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 (formerly known as Crafty Broads) 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. A decade and many, many 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.
When my ex-wife and I got divorced and split up our business in 2017, I rebranded 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 venue 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.
How I cater to offbeat weddings
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 Bride 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!
"OMG CINDY!!! What an incredible wedding planner and person. We went searching online for a queer Wedding Planner in Seattle and she was the first to pop up. When we opened up the Aisle Less Traveled website, we saw her amazing pink hair and dozens of swears, and we immediately knew we were at home. :) We really appreciated all the options of different packages to choose from, her many resources and tools to use as we planned parts of our wedding, and most definitely her hands-on help and expertise the month before and day of our wedding. SUCH a huge deal! She also did a fantastic job of navigating the many complications COVID threw at us from beginning to end. Especially as an anxious person Cindy left me feeling very calm, and I trusted her capabilities 100%! She communicated clearly with us and our vendors and managed our wedding day-of SO smoothly that we were able to spend our entire day just enjoying ourselves and being present. Seriously amazing job!!! Highly recommend!!!" - Brittany & Peter
Examples of my work
Rates
$$$ midrange
$$$$ upscale
Vendors, we want you in here!