The offbeat bride: Adrian, Chef
Her offbeat partner: Brian, Bartender
Date and location of wedding: Pendarvis Farms, Happy Valley, OR — June 16, 2012
Our offbeat boho wedding at a glance: We received a lot of help from our community. Our photographer is a concert photographer who we convinced to shoot our wedding. The amazing cake was created by me and my pastry chef cousin. The catering was courtesy of a couple of my favorite kitchen ninjas. My husband and I worked on decorations and signs for a year before the wedding, but all the hard work was put in by friends the day before the wedding. A couple of them even dug a six-foot deep hole for the Luau-style pig.
I worked to get our wedding band, Chervona, for about six months. Even though they are friends of ours, they “don’t do weddings.” When they finally agreed we were so stoked. Think Russian/Balkan/marching band meets punk rock dance party! We actually kept many wedding traditions like the bouquet and garter toss and first dance, but we tried to make them our own. We knew we wanted to have our wedding outside with camping, which ended up being lots of fun.
Tell us about the ceremony: My son walked me down the aisle, and a very dear friend officiated. He is a poetry slam artist/world mustache champion from Seattle, WA and he definitely brought his own brand of wordsmithing with him. Here is an excerpt:
Before us on an altar stand two lovers.
There’s a thusness to these lovers.
They maintain themselves when you turn your head.
They share a smile, a gaze, a caress.
They are lovering here on the altar.
Their tendency which you observe directly to lover here,
and not to hater, or to indiffer,
but to remain lover, and to transform over time
by loving in a distinctly loverish manner,
is something we have a word for, a verb.
We say that they ‘coexist.’
Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge by far would have to be our friends, generally, because, let’s be honest, bohemian/artist/hippie/punk-types aren’t the best at RSVPing. We sent out 228 invitations and got back 90. HA.
My favorite moment: It was very special to have both sets of our parents at the wedding with us. About six weeks before our wedding, Brian’s father was diagnosed with kidney cancer and immediately went into surgery to have his kidney, lymph node, a rib, and part of his liver removed. Brian’s parents live in Alaska, so we weren’t sure until three days before the wedding if his father would be well enough to get on a plane. This was really hard on both of us since I have grown very close to his family over the years as well.
Also, until the week of my wedding I hadn’t seen my mother in almost ten years. Not because we were fighting, but because we both live well below the poverty line and an ocean separates us. My extremely generous uncle buying her a plane ticket was the only reason she was able to be there. Having her there was probably the most emotional experience next to the actual ceremony.
My funniest moment: That would have to be the garter toss mosh pit. People went wild in there. It was cray-cray.
Was there anything you were sure was going to be a total disaster that unexpectedly turned out great? I wanted desperately to pull off a perfect pig roast. Since I was born in Hawaii and Brian was born in Alaska, we went with a Hawaiian vs Alaskan food theme. But when we went and dug up the pig, it was seriously underdone. But with a bit of quick thinking, my kitchen ninjas had that pork sliced thin and slapped on the grill to finish. It wasn’t perfect, but we loved it.
What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding? If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. But if you want something done at all, you have to let other people help out — and it may be the best thing to bring everyone together.
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
- Photography: Bryan Southard Photography
- Band: Chervona
Enough talk — show me the wedding inspo!
