offbeatbride_dc [heptadecagram]

red_lynx and I got married! It was a lot of fun.

The day started out with us getting ready. I got to wear a princess hat!

One thing I recommend is to write your betrothed a note on your wedding day. I got up early to write such a note (without telling red_lynx that I was doing so), and gave it to her mother with instructions to hand it over as she was getting ready. I cried when I wrote it, she cried when she read it, we cried about it when we saw each other for the first time, and I cried again when I saw these pictures. She still carries the note in her purse.

This was the most do-it-yourself wedding ever, and the only way it worked was because all 150 attendees pitched in in some way, whether it was making decorations, the dress, my vest, food, music, whatever. Our thank-you notes (which we're still writing) mention help a lot more often than gifts. Personally, I kinda like it that way, but I'm weird about gifts.

There was a very strong nature theme running through the whole wedding. Every bouquet was made by friends from fresh flowers. Every garland, every centerpiece of ivy, every smilax strand of decoration was made of fresh green plants. I think we ended up spending about $2000$1000 on just the raw plant materials. I don't even want to think what the cost would have been had we paid for labor as well.

I used to be a professional cake decorator. I told myself that I was NOT ALLOWED to make my own cake; I would have enough going on before the wedding. A dear friend of mine offered, so I was able to hand it off to her. And the cake was absolutely delicious.

Our wedding started with us advancing from different directions up to a veil that separated us. By virtue of the time of day, this was what I saw, which caused my heart to stop beating and the whole world slow down.

Not liking veils of illusion, red_lynx whips out a sword and slices through symbolism.

Because holyshitthatgirlhasasword, I attempt to placate her with brownies (which I baked at 8:30 that morning).

Success! She takes the bait. Let's go get married!

It was beautiful outdoors. We had a meaningful ceremony that we (naturally) wrote ourselves, and were married by a dear friend, under a lovely arch made by another dear friend. We strung our rings and handfasting cord from it.

We loved our ceremony, and I cried through most of it, but it was everything we wanted and deeply emotional. The music was played by friends (exactly three people in the audience figured out that my entrance was the theme from 'Voltron'), the guests threw rose petals, and I was next to the most beautiful person in the world. What did you think of it all, little red-headed girl?

...

...

Alrighty then.

And after that, we danced the night away.

You see, about eighty or so of our guests regularly go vintage ballroom dancing. Ten of them (including me) used to do it professionally. So there was a lot of dancing.

One of our professional dancer friends was willing to lead the guests through a country dance as the caller.

And after that, everyone went home, including us.

That's the most insanely brief recap I can make, because I'm not giving thanks to all the people that helped, like our food manager, wedding coordinator, cake decorator, strike manager, florists, friends, and everyone else who helped. If you want to see the full gallery, go to StoryMotion Studios and check out our gallery (use any e-mail you like; the password is 'echlin', all lowercase).

Thank you to everyone in this community for your kind support and ideas! (sicarii, should I just snail-mail the book back to you? We're just now digging out of wedding decorations at our house.)

Things we learned: DIY means a lot of work, and the majority of that work (that we had to do) is management. We had people specifically managing food, decorations, flowers, cleanup, dance, music, everything. Everyone pitched in, and we tried to make sure that no one person was doing too much (the most amount of food that anyone was asked to make was 1 gallon, and we provided recipes). The set-up team can be small, but the tear-down team can (and should) be large.

Spend at least an hour or more every weekend not planning your wedding. Go on a date or something.

We only had one family member in attendance (red_lynx's mother). We only invited the people we wanted to, and we didn't go into debt doing it. Although I'm almost certain we forgot to invite some people that we meant to.

Look up historical weather information for your wedding day. We had narrowed our window down to a couple of different weekends, and then we wend to Wunderground and looked at historical weather for those days. We picked the one that had the least chance of rain and the best chances of good weather, and it paid off (as our next two choices ended up cloudy and raining).

Have a day or two off after your wedding but before your honeydoom. We left for ours the very next day at noon, and we really could have used the time to get more organized and track down missing items. As it was, there wasn't any way we could get more time off, so this is what we were stuck with.

Our photographers were StoryMotion Studios (linked above). They're a husband-wife pair that have been doing this for some time, and we really liked their photojournalistic style. Having two photographers was nice, because it meant that they could be in two places at once and capture action from two different angles, or even two different lenses. Very important for our wedding, due to our ceremony approach, and also because we wanted pictures being taken in two different places at once (her primping and the Mill being set up). I highly recommend them, mostly because they are people that we found a really good connection with. Tell 'em we sent you. They're pricier than a single photographer, but much cheaper than two-camera coverage at most places ($1600). They let you get digital negatives, a requirement for both of us.

Our wedding was at Adelphi Mill, in Maryland. It's the cheapest place ($800$650) for the number of people we wanted, and other friends of ours have had weddings (and Pirate Feasts) there. The walls are an ugly painted white (pity, because it's nice old stone underneath), but there's a kitchen, danceable floors, and neat-looking mill machinery. It's also next to a pretty river and woods, as you saw.

We had a videographer, but that was more an afterthought: Dolce Video. We wanted to capture toasts and dances on film (our ceremony audio was recorded by a wearable mike I had on the whole day, courtesy of the photographers). Were it not for the fact that we would have had to ask a guest to not participate fully in the ceremony or reception, we would have asked someone to do this for us (same reason why we went with professional photographers).