The Offbeat Bride: Bailey, Grad Student, Theatrical Design and Technology Specializing in Costume Design (and OBT member)
Her Offbeat Partner: Chris, Grad Student, Theatrical Design and Technology Specializing in Lighting Design
Location & date of wedding: Clyde H. Wells Fine Arts Center Theatre, Stephenville, TX. Our undergrad theatre where we met! — December 20th, 2008
What made our wedding offbeat: First and foremost we had our wedding in the theatre in which we met at college. We were both theatre majors. We got married on the stage where we first met! We didn’t want “theatre” to be our theme, but the place was very important to us.
I had a personal theme throughout the wedding. Many things had sewing references. I am a costumer so the cake had buttons, the bouts had buttons, my viel was made of ribbon (thanks Ariel!).
We cut corners left and right, but still had a very classy affair. We stuck to our budget! We spent under $7,000 on our wedding — well under the local average.
We chose to have a friend ordained online to marry us. Which made our families FREAK. But we aren’t practicing any religion currently, so we felt it hypocritical to have a religious wedding.
My husband was very involved with the wedding. He had an opinion! He did the lighting design for the ceremony. He chose his attire and he insisted on wearing sandals (therefore all the grooms”men” wore Sandals). He chose all the quotes for the cupcakes. He even saw pictures of my dress before the wedding. He wouldn’t let me try it on for him however.
He had a groomslady, our friend Sonya. I had a bridesman, my good friend Josh. We couldn’t imagine it any other way! We wrote the whole ceremony ourselves. We called it the “script.” We insisted that David (friend/officiant) never use the words “man” and “women” when refering to marriage. We don’t believe that, so why say it!
Our biggest challenge: One of the biggest challenges was distance. We are both attending grad school in Southern Mississippi. We insisted on having the wedding back in Texas, where most of our family is, where we met, and where we eventually want to live! Due to the over 500 mile distance we had some serious troubles with planning.
We relied so much on our mothers for help. His mother made the cake and coordinated with my mother on reception decor. My mother did the invites, decor, and lots and lots of rentals!
Neither of us really like Christmas, so having a wedding so close to Christmas was kind of a challenge. After three or more suggestions for BIG Christmas Trees, people finally realized we were not having a Christmas wedding!
My favorite moment: Our reading was my absolute favorite. A good friend of ours, Bethany, read a poem — “To Love is Not to Possess,” by James Kavanaugh — that we found and decided was perfect.
We also had what we called a “Vow of Support” from our parents and guests. The officiant asked that our parents take the new in-law and love them as their own. Then he asked that guests, “Will you encourage Bailey and Chris in their love?” Will you support them in their choice of one another? And will you continue to stand beside them, yet not between them?”
It was amazing to have all those people there and for them to actually vocalize their support and excitement for us!
My advice for other offbeat brides: Seriously reconsider a caterer! If you are going to serve food, people want it to be good food. Chris and I have been to lots of weddings where people catered themselves and the food literally got left on the back burner! Yes they are all here to support you, but they want good food in their bellies too!
We found a caterer/friend of a friend who provided a three meat BBQ plate with beans and salad for $9 a plate! If you shop around you can find good deals!
Which also reminds me: USE (in a nice way of course) your family and friends. If they offer to help, that means they want to!
Our friends and family contributed to the catering, flowers, officiant, photography, cake, DJ, bartenders and the day of coordinator. She is a friend from college and she loves weddings. She took care of the lobby display and made sure things ran smoothly as possible. Between her and the DJ everything went off really well!
Chris would like to add this piece of what he is calling “man advice”:
Bottled beer over keg! At the end of the night you dont have to worry about floating a keg, you just load the left over bottles into the back of someone’s car and party the next three nights — well we did anyway!
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?:
- Wedding Rings from Titanium Knights
- Save the Dates from Magnetstreet.com
- Wine from D’Vine Wine
Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!:
