, and to go on walks with you as much as possible.
I promise to respect your unique talents and abilities, and to lend you strength for all of your dreams.
I promise to hold your hand wherever we go and to always kiss you goodnight.
I love you more than anything and I promise to love you that much forever.

I, Katie, choose you, Jesse, as my best friend and my love for life.
I promise to always pack you lunches complete with love notes, to bake you banana bread whenever you want, to continue giggling every time one of us burps and to always embrace your love for metal, even the scary kind.
I promise to respect your unique talents and abilities, and to lend you strength for all of your dreams.
I promise to hold your hand wherever we go and to always kiss you goodnight.
I love you more than anything and I promise to love you that much forever.

Our biggest challenge: Originally, we'd planned to get married in a different city in August. We'd had a venue booked well in advance, but they turned out to be just awful and we just couldn't work with them. By the time we decided to drop our original venue, we couldn't find a new one we liked that was available for our date. It all worked out for the best though. We pushed the wedding back a couple of months to give ourselves time to figure things out, found a more local venue to make things easier on ourselves, and ended up having the wedding in our favorite season just before our favorite holiday. We were really fortunate that our photographer was understanding about the date/venue change — he rocks.

My favorite moment: My dad was more nervous and excited about walking down the aisle than I was. I remember him saying, “Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God, Oh my God…” as we were waiting for our turn to walk, and it made me smile because it was so adorable. I hadn't really considered that he was walking his youngest daughter down the aisle and what that might have meant to him until that moment.

My funniest moment: I spilled a bunch of unity sand during the ceremony. I laughed a lot, but nobody else did! Hey wedding guests: if the bride does something ridiculous and laughs it off, laugh with her, otherwise she'll feel like an asshole. HA!

Also, my friend spilled Jagermeister down the front of my dress during the wedding reception. The look on his face when I “scolded” him was priceless. There was a lot of spilling: we're a clumsy bunch.

Was there anything you were sure was going to be a total disaster that unexpectedly turned out great? The weather! I expected rain since it was northwestern Washington in the fall, but it was actually sunny! I was so happy that we got to take pictures outside without worrying about rain.

My advice for Offbeat Brides: I have three very different pieces of advice:

1. Spray paint might just be your best friend. I used spray paint so much for our wedding. I spray painted picture frames for the family photos table, and the candelabra centerpieces were white before I took pumpkin orange spray paint to them. I spray painted vases and baskets too. You can make inexpensive stuff all look awesome and match perfectly. SPRAY PAINT ALL THE THINGS!

2. If you can, get a hotel room with your own hot tub for your wedding night. You're going to be exhausted, your feet will be killing you, and stepping into that hot tub at the end of the night felt heavenly.

You don't have to feel guilty for having feelings that aren't all sunshine and rainbows over your wedding day.

3. A lot of things went wrong the day of our wedding. Some small things, some big things. I'm finally okay with it. I'll admit that I was bitter for a long time, not that I wasn't happy to be married, not that I didn't love parts of my wedding, but it's hard to move past wedding disasters when you've been planning the event for years. If, in whatever way(s), your wedding isn't everything you'd hoped for, take some time and be upset about it. You don't have to feel guilty for having feelings that aren't all sunshine and rainbows over your wedding day. I say this because when I'd tried to talk about the things that upset me about that day, people would act like I was crazy. People expect you to think your wedding day was the most perfect, special, awesome day ever. That's not always the case. So, allow yourself to be upset, allow yourself to deal with those emotions, and then move on from it. Try to focus more and more on the good parts of the day, and eventually you'll move past the negative feelings.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

• Photography: Sean Sherman
• Dress: J.Crew
• Jesse's vest: Iron Fist
• Ties: Bows-n-ties.com
• Linens: Efavormart.com
• Papel picado: Etsy seller Aymujer
• Custom guitar picks: Steve Clayton

Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!

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.