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The offbeat bride: DonnaMarie, FDNY Paramedic
Her offbeat partner: Ricky, Concierge
Date and location of wedding: Crash Mansion, Bowery, NYC — November 13, 2010
What made our wedding offbeat: As a musician who had spent almost her entire adult life performing in clubs, it seemed like a no-brainer to get married in one. Of course my band would get to play, but that wasn't enough. I figured that, since so many of my friends were performers themselves, I'd just go all out and make it wedding and a cabaret night just to show them off.
For starters, the wedding itself was performed by my friend Corinne, a former dominatrix-turned-Reverend. My friend Anthony doused the crowd with glitter as my Flower Girl. (Or Glitter Boy, whichever you prefer.) In lieu of flower centerpieces, I bought vintage games like Hungry Hungry Hippos, Operation, Perfection, Connect Four, and Battleship and placed them on the tables for the guests to play.
The favors were empty beer bottles cut in half and filled with rock and roll supplies (custom shot glasses, guitar picks, condoms, ear plugs, and lighters) and were put in brown paper bags, personalized, and strewn throughout the club for each guest to find.
Additionally, two of our guests showed up in the vintage baby blue and neon orange tuxedos from the movie Dumb and Dumber, complete with top hats and canes.
My band took the stage at some point and surprised Ricky with a cover of Metallica's “Nothing Else Matters,” and it was the first time in almost 20 years that my parents had seen me perform.
Our cake was our only splurge. It was the scene from Ghostbusters where the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man steps on the church, and Ricky and I are the Ghostbusters shooting him on top of the apartment building. The phasers actually lit up and blinked!
Then we had the “Heavy Metal Cabaret Afterparty” with belly dancers, a sideshow carny, a fan dancer, cabaret singer, ukulele player, and two sets by my metal band, the missing.
Tell us about the ceremony: You can see it on video!
Our biggest challenge: The biggest challenge was cost, but we got around that in a number of ways. We paid for the wedding entirely on our own, and as a result, we were able to limit our guest list to just the friends and family we really wanted, and no one could argue because they weren't paying for it. So there was no lady-who-works-with-my-mother or distant-cousin-I-hadn't-seen-in-ten-years. The headcount was small and, as a result, very personal and affordable.
For liquor, we realized that most of our guests wouldn't ask for things like a Grey Goose martini, they would ask for a vodka martini. So instead of wasting money on top shelf across the board, we went with mid-grade/call, which meant that standard mixed drinks used a decent liquor, but top shelf could still be had by the few who requested it.
For food, we went with passed cocktail trays and a nice buffet which saved a mint, not to mention that a big, sit-down meal would have been kind of awkward in a rock and roll club. It also suited our vegetarian friends much better.
My favorite moment: Our vows. We made our own, and we both insisted that they be unrehearsed. They turned out to be short, sweet, and very moving while also managing to contain a fair amount of hilarity. And I'm fairly certain it was of the kind that's not appropriate to reiterate here.
My funniest moment: Probably our first dance. We didn't have anything planned except the song, which was “No Children” by The Mountain Goats. But somehow we both started acting out these really funny lyrics, and it turned into a little show.
My advice for offbeat brides: As The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would say: “DON'T PANIC.” Don't sweat the small stuff. Things are going to screw up, just don't get your panties in a bunch about it and you'll still have a good time.
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
- Photography: Angela Cappetta
- Bride's dress: designed by Tova Marc of Wedding Dress Fantasy
- Venue: The Crash Mansion club (alas!) is now closed
- Cake: Charm City Cakes
- Custom guitar picks: In Tune guitar Picks
- Wedding video: Bryan Sarkinen
- Wedding website: Wix.com
- Fog machine and fog juice: Vortex Chillers and Froggy's Fog
- DJ and officiant: DJ Trevor (one of NYC's top gothic-industrial DJs) and Reverend Corinne
Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!
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I love, love, LOVE the Ghostbusters cake!! And the amp card box – genius! Really cool and unique wedding : )
Amazing wedding dress, absolutely gorgeous! Also love the Ghostbusters cake, it is genius!
