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Aisle Less Traveled

$$$$$ (Luxury)

LGBTQ-Owned Neurodivergent-Owned Non-Binary-Owned

About Aisle Less Traveled

Hi! I’m Cindy, and I’m your queer feminist anti-status quo wedding planner! First and foremost, I want it to be crystal clear that I’m here for all kinds of couples – no matter your race, sexual orientation, religion, age, ability, immigration status, etc. and that I’m wholly in favor of giving wedding traditions the finger and doing whatever suits you two best.

My belief is that there are only two rules you need to have a perfect wedding:
1) Pick the right person to marry (this is really important, so don’t fuck it up!)
2) Abide by the requirements of any religious institution and/or legal jurisdiction you wish to recognize your marriage.

Everything else is just a party and you can party any way you damn well please.

And, gonna toot my own horn here – I’m really good at planning parties. My background as a theatrical stage manager translates perfectly to my wedding planning career, which began over a decade ago. I got into this business after planning my own wedding and experiencing firsthand the heterocentric, traditional, and super gendered norms that run rampant in the wedding industry. Even in my liberal major metro area, vendors still assumed that I was marrying a man and my partner was a sister or friend (insert eye roll) when we showed up together.

So in 2011, I opened my business to be a cheerleader for offbeat folks who were planning the weddings that felt right to them and to fight against the “it’s not a real wedding if you don’t do X, Y, or Z” bullshit. Many years and hundreds of weddings later, shaking things up is still my jam. The overwhelming majority of my clients find me here on and I fucking love planning, designing, and executing meaningful, modern weddings for my LGBTQ+ community and our allies.

I built my business with y’all in mind. You know who you are: people who get that the important thing is the marriage and the rest is just details. You are finding creative solutions to make awesome weddings; you are ditching the cookie cutters and doing your own thing; and you could really use an experienced planner who gets you to make it all happen.

And then in 2020, COVID hit and I had to figure out how to keep doing this during a pandemic. I started officiating weddings (especially elopements) from a queer, feminist, and secular perspective – it’s been so meaningful and emotional to create ceremonies that celebrate y’all as your full, true selves! I’ve also upped my virtual planning options so that I can safely guide your wedding from engagement to honeymoon without either of us leaving home!

My mission is to make wedding planning as painless and stress-free as possible by taking the grunt work, and the research, and the endless phone calls and emails and logistics off of your plate so that you can focus on the fun parts and reclaim your time. It’s to be the gatekeeper so that you never have to come out to another vendor and hope they don’t reject you because of their so-called faith or look at a contract that says “bride and groom” when you’re neither or hear the wrong pronouns come out of a vendor’s mouth about you. And it’s to run your wedding day like a boss so that you can actually be present to enjoy it.

Services Offered

Wedding Management

You know you can plan your wedding just the way you want it. And you also know that you can’t be everyone everywhere all at once, so you’re handing the details and execution over to our team of pros.

We’re gonna start planning together wayyyyyy before your wedding and we’re gonna do a lot more than just show up on the day – and that’s why we don’t call it “Day-of” or “Month-of” Coordination.

Unlike some planners who won’t even talk to you until a month or two out, you’ve got us on speed dial from the minute you sign with us. Plus, we’re going to equip you right away with an Alt+Ctrl+Wed membership and draft timeline so that you have everything you need to finish getting your wedding planned.

As your wedding date gets closer, we’ll meet to download all of the details from your brains and notes to ours. We’ll get you organized and then connect with your vendor team to make sure everything is ready to go.

On your wedding weekend, you get to relax and enjoy the party, because we’re making sure everything goes smoothly. From running your rehearsal to managing your vendor team to taking care of you and your guests to clean up at the end of the night – we are on it. You just show up and dance your faces off!

 

Wedding Planning & Design

If you took one look at a wedding planning checklist and thought, “hell no, that’s not for us, we need a wedding planner STAT,” then this is for you.

Your vision? Crafted. Your budget? Planned to the last dollar. Your perfect venue? Delivered to you on a platter. (Ok, actually a PDF, but you get the idea.)

A bold and beautiful design with a cohesive color palette that’s carried through even the smallest parts of your day and a team of vendors who are true artists to make that vision come to life? Event design is included so this is done and done.

Logistics planned? Timeline confirmed? Every last detail thoughtfully considered? Your wedding day executed flawlessly? Check, check, check, check.

For marriers who want a proven, organized process with expert guidance along the way paired with a stunning design that will wow their guests.

