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The Offbeat Bride: Holly, Teacher
Her Offbeat Partner: Andrew, Data Backups Network Engineer
Location & date of wedding: British Virgin Islands, Virgin Gorda, at Leverick Bay — July 11th, 2009
What made this wedding offbeat: I have alopecia and instead of wearing a wig to hide it, I rock the bald look (and he loves it). We met in 7th grade and started dating when we were 24. He proposed in front of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame while we were on motorcycles.
We did a destination wedding in the British Virgin Islands, sailing around the islands for a week before and a week after, stopping at Leverick in the middle to get married on the beach, sunglasses tan lines and all. We had our bachelor/ette party on the Willy T, which is a boat/bar that is anchored off of the coast of Norman Island (aka Treasure island).
I refused to wear white, since it doesn't look great with no hair. My friend Faith made my dress (designed and all) and sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” by Izzy for my wedding walk down the ‘aisle.'
My Mother in Law took a bunch of Jolly Rogers and painted “Just Married” on the bottom and she strung them up on our sailboat from the spinnaker (seen in the background of some of the pics). My Mother made my bouquet, without having seen my dress before hand, and it came out beautifully!
Wherever we went before and after (on other islands too!) we were constantly congratulated and people recognized our party. Our Party Animals, er, um, guests, had a blast and made a lasting impression upon both natives and tourists alike.
Our biggest challenge: Logistics. This could have been such a nightmare if we hadn't taken every precaution to organize when we were going to catch up with our 42 wedding guests! We had to coordinate flight information and a water taxi for some of our guests to get them to the bachelor/ette party.
We collected information and compiled it into a Googledoc which also counted up our guests for us and helped us keep track of the guest list. We were actually surprised by the number of people who came, out of the 75 invitations that went out, 42 were there!
My favorite moment: Surprising Monica, the owner of the resort's wife, with her trip to St. Maarten. She had done so much to help us coordinate and organize this event we decided to do something nice for her.
My advice to other offbeat brides: Google Docs is an excellent resource for coordinating these types of events where you have to keep track of mass amounts of people. And both you and the groom are able to enter and save information when the documents are shared.
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Everyone looks like they had a HELL of a time. And Holly? You look STUNNING, whether that's conventionally stunning or not. 😀 That dress suits you so very awesomely.
Hee! I went to college with Holly and totally wasn’t expecting to see this. You totally made my night.
The dress is just gorgeous! I love the lace-up back. Congratulations on putting together such a fun-looking laid-back destination wedding; I've known some brides who make their destination weddings so labor-intensive and uptight that they don't even get to enjoy the locale!
This couple is awesome!
beautiful wedding, gorgeous dress, and a simply radiant bride! you looked amazing 🙂
I must say that the best part of the whole wedding for me, other than getting married of course, was getting an opportunity to share the place we enjoyed and love with those family and friends who would never have thought of visiting otherwise. Hearing my mother in law, who was very apprehensive about the whole thing, tell me that she misses the BVIs and can't wait to go back again makes it all worth it.
yaaaaaay! another bride rocking no hair! i was sooooo excited to see your photos online!
whether you went bald by choice or not, i love the way you took it all in your stride and were your beautiful self at your wedding on those beautiful islands.
you look awesome and incredibly happy! 🙂 congratulations!!
I actually squealed outloud when I saw your smiling photos. What a wonderful day!
Also, that dress is SO. DAMN. PRETTY.