Sarah & James’ tree-planting rainbow geeky wedding

We teased this couple's epic fantasy cake, and you guys made it clear that the rest of the wedding must be seen. And seen it shall be!

The Offbeat Bride: Sarah, Youth Worker

Her offbeat partner: James, Video Game Character Artist

Date and location of wedding: Matara Centre, Tetbury, Gloucestershire, UK — May 11, 2014

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: When we looked for a venue, we wanted something a bit different and preferably somewhere with a beautiful outdoor space. The Matara Centre was quite far from home but as soon as we visited, we knew it was perfect, especially as we could stay onsite with our friends the night before and night-of the wedding (which meant very little sleep!).

We wanted everything to be as colourful as possible, so went a little DIY-happy. The invites featured LEGO characters, Scott Pilgrim characters, and a little sprite of our cat. We made almost 200 paper pom-poms, fluffy pom-poms for the centrepieces, the place cards, guestbook sheets, origami cranes, and stars galore.

The groom's sister made a LEGO card box, my bridesmaid made paper bouquets and button holes, and my mother-in-law made my beautiful huge paper flower. I had other friends making the photo booth, tablecloths, and lots of people helped us “foof” the paper pom-poms the night before the wedding. It was a lot of work and was a huge team effort, but it was totally worth it. It was so lovely that so many people took part in it with us.

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I'm a feminist, so I really thought long and hard about how this featured in our decision-making process. We ignored lots of traditions: I proposed to him, we spent the night before and the morning of the wedding together, he'd already seen the dress, we walked down the aisle together, we kept our own names, I had a bridesdude along with my two bridesmaids, he had two best men, we gave a joint speech, and generally tried to make sure it was all pretty laid-back.

My ring was recycled silver with a spirit rabbit from Watership Down, a moon and stars on that he'd had engraved with “Moon of my life” from Game of Thrones, and we made a LEGO ring box to carry it.

There was no way I was going to change my pink hair for the wedding (despite being asked this a lot), so I coordinated with my pink sash, pink underskirt, and pink/purple galaxy boots. I asked the bridal party to pick whatever they wanted to wear as long as it was a bright colour, then the groom told the best men just to pick whatever tartan they wanted for their kilts (they are Scottish). I was also asked quite a bit if I was going to cover my tattoos up which felt a little bit weird to me as they are part of who I am. Of course they were going to be on display!

Tell us about the ceremony:
In our official ceremony around the cloisters we read “A Scientific Romance” by Tim Pratt which was perfect for us as it involves geeky stuff, zombies, and fajitas.

On the day, it really occurred to us that it's not the easiest thing to read aloud, especially when you're nervous! There are a few pictures of us laughing our way through it. While we signed the register, we had “Mario Kart Love Song” and “If I Had a Million Dollars” playing. We danced our way out to “Magic Dance” from Labyrinth and then went outside.

Out in the woods, our celebrant did a blessing for us and we read our own vows before all of our guests tied a ribbon to a “wishing tree” and made a wish for us. Then, despite the horrible weather that day, we went out into the fields and planted our own cherry blossom tree. Some of the important women in our lives read “Thoughts In A Garden” by R. Gerhardt which was really fitting for our service. We can go visit our tree each year on our anniversary.

Our biggest challenge:
I was my own biggest challenge. I'm a massive perfectionist and always want everyone to be happy; I'm also terrible at making decisions. I didn't realise how important centrepieces would become to me until we had to decide on them! It was really hard to keep my stress levels under control when I was obsessing over everything. Having said that, once everyone had seen all of our efforts, I didn't care when the jar of flowers fell into the pond during the ceremony, the printer on the photo booth stopped working, and the pompoms started falling from the ceiling.

My favorite moment:
I think my favourite bit of the day had to be the first dance. Although I'm more than happy to make a show of myself on the dance floor, James is much quieter than I, so we'd asked lots of our friends to join us after the first verse. We danced to “Together in Electric Dreams” as it was the first song we ever danced to together. When everyone did join us, I looked around and saw that, not only was everyone dancing, they were all bouncing around and having a great time alongside us. I don't think I'd ever felt so happy.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

• Photography: James Fear
• Cake: Black Cherry Cake Company
• Ring: Hairy Growler
• Dress: The Big Day
• Boots: T.U.K.
• Hair: Heidi Vince Hair

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.