It's getting colder here in the Northern Hemisphere, so this week we're celebrating woodsy, outdoor weddings while we can. Get ready for majestic mountains, placid lakes, and gorgeous forests for days.
Photos by C + K Creative
The Offbeat Bride: Jessica, Software Applications Developer (and Offbeat Bride member)
Her offbeat partner: Shawn, Entomology Ph.D. Student
Date and location of wedding: Rockin Y Ranch, Austin, TX — April 19, 2014
Our offbeat wedding at a glance: Our wedding started off as an un-themed "all-the-things-we-like" wedding, which included a mixture of entomology, nerdy fandoms (video games, Harry Potter, anime, renaissance, etc.) with a little Austin hill country influence thrown in.
We rented an Austin ranch house, the Rockin Y Ranch, for three nights to host all of our events (bachelor, bachelorette, rehearsal, and wedding) and also got to stay with our wedding party since it sleeps 16 people. We love Austin, so we included popular local fare, such as Torchy's Tacos for dinner and Bananarchy frozen bananas for the cocktail hour, and included a selection of tasty Texas beers and wine (Messina Hof, Real Ale, Shiner, St Arnold, etc.).
My husband is an entomologist, so we had a butterfly letting during the ceremony and included Luna Moths that he caught locally. Another of his hobbies is rearing dart frogs, so he also set up a terrarium of Yellow-banded poison dart frogs, Dendrobates leucomelas, for the guests to see.
I was inspired by the geeky terrarium centerpieces posted on Offbeat Bride, so we decided to make our own of landscapes and scenes from all of our favorite fandoms, anime, and video games — one for each reception table. The centerpieces included: Mario in the Desert World, a quidditch match from Harry Potter, a scene from the indie game FEZ, EVA-01 fighting the Angel Sachiel from the anime Evangelion, Lucca repairing Robo from the video game Chrono Trigger, Samus from the video game Super Metroid, the beach scene with Marle and Link from the video game The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, a battle scene from the video game Final Fantasy IV, a Pokemon battle, and a the forest full of Kodama from the anime Princess Mononoke.
One of the most ambitious projects was creating a Portal Companion Cube card box made entirely of perler beads, which totaled approximately 23,000 perlers. Our best man and I worked together to create a TARDIS photo booth out of PVC pipe, cloth, and an Android tablet.
We included mint and white paper cranes throughout the ceremony and reception, and decorated our arch with hundreds of strung paper cranes. I wanted a focal point for the reception, so got a giant paper lantern and decorated that with swirls of paper cranes as well, and decorated the tables, favors, aisle markers, etc. all with paper cranes of varying sizes. I believe we must have folded somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 paper cranes.
Our favorite games are indie games, so we wove several indie games into the theme. Our wedding cake was themed for the Playstation indie game Journey, and we included music from the game in our ceremony because the game is so emotional and has a beautiful soundtrack. The cake was also a delicious cinnamon-sugar "churro" cake complete with vegan buttercream. In addition to including the indie game FEZ in our centerpieces, when FEZ released on Steam, we gifted copies to each of our groomsmen as attendant gifts.
Tell us about the ceremony:
Music is very important to us, so we had a string and piano ensemble, Fountainhead Ensemble, at our ceremony to play the processionals, ceremony cues, and recessional. They were amazing and agreed to all of our ludicrous demands and enjoyed the challenge of playing some offbeat selections that are our favorites. While people were seating, they played the Game of Thrones theme, a Pokemon medley, the "Overture" from the videogame Katamari Damacy, "Katamari on the Rocks," and "Pure Imagination" from Willy Wonka. The wedding party walked out to the Final Fantasy Prelude, and the bridal processional was to "Apotheosis" from the indie video game Journey.
Our officiant was a friend of ours from school and did a wonderful job leading the ceremony. He opened with the story of Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan's epic love affair. We were too nervous to write our own vows, so instead we decided to exchange readings between us. I read "Scientific Romance" by Tim Pratt, and Shawn read a selection from The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman. After that, we released butterflies en masse during our butterfly letting, while the ensemble played "Yearnings of the Wind" from video game Chrono Trigger. During the recessional, we skipped down the aisle to "Both of You, Dance Like You Want To Win!" from the anime Evangelion.
