Wedding Porn: The Blog of Offbeat Weddings
Mario, a magician, and his assistant, Katie, have a 1920s-themed wedding. Kate wears a headband bought on Etsy. Photos by Daria Bishop. More images here.
In Junior High, our Health class had a unit about “basic adult life skills”: how to pay your bills, how your car works & why you really do need health insurance, despite the fact that you think you’re indestructible. One of the final projects we had that quarter was to budget out $30,000 in one of two ways: it was to be either your funds for one year of single living, or your budget to plan a wedding. The teachers assigned this without irony, and kids took it very seriously: it was not a lesson to show us how excessive the average wedding seems when you consider how else the money could be spent, but a lesson in how a proper American wedding was to be done. I was horrified. Years later, the following passage from The Commitment, Dan Savage’s gay-marriage memoir, summed up my perception of The Great American Wedding perfectly. In the scene below, Savage and his boyfriend Terry find themselves at a wedding expo:
Each and every vendor, from the lowliest florist to the highest-end caterer, was selling the fairy-tale princess wedding, the wedding that almost all straight girls grow up fantasizing about. For the women in the room, this was their one and only chance to be the princess in the Disney movie and they were determined not to fuck it up – and “it” refers to the ceremony and the reception, not the choice of a mate, as divorce rates would seem to indicate. (The wedding industry rakes in billions annually at a time when one out of every two marriages ends in divorce. Isn’t it about time some trial lawyers slapped Brides magazine, Vera Wang, and the rest of “big marriage” with a class action lawsuit modeled on the ones filed against big tobacco?)
Back to the boys: As we worked out way up and down the rows of vendors, I caught sight of the same guys again and again. Every time their fiancées or future mothers-in-law looked away, the boys would send out subtle distress signals, like a kidnap victim in a ransom video, blinking messages in Morse code. “Oh my god, what have I done?” As they were dragged from florist to caterer to limo, they looked like pawns. No, it was worse than that: They looked like hostages. No, worse still: they looked like afterthoughts. You don’t need men to have weddings! You need women and their mothers and sisters and their best friends and container ships full of machine-made lace from China and towering ice sculptures and enormous white canvas tents and karaoke machines and stretch Hummer limos and bouquets and chocolate fountains and cover bands and garter belts and veils and trains and engraved champagne glasses and sterling silver cake knives and on and on and on … you need a boy at a wedding like you need a stalk of celery in a Bloody Mary: It looks nice, and it makes things official, but it’s not crucial and probably wouldn’t be missed if you left it out. But a wedding – as currently understood, practiced, and marketed in America – without a bride? Unthinkable.
Clockwise from left: pink-haired bride, casual Arkansas wedding, Lucifire & Dave Tusk’s bright red circus wedding, Han Solo & Leia cake topper
There are, of course, other ways to go, especially this year. More and more people are opting for crafty, creative weddings that either twist around the tired tiara-and-lace tropes, or toss them out altogether. And on the site Offbeat Bride, the Wedding Porn section chronicles the most unusual, inspiring weddings ever to be documented on the web.
These are the weddings of our generation: pixelated 8-bit wedding invites, space helmets, brides as officants, a special category on the blog just for black wedding dresses, a San Francisco bike wedding, and, of course “Wedding! The Musical.” There’s enough love and joy on this site to make you queasy if you’re in a “only stupid people have good relationships” kind of mood, but even then, something on the site will make you smile. Like these Lego cake toppers, for instance.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
This made me smile. I love offbeat weddings.
I already warned my parents that when I get married it’ll be anything but traditional.
January 7th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
May get hate mail for this, but…’GASM:
http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h105/tsuqihoh/nkvogue02.jpg
January 7th, 2009 at 3:49 pm
I love this. Thanks, Nadya. And it is hitting really close to home for me on a personal level, because two friends of mine, Dan and Nieves, who had the most beautiful, moving, off-the-beaten-path wedding I’ve ever attended (and when I say off the beaten path, I MEAN it…Dan’s parents hosted a three-day-long jamboree campout hootenanny on their farmland in a secluded redwood valley that take hours to reach from the nearest highway) just had their first baby today. I’m verklemmt all over again.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Good article. My wedding I am glad to say is not traditional. Myself and my partner are now just a month and a half away from our wedding in Venice. It’s at the Palazzo Zenobio (which has a hall of mirrors) and will involve us being in medieval garb (not ren faire, plus the wedding is at the end of Carnivale as we got engaged there last year) with a string quartet playing some of the music from ‘The Fountain’. So this is no white wedding (her wedding dress is from Yosa and is in red velvet).