Bespoke Event Production

Picture this: You book your planning experience with us. We have one meeting – one – where you share your wedding vision with us. You give us your guest list. We share a mood board and a draft budget with you, and you choose your venue from a selection we’ve hand-picked just for you.

And then, you do… nothing. Not a goddamn thing, except living your life and enjoying your engagement.

The next thing you know, you’re at your wedding preview, where a scaled-down version of your wedding is waiting for you. A chauffeured car will bring you to your wedding venue, where you’ll be pampered by your glam squad. When you emerge, your DJ will be playing your favorite songs and you’ll wander through the venue with your photo and video team, capturing your engagement on film.

You’ll make your way to a table fully set in your wedding design: the exact floral arrangements, linens, tableware, and lighting that we’ve carefully curated to bring your wedding vision to life. You’ll taste your wedding meal, followed by dessert.

When you’ve had a chance to experience and approve everything we’ve planned, you’ll sign all of your vendor contracts at once, knowing that they’re going to deliver an incredible experience for you and your guests – because they already have.

Your driver will return you home, where you’ll sit back and relax for the rest of your engagement while we put the finishing touches on all of the details. When your wedding weekend arrives, the only thing you have to do is show up and enjoy it!

Pricing & Packages

  • Wedding Management: Investment begins at $4500
  • Wedding Planning & Design: Investment begins at $15K
  • Bespoke Event Production: Investment begins at $25K+

Frequently Asked Questions

Well… I made this business up just for you! You are our ideal clients, because after 100+ weddings, we’ve learned that our favorite couples to work with are our fellow LGBTQs and plus-size folks, creative DIYers, freaks and geeks, and anyone who is being true to themselves rather than buying into the status quo.

I’m also a former Offbeat marrier myself! In fact, way before I even got married (the first time), when I was in a state of engaged-but-not-able-to-legally-marry in my state, one of the first wedding things I did was pick up the OBB book and read it cover to cover. Then I planned a $5k, DIY-heavy (as in, I made my own dress, our website, invitations, and a 3-tier/3-flavor cake), community-centered wedding and I loved doing it. Um, and for my second wedding, I eloped on a beach with a bonfire and ordered food from our favorite fast-food joint for our three guests, who also served as witnesses, photographer, and officiant. Plus, I was queer AF both times!

Enthusiastic doesn’t even begin to describe how my team and I feel about y’all. When your inquiries land in our inbox with the Offbeat Wed box checked, we squee and do a little happy dance. We want to hang out with you all the time, because you are the coolest, and also we would really dig helping you plan your wedding in any way we can!

It’s wildly important to me that everyone who wants some wedding planning help can afford to get it, so I designed a self-guided, online wedding planning membership to make all the important junk inside my wedding planner brain accessible and affordable to you. Or you can pick from my wide range of a la carte and packaged planning services – we’ll find the right level of guidance for your wedding, within your budget, if you want to plan with me!

Everybody gets a free consultation to see if we vibe, so what are you waiting for? We’re refreshing our inbox right now, hoping you are in it!

Wedding Planning & Design and Event Design & Wedding Management packages can be booked up to two years before your anticipated wedding date.

Wedding Management packages may be booked up to one year in advance, once you have a confirmed date and venue.

Yes, absolutely! The descriptions on this page broadly categorize the services we offer. However, we have multiple packages to choose from, since no two weddings or couples are exactly alike.

Once we learn more about you and your wedding vision through our inquiry form and the conversation we’ll have on your complimentary consultation, we’ll be able to help you choose the right collection of services for your wedding.

It depends on what we have planned in our personal lives, but it’s possible! A $1000 surcharge will be added to our fee as compensation to cover a higher holiday pay rate for our team and as compensation for giving up time that we would have otherwise spent with our loved ones.

Holidays and special family dates subject to this surcharge are: Memorial Day weekend (Friday-Monday), Juneteenth, June 30th, Independence Day weekend (Friday-Monday), Labor Day weekend (Friday-Monday), September 16th & 17th, Thanksgiving weekend (Thursday-Sunday), December 15th, and our winter break from December 22nd through January 5th.

It depends! Our Planning & Design package is only offered in the Seattle/Puget Sound area, including Bainbride, Snohomish, and the San Juan Islands. That’s because in order to find you the best venue and vendor team, we have to know the local industry. Seattle is what we know best.

Wedding Management packages are available throughout the Pacific Northwest, within about 6 hours of driving time from Seattle.

For weddings in other locations looking for more support, please ask about our Guided Wedding Planning package, where we’ll help you through every step of planning. Then, we will connect with your local wedding planner to handoff the details so they can be fully up to speed to run your wedding day.