Our biggest challenge:
On the day-of we had some last-minute issues with the photo booth and the music. The Android app we were using in the TARDIS photo booth wouldn't connect to our Dropbox account. It turned out okay, since the files saved to the Android tablet and I just messaged all of my guests afterwards with their pictures. Our music list was in Shawn's phone and the phone dropped on the floor the night before the wedding, which destroyed much of the songs on the SD card. We didn't discover this problem until three hours before the ceremony. My bridesmaids' husbands stepped up to take care of the task and were able to basically recreate the playlists from scratch. It was amazing that they pulled it off.
Both Shawn and I are atheists, and although I found it easy to create a non-religious ceremony, we were unable to secure any premarital counseling in the nearby area even though we looked around a lot. Twogether in Texas makes it so that if you take a free premarital education class, you would be able to waive your marriage license fee. We wanted to participate in this, but we couldn't find any non-religious vendors that were actually available, and even the religious ones we thought we would be okay with were also no longer giving the class. So that was unfortunate.
My favorite moment:
Our exchange of readings (what we did instead of vows) was probably the thing I think back on the most and it still gives me the sniffles.
We also had a low-key after-party in the ranch's party barn. It was really meaningful for me to play games, chat with friends, and wind down from the hectic frenzy that was the wedding. Most of my friends live so far away and it was wonderful just to be with them again in a casual, comfy way.
My funniest moment:
When we asked everyone to pick out their weapon of choice for the "Wedding Party Nerf War," our flower girl picked the ridiculously large shotgun which resulted in some amazing pictures. We had also joked with her at the rehearsal that she should dump all of the flowers all at once when she gets to the end of the aisle and, during the ceremony, she did! I didn't get to see it live, but I got to see the video of it afterwards and it's just awesome.
What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding?
I learned that you can never plan too much for a wedding. In the two months preceding the wedding, we packed each "table box" complete with the table setup, a layout diagram of the area with the table highlighted, and a photograph with the mockup of the table. It was essential to the final setup, since it was very easy for everybody to pitch in and set up the decorations. Going through the effort of measuring, re-measuring, meeting every other week through Google Hangout, getting together all of our vendor's schedules and wedding party schedules, making lodging assignments — it took a lot of time, and I felt like I could have started even earlier with even better results.
I think the second most important lesson was that any project, even a wedding project, is subject to the project management triangle (scope, time, and cost) and one of those corners on the triangle has to give. Our schedule was running out and we didn't want to decrease our scope, so our costs went up significantly, but that's something we noticed and anticipated for.
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
Photography: Kerrisa and Chad Treanor of C + K Creative
Venue: Rockin Y Ranch
Videography: Jensen Yancey
Ceremony musicians: Fountainhead Ensemble
Cocktail frozen banana appetizers: Bananarchy
Dinner serving staff: Trinity Event Staffing
Dinner fajita tacos: Torchy's Tacos
Cakes and cupcakes: Sugar Circus Bakery
Bridal hairdresser: Priscilla Gallardo
Bride's wedding ring: Wexford Jewelers
Groom's wedding ring: Juno Jewelry via Amazon
Bridal gown: Gallery Serpentine
Bridal and bridesmaid's paper crane jewelry: Birch Handmade
Bridal flower crown: Serenity Crystal
Bridal bouquet and groom's boutonniere: PaperWeeds
Groomsmen's boutonnieres and bridesmaids bouquets: Mazziflowers
Groom's and groomsmen's game cartridge cufflinks: oh my geekness
Groom's tie: Projector Ties
Groomsmen's ties: Cyberoptix
Wedding cake toppers: Antoni's Art Asylum
TARDIS Guestbook: Bits With Byte
Flower girl basket: Yats Wedding
Diagrams and layouts tool: Garden Planner
Wedding planning tool: Google Wedding Planner
Washers for the handfasting cords: Compass Rose Jewelry Designs
Test tube flowers and bridal/bridesmaids flower pins: Lavish Laces
Gomez for the FEZ centerpiece and Samus for the Super Metroid centerpiece in mini-Hama beads: Pixel Bead Pictures
Glow-in-the-dark Kodama for the Princess Mononoke centerpiece: Catalicious Creations
San's mask for the Princess Mononoke centerpiece: Happy Beader
Enough talk — show me the wedding porn!
This post features Offbeat Vendors! Check out their vendor listing to see how they cater to Offbeat Brides:
Wexford Jewelers
Gallery Serpentine
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