In choosing where to host our wedding, we looked at what was around us, the world we already inhabited. We crafted our wedding to be a reflection of that place. Why create some other world to live in for a day? Commitment is all about day-to-day partnership, the long years of companionship. It can be rough to get married in a fantasy land filled with horse-drawn carriages and then find yourself riding back to your apartment in a hatchback the next day.
For us, we wanted to reflect the two people we are and the space we inhabit, not some foreign dreamland that we could visit for a day before returning to our real life. We didn’t look at wedding magazines; that’s not our world. For inspiration, we looked at wedding photos from people who lived lives like ours, but ultimately, we crafted our vision for the wedding based on the life we live and the people we live it with. And that vision started with the physical location.
Our venue was a study in taking the path of least resistance. I grew up in the shade, raised in a log cabin that my parents built in the rainforest of Bainbridge Island, which is a thirty-five-minute ferry ride due west of downtown Seattle. Thirty years ago, the community consisted mostly of old money and young hippies (guess which my parents were), but the population has since doubled, and the island has evolved into more of a typical Pacific Northwest suburb, filled with polar fleece vests, overpriced SUVs, and latte-gripping mothers with frosted hair and the funds to pay a mortgage on waterfront property.
It’s an insular community, and as provincial as you would expect for an island. It’s also unbelievably beautiful and is the perfect place for a wedding—even if you weren’t a cedar-sheltered Islander child, which I certainly was. The forests of Bainbridge Island drip with moss and lichen and the smell of living things becoming soil. And so we selected a venue where we had an abundance of space and the easiest access: my mother’s ten acres of forested island property and her neighbor’s small bed-and-breakfast.
Tip: Get married where you like to be.
One offbeat bride I spoke to summed it up best when she said that in picking a wedding venue, you want “the kind of place you would actually go to if it wasn’t a wedding.” Is a church or synagogue the place you go to feel good and celebrate? If so, then maybe a religious locale is perfect for you. For many secular, untraditional types, however, there are numerous places where we feel infinitely more happy and at peace with ourselves—be that a forest or a cow pasture, a library or a museum, a restaurant or a theater. These places are just as holy to some couples as a temple is to others. And in many cases, they’re a better spot for dancing and squealing.
The vision, in other words, was limited to what we could already see.
There are varying degrees of extreme wedding venues. Many nontraditional brides I spoke with went the family-property route as well. I heard beautiful stories of grandmothers’ farms and family backyards. Plus, offbeat weddings held on family property can be a great way of honoring your family without following its traditions.
But not everyone will have access to (or want to choose) such family-friendly venues. Julie McAlee decided to marry her husband in their favorite place to be: underwater. As scuba divers, it was a natural choice.
According to Julie, however, her mother’s first response was, “That’s not fair!” She had a bit of a point: Since Julie’s mom didn’t scuba dive, she felt that she was being pushed out of the ceremony. Julie and her fiancé made special efforts to include non-diving family members, renting a boat with a glass bottom and having parts of the ceremony performed above water so family members could take turns at readings. These efforts stand as an excellent lesson for all weddings held in untraditional locations. You can find ways to make your friends and family feel included, even if they’re a little (or a lot) out of their element.
