The Offbeat Bride: Lauren, Elementary School Nurse
Her offbeat partner: Vaughn, Assistant Professor of Math
Date and location of wedding: A friend’s farm in State College, PA — July 20, 2013
Our offbeat wedding at a glance: It was important to us that our wedding be a genuine reflection of us and our relationship. We are silly and whimsical, and we love colours, kids, and the outdoors, so we did our best to bring these aspects into our wedding.
I am gluten-intolerant and have family members who have Celiac, so it was important to have food at our wedding that we could all enjoy. We served Indian food, which is often gluten-free, and had both gluten-free cake and a regular cake.
Tell us about the ceremony:
There are few things that bring as much joy to my heart as watching and spending time with children. We had all the children who attended walk down the aisle before the wedding party tossing pom-poms. It was so cute! My dad did a read-aloud of the picture book “A Lovely Love Story” by Edward Monkton during the ceremony and invited the kids to come up to see the pictures.
As Mennonites, hymn singing is very important to us. Our ceremony was a big hymn sing with all our favorites. In fact, we ditched the traditional Mennonite sermon for more hymns! We also asked people to turn in hymn suggestions with their RSVPs. The songs we chose were a combination of our favorites and suggestions from our friends and family. It was so amazing being surrounded by green rolling hills, listening to the four-part harmonies sung by all my loved ones.
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Vaughn really wanted to do a unity ceremony of some type. I didn’t want to do anything too traditional. We finally settled on a non-traditional unity symbol. We combined coloured baking soda and vinegar into a jar. Each of our jars was brought up to us by our moms. The blue baking soda and the yellow vinegar became a completely different green substance and the baking soda and the vinegar can never be separated again.
Our vows were very meaningful to us. We sat down and wrote them out together the week before the wedding. We had been together for five years and been through a lot of changes and difficulties, so we know each other very well and knew the things we needed to promise to do. They included things like this:
Lauren: I promise not to be jealous of your love for math and books.
Vaughn: And I promise to put you first. I promise not to be jealous of your love for kids, animals, and crafts.
Lauren: And I promise to put you first.
Vaughn: I promise to share my feelings with you.
Lauren: I promise to be affectionate to you. I promise not to try to make you angry.
Vaughn: I promise to tell you when I’m angry. I promise not to shut down when we disagree.
Lauren: I promise not to bombard you when we disagree.
We compromised on the traditional “for better or worse…” lines. I said each part in my own words and then Vaughn echoed me with the traditional words:
Lauren: Through good times and hard times
Vaughn: For better or worse
Lauren: In times of feast and times of famine
Vaughn: For richer or poorer
Lauren: Through all of our maladies
Vaughn: In sickness and in health
Lauren: For now and always
Vaughn: For now and always.
Our biggest challenge:
The biggest challenges were the logistics and time crunch. We planned our wedding in four months, which I found to be a feat. We planned a Pennsylvania wedding while living in Texas, while my parents were living in Wales and Vaughn’s parents were living in Manitoba. There were times I felt very isolated in planning the wedding.
My funniest moment:
My dad and uncle set the trash cans on fire trying to light sparklers with a blow torch! The fires were put out quickly, but it gave us quite a send-off.
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
- Indian food: India Pavilion
- Cake: Dolce Vita Desserts
- Gluten-free cake: Betsy’s Bakery
- Unpainted cake toppers: Goose Grease
- Flowers: Deb’s Flower Farm
- Rentals: Best Even Rental
- Restroom trailer: Chamberlin & Wingert Sanitary Services
- Photography: Simple Life Portraits
- Wine: Mount Nittany Winery
- Brides dress: Merry Go Round Consignment Bridal
- Dress alterations: Kristen Johnson Bridal & Tailoring
- Bride and bridesmaid’s hair: Salon Beautiful
- Rings: Alan Cable Jewelers
Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!