It’s all quite good really as it means only a select few of my family and my fiancee’s can make it, meaning no annying children etc. The was driven home when we had attended her cousins wedding at the town hall. It was a typical, Northern, white wedding where the ceremony had taken place in the Catholic cathedral just for the sake. We however will be having a further gathering when we get back to the UK to do our pagan ceremony with our friends.
This of course is a big contrast to when my ex from 4 years ago wanted a white wedding in the church her parents got married in. This didn’t sit well with me because I’m not Christian so I feel I would have been taking the piss.
And of course the wedding and the honeymoon in Verona are costing a fraction of a typical white wedding (I would guess about $9000 in total).
So yeah this time in 2 months time I’ll be starting a new part of my life as a postdoc researcher at a new uni, in a new city with my new wife.
January 7th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I really loathe the current wedding trend in the United States right now. I think with the advent of couples living together, having sex and sharing their lives fully BEFORE they get married makes some people feel that the actual state of marriage might not seem as exciting as we are taught to believe.
I think people feel the necessity for a large and superfluous ceremony to further signify change and new territory when in actuality, marriage might be more mundane and familiar than couples would like to believe.
I’ve already found the man that I plan to some day marry, but when the day rolls around, it will be off to the courthouse we go! With that said however, I have no problem with people being crafty and celebrating a special day in a more feasible way. Some of the things shown in this blog are a cute way of doing so (though some of them still look like they cost an arm and a leg).
January 7th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
So…with proposition 8 still simmering…weddings like these make me wonder why the “gay community” even wants marriage in the traditional sense anymore.
“More and more people are opting for crafty, creative weddings that either twist around the tired tiara-and-lace tropes, or toss them out altogether.”
So why don’t they just toss out a couple more things and give the whole ritual a different name? Maybe the new ritual wouldn’t be “time-honored”, but it would be new and fresh and maybe people are less likely to fuck its rep up by getting divorces.
Then equal rights legal battles could wiggle away from some of the social pressures from religious freaks n’ homophobes who cling so strongly to their “sacred” institutions. The focus could stick to making sure homosexual couples had hospital visitation rights, joint tax returns, etc.
Let them keep their dopey/tired ritual with its pathetic batting average. Build a new one that makes the old one look like a game for chumps. Dan Savage could head the first think-tank meeting…
January 7th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
oh man oh man i love the offbeat wedding blog.
and that lovely pink-haired bride is danielle, one of my livejournal friends! she’s also a really awesome artist (http://home.earthlink.net/~ahoymiss/)
xox
January 7th, 2009 at 5:05 pm
@ Skerror: I admit that the pictures I chose make the Wedding Porn blog look pretty heteronormative, but it’s a very queer-positive blog. I only chose the pictures I chose because, as a photographer, I liked them best. But there’s a lot of great stuff for queer couples on that blog… there’s some posts about Prop 8, a post about a transgendered groom, and lots of sames-sex couples. The bottom line is that, to many people, it’s not just a dopey, outdated ritual. They don’t want to completely reinvent it, they want to own it.
Dan Savage’s book actually deals with that question as well. Why even have a wedding, he asks. Why can’t we have some sort of party, some sort of joining ceremony, and throw out the word “wedding” altogether? He deals with that question in a way that’s more complex, personal and universal than I’ve seen elsewhere. I won’t give away the ending, but it’s a great read.
January 7th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
@Nadya: Thanks for not giving the ending away. I’ll get to read Dan Savage’s book like it’s a mystery novel :D Pretty curious where he went with that…
I don’t mean to dump too much on marriage…anything is cool when people do it right, treat it with respect, and make it work. I just wonder though, with everyone trying to own it, if it ends up in the same category as stem cell research, abortion rights, evolution/creationism…one of those turf-war things that can go back and forth depending on changes in political winds. I don’t know what a proper compromise looks like (or if one even exists), but the evangelicals have way too much leverage right now around the marriage issue and there’s way too goddamn many of them, they have way too many goddamn kids, and they keep teaching the kids hateful things. So I’d LOVE to see a serious secular alternative to marriage crop up purely as a giant fuck you middle finger to them…and to get to a place where future negotiations can happen from a position of more strength. Something like what Stephen Colbert did to Bill O’Reilly…
January 7th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
Actually, one of my very good friends did the Han/Leia top when he got married about 10 years ago. Sadly, I had lost touch with him during that time and didn’t even know about the wedding til a year later…
January 7th, 2009 at 8:57 pm
@Nadya
THANK YOU for finally saying that the word “wedding” needs to get thrown out. Get rid of the word, get rid of a LOT of the controversy — civil unions for all! If you want to call it a “wedding” in the privacy of your own home/church/community, feel free, but as far as legal matters are concerned, a civil union for the purposes of taxes and death benefits should be enough for anyone.