Wow, that wedding looks totally awesome, and that is the absolute coolest cake evar.
You look like you guys a blast! …And not to be a broken record, but that cake and dress are phenomenal.
the small details are amazing.. favor bags for guests to find, vintage games, the invites & RSVP cards.. awesome! i bet it was a ton of fun to attend this wedding!
When I look back at the pictures, I keep saying: “I wish I had been a guest at this wedding!” 😉 I mean, I had fun, but I was so busy! My guests had a great time, and that’s what was important.
THAT CAKE! ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THAT CAKE? I’M DY-ING! UHHH-MAY-ZING!
“For starters, the wedding itself was performed by my friend Corinne, a former dominatrix-turned-Reverend.”
That is quite possibly the best thing I have ever read.
Thank you all! Our wedding was *truly* a blast! It’s so much fun seeing all of these pictures again. I hope the awesome vendors we used get some much-deserved business from being featured here! 🙂
WOW! Loved ALL of it!
Ahhh soon as I saw that Cake I though “Oh my god, is that a Charm City Cake?” They do the coolest (If, as you say, splurgy) cakes. It makes me sad that they don’t exist in the UK!
I had the same idea for a card box, but figured I’d have to make one out of a cardboard box! How was yours done?! All your pictures look fabulous!
I bought a cheap mini-amp off of eBay for $0.99 (it cost more to ship!) and ripped the guts out. I glued all of the knobs back on and cut a slot in the top with an electric saw. I “sealed” the back with black foamcore board (made a pull-tab out of black duct tape so I could open it later) and then covered it all with band stickers. It even looked like it was plugged in because I left the plug intact. So cute and so inexpensive…I think it cost more to buy some of the stickers!
I feel like I have been waiting for this wedding profile forever! I loved the updates on the Tribe 🙂
As a professional baker, your cake gives me something new to aspire to. It was truly badass!
If you can do stuff like that, please advertise the living crap out of yourself!! We went with CC Cakes because we couldn’t find any small-scale bakers in our area who could give us what we wanted, but I always love to support the “little guys” and locals!
I love that ‘No Children’ was your first dance. It’s the song my boyfriend and I sing to each other and makes me love him more and more every time.
We debated long and hard over the song: it was either “No Children” or “I Love You Baby” (by Brak from SpaceGhost C2C). Both were hilarious and inappropriate; I think we coin-tossed it at the end. 🙂
YOUR RSVP CARDS ARE AMAZING–even with the Comic Sans!!
Could not find a more “handwritten” font than Comic Sans without purchasing one or actually hand-writing the invites. And we held fast to our low-budget (and low-fuss) philosophy!! ;P
I have never before felt so bummed that I was not able to attend a complete stranger’s wedding. That looks like an absolute blast!
Makes me kinda wish we’d done that “Four Weddings” TV show that TLC begged us to do. (Oh, who am I kidding? It felt cooler to turn them down and not worry about what the rest of the world thought about us and our weirdo friends!) Shit, you can see the videos on YouTube and pretend you were there… 😉
AWW I love love love me some Metallica! My parents(mom and stepdad) had the same song during their ceremony. SO amusing seeing the JPs eyes get kinda wide and how he seemed uber relieved when it was finally over. The invitations even had lyrics from the song.
I love this post! This wedding is perfect and awesome and OMG! you are amazing!
I am so super excited to see other brides in red dresses! When I went shopping for my red dress, every dress saleslady was like, “You want a what??” and “No, no, no. Bridesmaids can wear red. NOT the bride.” But, I refused to crack. I wouldn’t even try on any other color gown. And I’m soooo happy with the dress I chose. It’s one of the things I’m most excited about in the wedding!
Thank you for sharing!
Just making sure you know about this archive of posts: http://offbeatwed.com/tag/red-dress
I’m so happy to have been their photographer. They basically let me do whatever I wanted, which is both awesome and rare. Best couple ever.