Our planning memberships and a la carte services are all provided virtually and are available throughout the US.

Regrettably, due to the extremely confusing nature of international sales taxes and work visas, we do not currently offer our services outside of the United States.

Due to the number of inquiries we receive, we do not hold dates. If you’re interested in planning with us, inquire now so that we can get your no-obligation consultation on our calendar.

You will receive your custom proposal and planning contract following your consultation. We encourage you to sign it as soon as you decide you’d like to work with us in order to secure your date.

We do! Alt+Ctrl+Wed™ is our virtual wedding planning membership for folks on smaller budgets or who simply prefer to tackle the planning on their own.

You’ll get instant access to our comprehensive wedding planning portal with all the checklists, spreadsheets, templates, money-saving tips, and advice you need. Plus, ask us all of your planning questions in our private Discord community.

Alt+Ctrl+Wed™ is priced on a sliding scale starting at $297. Once you join, you have access for as long as you need it. There are no recurring fees (but you can space your payment out over three months if it’s easier on your wallet.)

If you need one-on-one or done-for-you support with just a few pieces of your wedding plans, you can build your own wedding planning package from our suite of a la carte services, which start at $49.

  1. Submit your inquiry and we’ll check our calendar to make sure we’re available! Then, we’ll reach out to schedule a complimentary discovery call.
  2. We’ll meet on Zoom to see if the vibes are right, talk about your wedding vision, and get all of your questions answered.
  3. We’ll help you choose the right package and review all the details together. Sign your contract, pay your retainer, and we’ll start planning!

At a Glance

LGBTQ-Owned Neurodivergent-Owned Non-Binary-Owned

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Offbeat Member

This vendor is an active Offbeat Wed member and has committed to inclusive practices. For more, read our disclaimer or join us.

Love from Offbeat Couples

As a lesbian couple, it was very important for my wife and I to hire LGBT-friendly vendors for our wedding, and we were so happy when we found Aisle Less Traveled. Planning a wedding as a queer couple comes with a unique set of challenges that Cindy and her team understand on a personal level and have years of experience navigating. Cindy has truly thought of everything when it comes to planning a wedding, and we learned a ton from their online resources, one-on-one meetings, and countless email exchanges (thank you, Cindy!). Cindy managed both our day-of coordination (which included preparation several months leading up to the wedding itself), and also acted as our wedding officiant. Over a month later, our guests are still talking about the ceremony program that Cindy wrote because it was so unique and true to us as a couple. We also included a handfasting ceremony, which Cindy executed flawlessly. Our wedding went off without a hitch and we were able to enjoy it worry-free. We could not have been happier with how perfect our wedding was because of Aisle Less Traveled. Hire them to plan your wedding–you will thank yourself later!

– Sidney

Cindy and her team are worth their weight in gold. I genuinely cannot recommend them enough. We worked with them for two years, and my stress level over my wedding for that period of time was a ~*fraction*~ of what it could have been. That’s a long period of time for one’s mental health to be benefitted. My partner and I both have ADHD, so we can kind of suck at task management and responding to emails. Cindy and her team were so, so good about it and helped us so much with no judgement. I’m incredibly grateful for that. I came into the wedding planning world with a ton of self-induced pressure for it to be both perfect and entirely different from any wedding I had seen before. I knew I had no idea what I was doing and that I’d cry myself to sleep forever if I got it wrong, a deadly combination. Cindy and her team actually made it happen. I am so over-the-moon happy with what my wedding became, and it could not have happened without them. Thank you Aisle Less Traveled!

– Heather

Cindy and her team are the best of the best, especially if you are looking to celebrate love in the LGBTQIA+ community! Kind, thoughtful, thorough and meticulous, Cindy is a powerhouse of planning AND inclusivity.

– Jennifer

I’ve worked with Cindy many many times while photographing weddings (especially queer weddings ??) and every time the evenings go absolutely amazing. Even leading up to the events Cindy is extremely thorough making sure every detail is accounted for!

– Alesha

What do you do when you're not planning weddings?

When I’m not planning weddings, you can probably find me doing one of four things: making something, eating something, reading/learning something, or trying to relax. (I am not the best at that.) I love getting my hands dirty in the pottery studio – that’s my current favorite way to spend a day off. My other crafty hobbies include embroidery, painting, sewing, quilting, and pretending like I will one day have a wood shop in which I make beautiful furniture.

Do you speak any other languages?

I’m learning Italian because my spouse was born in Italy and I had to pass a language test to be eligible for dual citizenship. That’s cool because I love languages. Also useful as we’re trying to teach our baby to be bilingual.