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The Offbeat Bride: Jensen, Food Photographer
Her offbeat partner: Quinn, Director of Research
Date and location of wedding: Villa Woodbine, Miami, FL — October 26, 2014
Our offbeat wedding at a glance:
Our love blossomed in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and we spent many dates going to beer gardens, brunches, and cocktail bars. A year before the wedding, we relocated to Miami. Since both cities are important to our history, we wanted to feature them equally through our wedding theme: Brunch Drunk Love. We put a fun atmosphere, great food, and lush tropical foliage at the forefront. The guests were served brunch items like chicken and waffles, craft beer in personalized pints, and we had cornhole boards staged outside.
Tell us about the ceremony:
We had a beautiful ceremony at the fountain at Villa Woodbine. Petals with Poise decorated the fountain with flowers, and Unearthed Vintage surrounded it with mismatched wooden chairs. I walked down the aisle with my mama to “First Day of My Life” by Bright Eyes. We exchanged vows we had written, and Quinn's made me cry! We had our close friend officiate and read the love story of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. We exited the ceremony to “Strangers” by The Kinks.
What was your most important lesson learned?
My biggest goal was to provide our guests with a wonderful experience. It's easy to get lost in traditions and lose sight of what you actually want. To keep my vision, I planned A LOT and even created a Dropbox for my vendors so we could all be on the same page.
The best advice I got was to stop and enjoy the wedding as much as possible. I stepped back and looked at my family and friends during the ceremony. I held Quinn's hand and walked along the venue seeing every detail. We danced, laughed, ate, and drank. If you don't take time to absorb those moments, what's the point?
Vendors
- Venue: Villa Woodbine
- Catering: Bill Hansen Catering
- Photography: Jordan Emmitt and Kelly Kee
- Event Rental of Tables, Chairs, Barrels, Seating Chart Doors, Sweetheart Table, Rug, Chalkboards, and Ribbon Backdrop: Unearthed Vintage
- Florals: Petals with Poise
- Hair & Makeup: Agape Airbrush Makeup + Hair
- Headpiece & Bracelet: Vita Amore Sogno
- Necklace: Selicias
- Groom’s Suit: measured, designed, tailored, and styled by Artigiano
- Wedding Pies: Fireman Derek’s World Famous Pies
- Popcorn: BrownBag Popcorn Co
About the Author: Offbeat Weditors
Working tirelessly to bring you stimulating content day after day, the Offbeat Wed editors will not sleep until you've gotten your offbeat fix.
I thought the groom was Ricki Hall for a sec! http://www.esquire.co.uk/magazine/article/6164/the-most-influential-hair-in-britain/
The food looks delish and the photography is great.
Such a sweet wedding! Both the bride and groom look amazing and those centerpieces are luxurious. Beautiful!
Is this wedding for real? Because it looks like a dreamland. Good lord, you two. Absolutely breathtaking.
Wow. Utterly stunning. These photos look like they belong in a glossy magazine!
One of my favorite weddings EVER. You’re both gorge and the food made me hungry for lunch..so amazing!
So gorgeous! Any chance you can send me the transcript of what you read for the Carl Sagan and Annie Druyan story? I’m a chemist and I’m marrying an engineer…we would love to rock that.
Don’t send it — post it! We’d love to share it! 🙂
Hi, Olivia!
This is edited from the NPR Transcript. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. 🙂
____
This is a love story. And, oddly enough, it starts with an interstellar space mission and a golden record.
Toward the end of the summer of ’77, NASA launched two spacecraft as part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission. On board each craft was a golden record that included, among other things, the sound of a kiss, a mother’s first words to her newborn child, music from all over the world, and greetings in 59 different languages. The spacecraft were designed to take close-up pictures of Jupiter and Saturn, then continue into the great expanse of space beyond our solar system. The records on board were meant to survive for a billion years, in the hope that some day, against enormous odds, they might cross paths with an alien civilization.
So how do you decide what to put on the ultimate mix tape of the human experience? That was the charge of Carl Sagan. Of course, Sagan had a lot of help, including the creative director of the project, Ann Druyan.
For Druyan, though, the summer of 1977 and the Voyager project carry a deeply personal meaning, too. It was during the Voyager project that she and Sagan fell in love.
After searching endlessly for a piece of Chinese music to put on the record, Druyan had finally found a 2,500-year-old song called “Flowing Stream.” In her excitement, she called Sagan and left a message at his hotel. At that point, Druyan and Sagan had been professional acquaintances and friends, but nothing more. They had never even kissed. But an hour later, when Sagan called back, something happened. By the end of that call, Druyan and Sagan were engaged to be married.
The evidence of their love has taken on a life of its own. Not long after that momentous phone call, Druyan had an idea for the record: They could measure the electrical impulses of a human brain and nervous system, turn it into sound, and put it on the record. Just a few days after she and Sagan declared their love for each other, Druyan went to Bellevue Hospital in New York City and meditated while the sounds of her brain and body were recorded.
And the gold records? They’re still out there with their offer, to whomever might stumble across them, of a human body newly in love.
“Whenever I’m down, ” says Druyan, “I’m thinking: And still they move, 35,000 miles an hour, leaving our solar system for the great open sea of interstellar space.”