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The offbeat bride: Sarah / vintage clothier
Her offbeat partner: Todd / Graphic designer
Location & date of wedding: Clinton House Museum in Fayetteville, Arkansas. August 11, 2007
What made our wedding offbeat: We got married in a little old house by the University of Arkansas campus, where Bill & Hillary Clinton actually got married. Turns out, we were the first couple to get married there since them!
The next morning we woke up to find ourselves as the cover story of the Northwest Arkansas Times. We even got an official letter from Bill Clinton congratulating us. Kinda funny considering that our wedding was ultra casual (it even said that exact phrase on the invites) and quite non-traditional.
We had a tower of cupcakes as our wedding cake (with Polaroid pictures of us as the toppers) and an airbrushed carnival style backdrop that read “True Love” for endless photo-ops.
As for food, we went for my husband's all-time favorite – pizza. We continued to keep it low key & carnivalesque with cracker jacks, cotton candy and corn dogs. We just made to have plenty of beer & margaritas since it was on a very hot summer afternoon.
One of our good friends conducted the ceremony, which was the perfect mixture of humor & sweetness. Overall we were very fortunate to have very loving & supportive parents who, at the end of the day, said they couldn't have been happier with the celebration.
Our biggest challenge: The budget. It was very small, but I think it ended up being a blessing in disguise. It forced me to get creative & really make the wedding what it's suppose to be about – us. I feel like our wedding day captured our personalities & love for each other better than I could have ever imagined.
My favorite moment: Well, my favorite detail of the wedding was our invitations. A friend of ours is an amazing artist who designs mostly show posters for bands. Since my husband is a musician (and that's how we met), we sent out 24″ x 18″ silk screened posters as our invites. We packaged them in cardboard tubes with matching stickers on the front that read “you are invited.” It's great going to friends' houses and seeing our invitation now as art, framed on their wall.
My offbeat advice: Try to enjoy the actual day as much as you possibly can. Personally, I believe having a non-traditional wedding really allows you to do that. If you set a unique tone to begin with, it's like you have a special pass to skip all of the customs & rules that don't mean much to you, but that people might expect.
Enough talk — show me the wedding porn: So much awesomeness, so little time! Get clickin'!
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That’s so cool that the groom wore jeans! At least it looks like jeans in the pics, I may be blind though lol.
I LOVE your wedding!!! Thanks so much for sharing. I am totally stealing the photos-as-cupcake topper idea!!!
I’m blown away by the poster. That is a damn cool invite!! And your polaroid cake toppers are adorable.
Best invitations ever.
Hey, would your friend be willing to silk-screen posters/invites for other peoples’ wedding??
Awesome pictures…
I <3 everything about this wedding. The dress, the decor, the photo of Bill Clinton. <333!!!!!
The Clinton’s wedding was also super casual and budget, so it fits. They had it in their living room and Hillary wore a offbeat adorable dress. Love it.
I love your dress, where did you get it?
Thanks so much!
The dress is from White House Black Market, but my friend handmade the blue sash.
I also love your bittersweetstyles collection, but couldn’t find anything in the ebay store. Are you still updating it?
Love your ideas. And the cup cakes for the cake is great. I am going to do that. The idea of a big boring cake leaves me cold.
Glad that I am not the only one allowing my groom to wear casual pants to the ceremony. But am sure my mom will have a fit!!!
I also have to say how fantastic that dress is. You look absolutely smashing!
absolutely wonderful!! It looks like you had a great time!!
[…] Wedding Inspiration: Todd & Sarah, via Offbeat Bride and Brooklyn […]
I love the “true love” backdrop idea. I love the idea of making a backdrop for photos. I think I’ll talk to my partner about doing this.
Your invite inspired ours and by inspired, we kind of well…..imitation is the most sincere form of flattery they say!
Honestly though, while we were hugely influenced, we replaced most of the images with things that mean a lot to us and we also scaled it down to 11*17 and used Kinkos.
I’m also afraid we’re going to shamelessly copy your idea for the cake toppers!! My groom’s grandmother gave us her old polariod camera the day we told her about the engagement and so we’re already planning to use it…but not so creatively!! sheer genius…