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The offbeat bride: Jenifer, Small Business Owner
Her offbeat partner: William, Legal Word Processor
Location & date of wedding: The Rose Court Garden at the Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, CA — October 13, 2010
What made our wedding offbeat: Ever since I was old enough to dream of having a wedding, I've wanted a big, fancy masquerade ball. My fiancé went along with it pretending it was my idea, but actually relishing the fact that he got to let his inner freak flag fly.
Tell us about the ceremony: It was the shortest ceremony ever. I walked up the aisle, we unmasked each other, and I promptly forgot all my vows and shambled through something lumpy-sounding. My fiancé made an eloquent speech with a rose representing his love and a lot of Stephen King references, which is our thing. Then the officiant asked if there were any objections and if there were, that they were to engage the groom in hand-to-hand combat.
The rings went on, smooches were had, and only the next day did we realize the officiant didn't ask us the “I do” part of the ceremony. So technically we were married at Round Table Pizza the following week while signing all the paperwork.
Our biggest challenge: We had many people write and call about wearing masks. Many of the guests seemed concerned about the cost and the effort that went into the masks and seemed to think that we were taking the idea of marriage too lightly by making it “a big party” instead of a formal wedding.
We included this line on our wedding website: “we want you to contribute to the unique spirit of our event.” It had links to DIY masks as well as expensive store bought ones. Only a few people showed up without masks out of our 60+ guests.
My favorite moment: The second I turned the corner and saw how colorful it looked with the masks. Before that I had just seen a couple guests walking by me to go sit down. Seeing them all at once took my breath away.
My funniest moment: My new husband gave me a ginormous piece of cake and when I couldn't fit it all in my mouth, it fell down my bodice. My sister promptly grabbed a towel and reached down my corset right up to the elbow and fished it out in front of everyone. It was absolutely hilarious.
My advice for offbeat brides: Try to reuse things as much as possible. I managed to double the candle “bouquets” the bridesmaids held as centerpieces for the tables. It was very easy to get someone to run them over while we took pictures.
We also had someone take all the flowers from the ceremony and set them up in the reception hall during that same half hour. It was important to us to get a reception hall that looked nice so you we didn't have to spend money on decorations.
In the ballroom we rented, they only had to black out the windows since there was construction outside, and put simple black tablecloths on everything. The room had naturally beautiful wood paneling, tall windows, and a giant chandelier. With the flowers moved from the ceremony, it looked stunning with no embellishment.
What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding? The guests will be happy if you're happy. They will notice if you're stressed, distracted, or tweaked out. They're there for you in the end, so let them help you and relax if things go wrong.
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
- Red dress with removable sleeves: Romantic Threads
- Accessories (Gradience Dragonscale wrist cuff): Steampunk Garage
- Men's leather masks: Etsy seller Kennosborne
- Women's filigree metal cut masks: Imported from Venice, Italy
- Groom's custom silver and black coat: Samiah
- Photographer: B. Pinzon Photography
- Photo Booth: Red Cheese
About the Author: Offbeat Weditors
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Love it! very cool and lovely wedding!
Wow! The whole thing is stunning – I especially love your dress.
Wow! It looks just awesome, the masks and the baroque atmosphere! What a dream !
I. Have. Severe. Wedding. Envy. AMAZING. Everything looked gorgeous! Congrats to you both!!
This wedding is freaking awesome! What a beautiful wedding and great theme!
I swear this wedding manifested from my dreams! AMAZING! But I would like to point out the most awesome part of all of this… THE BRIDE IS TALLER THAN THE GROOM! THANK YOU! OBB PLEASE try and highlight couples like this whenever you can? Sometimes I feel like my being 4″ taller than my groom makes more isolated than any group on OBB because I NEVER see other couples like us on the web. Jenifer and William, you guys completely rock!
We have another taller bride profile coming next week too! 🙂
Ooh and lookie!: http://offbeatwed.com/tag/taller-bride
Thanks ladies!
OH EM GEE, this is my venue! THIS IS AMAZING!!!! I’ve never seen the Pavilion (reception site) look so good. Jenifer, who was your coordinator? I have Traci. 🙂
We had Cynnthia… and she was amazing! The customer care and attention were unreal and you could tell the staff really cared about the event going smoothly. They must not have known we got copies of all the Photo Booth pic though, because we found out they all sneaked in when we weren’t looking! :)))
I asked Traci about your wedding and she said she was at your Planning Session. 🙂 So great to hear you had a good experience with DFTW. We just signed our contract and we are so looking forward to working with them! If you are on facebook, please think about joining a group I started called Disneyland Brides. We have a good mix of former brides and brides-to-be and we all help each other out, it’s awesome!
OMG! I will be searching for the Facebook group right after posting this comment!
I am looking for other couples who have tied the knot at Disneyland because we have a lot of ideas and wanted to make sure we can do everything and customize everything. The more I search, the better I feel about it! Which package did you get???
Also, FABULOUS wedding!!!! So many beautiful masks! LOVE! Thanks for sharing 🙂
Jen, I added you to the group. We have a lot of former DLR brides who are happy to help answer your questions!
Love love LOVE the color-only matching bridesmaid’s outfits, all suiting *them*. They wore their dresses as opposed to the other way around. YES YES YES we need more of this. And I can bet that they’ll be happy to wear those dresses again.
Kudos for celebrating the individuality of your friends!
I love your dress! Heck, I love EVERYTHING about your wedding!
G… g… giggity…
My head just exploded because it couldn’t wrap itself around all the awesome of this wedding!
Lovely!!
This wedding fills me with joy. Definitely my favourite to date!! LOVE EVERYTHING!
I love this wedding! The masks are great!
I literally gasped when I saw that first picture and could not read this post fast enough. Totally gorgeous!
Gorgeous! Absolutely stunning! My favourite thing (aside from the masks) is that the bridesmaids are in a more neutral colour while the bride is in red. What a feast for the eyes!
stunning!
Evil, evil, wicked! This is just what I am doing at my wedding. :p Not necessarily the same, but we have masks for all the guests. Black for groom’s side guests, white for bride’s side. And the wedding party and immediate family have their own special masks.
Love!
I love this post so freakin’ much! 1. Your dress is drop dead amazing. Something out of my dreams. 2. The first picture, with him kissing your hand and you looking at him… be still my heart.
Wonderful wonderful wedding!! I’m seriously in love with what you did. Simply beautiful.