Sheena & James’ whimsical mountain love celebration

The Offbeat Bride: Sheena, artist

Her offbeat partner: James, engineer

Date and location of wedding: The Homestead at Wilshire Farm, Oakglen, CA — November 13, 2013

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: James and I got married on our eight-year anniversary of being together. We decided to do a little bit of a traditional, but mostly non-traditional wedding. We wanted the wedding to reflect our personalities, but also consider the love for our family and friends.

I'm an artist, so I like to do as much hands-on as possible, so I did a lot of DIY projects with the help of my sisters, especially in the props department. The main theme of the wedding was the movie Amelie. This is one of my favorite movies — I like how topics such as kindness and love are the main theme of the movie.

A few of my nicknames from James are “my dinosaur,” “my little dinosaur,” and “raptor claws,” which accounted for the golden dinosaurs for the table setting.

I am a true believer of wearing your “best dress” on your wedding day, regardless of the color. I had mine custom-made, and tried to pull resources to make it happen. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a blue tux for James, so we settled to just make it the bow tie.

Picking the venue was tricky. We liked the idea of an outdoor wedding, and I had been scouting for a while before I stumbled upon The Homestead at Wilshire Farm in Oakglen, California. We couldn't ask for a more perfect venue, it had almost everything that we could ever think of. The venue came with the best planner named Paula, who also owns the place. I didn't even have to worry about anything on the wedding day because of her well-coordinated follow-through. We are really grateful that we found her and her amazing venue.

During the reception, we had lots of activities set up: a bouncy castle, s'mores pit, games, unicorn piñata (that one of my artist friends made for us), a photo booth, and drinking games, with a dance party at the end.

Tell us about the ceremony:
The bridal party walk to Sigur Ros' “Hoppipolla” and my dad walked me to the aisle to The XX's “Angels.”

We met with the minister a few times and had talked about having a non-denominational wedding, but we would want it to be spiritual in a sense that it talked about our love for one another. Instead of having candle lighting or sand ceremony, we had two different color juices that represented our favorite colors and symbolize our personality. We walked out in the tune of “Clean Light” by the Mowgli's. Our guests then threw popcorn for our send-off.

Our biggest challenge:
Growing up, I never really imagined myself getting married. I just knew that there would be a lot of flowers. One of the biggest challenges is how I obsessively researched. Within the year of planning, I would say that I became a wedding inspo addict.

In the end, I realized that looking at other people's weddings will only serve as a reference guide, not the sole basis on how we would plan the wedding.

My favorite moment:
I loved being surrounded by people who love you and who you love. I am so grateful to have been given an awesome love celebration and to know that James especially worked so hard for me to have this wedding. I love him so much and I am eternally grateful. We are also both grateful for generous family and friends that have been there to support us.

But if I do have to choose my top moment, I would say that number one would be the moment when my dad (who was more nervous than I was) walked me down the aisle.

Number two, although my mom couldn't be there physically, she was with us through Skype. She sent a necklace that I wore that day. Lastly, my moments with James were the best, especially the memory of happiness beaming from his face.

My funniest moment:
We cut the cake with a sword that my dear friend let us borrow. James is worse than I am about having no clue about wedding etiquette. So when I was about to feed James with the cake, he fed himself first instead, which made me laugh so hard.

There were a few moments in the games that were hilarious, too. We had a sword fighting competition, and the highlight was that our friends pretended to be Zorro and Pancho Villa, and had the funniest sword battle.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

• Videography: Boffo Video (our video)
• Photography: Denis Thorp Photography
• Venue: The Homestead