January 7th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
I was absolutely THRILLED to have found the Offbeat Bride site about 4 months ago and have since been serendipitously meeting people who have contributed with their own stories and photos. Since I am currently planning my own ‘untraditional’ wedding (scheduled for mid-May), I’ve found this site to be an amazing resource for thankfully untraditional wedding material and inspiration, what a breath of fresh air! I was absolutely titillated to find your article today Nadya, thank you!
January 7th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
What a great site! What an even greater quote from The Commitment!
Ever since I was a little girl, my parents promised to foot the bill for the home that my husband and I move into after getting married so long as we eloped and saved them the unnecessary wedding costs, so that pretty much squelched any vapid Disney princess wedding dreams that I might’ve developed. So, yes, the courthouse it is, when that day rolls around! But that doesn’t mean I can’t use Offbeat Bride as inspiration for a 50-year anniversary vow renewal ceremony!
January 8th, 2009 at 4:03 am
inspirational stuff there! Puts a smile on my face to see couples really crafting a beautiful day them and those around them.
January 8th, 2009 at 4:26 am
i’m not surprised that less than traditional weddings are becoming more popular; here’s a pic from my wedding (in 2000, also ended in a divorce but c’est la vie)
http://www.thalia.org/kender/Pics/Parties/00-05-20Kim-ZoomWedding/index.html
the theme was formality throughout the ages, and even our families got into it with period costumes and our vows? sooo not traditional…
oh, and the total cost for about 300 guests? under $5000
and then there was my housemates wedding this past summer (in that brief window between legalization and prop 8 in ca) – complete with honor guard of flaming swords… http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=viewImage&friendID=389796&albumID=2906534&imageID=39866948
January 8th, 2009 at 8:25 am
As my other half Kris said above, we’re getting married in Venice in just over a month, during Carnivale. It was amazing in 2008 and I think when we decided to wed abroad it was the only choice. So my gown is Italian Renaissance style in burgundy velvet and black and the venue is one of the palazzos.
I never wanted a white wedding, although I did try on some white and ivory gowns whilst looking around in bridal boutiques. Some of them were REALLY fun to try (a huge white meringue with layers of tulle skirts and a bodice coated in Swarovski crystals – I looked like Bridal Barbie) but I didn’t really *click* with any of them – I felt a bit pedestrian and not quite like myself. I’d wear them for a photo shoot but not to get married in. In the end, being the goth I am I chose a dark colour. Kris is wearing a black tunic outfit with gold braid.
Even our ‘proposal’ wasn’t traditional – neither of us proposed, although everyone assumes someone did. We just talked about maybe doing something special and we were both on the same page but too scared to mention anything! Thankfully a church wedding was the farthest thing from both our minds.
The Venetian wedding will be a civil ceremony, so when we return we are performing a blessing/handfasting Pagan style to satiate our spirituality.
January 8th, 2009 at 10:41 am
ha! never thought i would wind up sneaking into a coilhouse post this way. (re “Wedding! The Musical”)
January 8th, 2009 at 11:24 am
The striped outfits I created for Acid PopTart and her beau Damion, were reviewed at Offbeat Bride :)
http://offbeatbride.com/2008/09/striped-wedding-dress#comments
I’ve always been a staunch believer in weddings/handfastings/etc… that truly reflect the people who are actually getting married. I’ve seen weddings that ran a generation behind (wherein everything is done to the parents liking), which I think is tragic when it happens to the extent that the people getting married are negating their own sense of style and taste. There’s something very beautiful about those couples (heterosexual, or same-sex) that choose to do things *their* way – all the way.
January 8th, 2009 at 11:48 am
looks like offbeatbride got knocked down by all the coilhouse love, eep. we sent ariel a note.
meanwhile – you can find “Wedding! The Musical” here at least:
http://scotto.org/listing.php?id=276
January 8th, 2009 at 11:50 am
Scotto, I highly doubt it. We get a lot of traffic, but not enough to knock down another site. It must be just a temporary glitch on their end. P.S. – Wedding! The Musical rocks!
January 8th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
I was pretty flattered when they posted my wedding on there as “wedding porn” last year: http://offbeatbride.com/2008/01/fabulous-gothy-wedding
I’ve since returned to see all the creative and marvelous weddings people have conceived of.
January 9th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Hey, thanks for putting our photo up there! Weren’t are photographers spectacular? Offbeatbride was a huge source of inspiration as I planned my vintage vaudevillian wedding of last October. You do good to draw attention to Ariel and her wonderfulness.
January 9th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
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