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.
Julie’s advice to others dealing with pressure from family about wedding venues was this: “It’s helpful to be able to explain why you want to have the wedding where you do, but you don’t have to justify it to your aunt, your coworker, and your mailman.” It’s important to set boundaries early on about your vision for the wedding. Explain what led you to choose your location and why it’s important to you. Then stand your ground. Ask for suggestions on how you can make that location more comfortable for more traditional guests, but don’t ever feel that you have to bow to others’ expectations. It’s okay to say, “This is where we’re getting married. We want you there, and we’ll do what we can to make you happy there, but this is where it’s happening.”
In thinking about locations, be sure to do your research and think of venues beyond those that advertise themselves as “perfect for nuptials.” You’ll quickly learn that anything that has the word “wedding” attached to it costs twice as much—and that includes more traditional wedding venues like ballrooms, hotels, and private estates. Researching and brainstorming venues can be grueling work, but the payoff is worth it.
Susan Beal recounted, “Finding the venue was kind of a pain. I looked at gardens, parks, restaurants, ballrooms, and everything in between for months—most of which were way, way out of our price range. Then I thought of a museum I absolutely love in Portland, the Contemporary Crafts Museum, which is a gorgeous, wood-and-glass 1930s arts center. It’s a very creative, open building with a very relaxed, modern vibe, and I could imagine how fun it would be to celebrate there. It was so much nicer than several of the places I saw charging four times as much, and so much more us.”
You don’t need to limit yourself to private property. Matthew Baldwin was married at the Seattle Aquarium. He explained that “during the planning process, we discovered that a lot of places that seem ‘exotic,’ like the aquarium, are actually a bargain because they are considered city or state parks and therefore rent for cheaper than a corresponding hall. We loved getting married there—the best part was that whenever we had a ‘transition’ (such as from wedding to reception or whatever), there were otters to look at for the guests.” Matthew went so far as to say, “We went to a traditional church wedding about a month after our aquarium wedding, and all we could think was, Booooring.” Matthew has a point: When was the last time you saw otters at a church wedding?
Tip: Burning weddings and other festival nuptials.
Offbeat couples love to get married at events like Burning Man, the Oregon Country Fair, and the U.K.’s Glastonbury Festival. I spoke to lots of folks who’d fallen in love at these amazing events and saw it as only fitting that they would get married in the same surreal, fantastical environment where they’d first met. Festivals are delicious venues for weddings—but be prepared for the fact that family and certain kinds of friends simply won’t be able to make the trek. Also, these large-scale events can be expensive as hell. Do you really want to make your beloved Aunt Mert, who lives off of social security checks, pay hundreds of dollars for a ticket to Burning Man? While I heartily encourage festival weddings, I also think festival couples should at least consider having a small, simple family reception in a more accessible location as well.
In our case, we tempered my mother’s homegrown forest eco-retreat with the relative comfort of her neighbor’s bed-and-breakfast. Our ceremony and dinner were held on the safety of a manicured lawn, with the reassurance of flushing toilets, well-tended gardens, and brick patios to soothe the frayed nerves of more traditional family members. It wasn’t until after dark that we led the troops down the hill to my mother’s property, where things were a little wilder, both figuratively and literally.
Was it a little funky? Yes. Did our guests poop into sawdust-filled buckets? Why, yes, they did. But did they have a great time? Sure looked like it. And we didn’t put ourselves in debt. Instead of paying to create a fantasy land, we picked the best things our everyday lives had to offer and crafted an extra-special everyday.
Our vision wasn’t really very creative in the “working from the ground up” sense: We did the things that were easiest for us and made arrangements with the people we were closest to. Instead of trying to forge a connection with strangers, we called on the skills of many friends and family members. In this way, we tried to create a day that was a reflection and celebration of our community of ravers, hippies, academics, and urban hipsters—not an expensive day dedicated to our relationship narcissism.
Basically, I got married in the same forest that I used to pee in as a child. Maybe it was more special that way, since we were encouraging our guests to pee there as well.
Your location probably won’t be as urine-centric, but just try to pick a venue that works well for you and your betrothed’s needs—and then find ways to share it with your extended family. It might take a little extra work, but if Julie can share her underwater wedding with above water family, then surely you can share your goth industrial-loft wedding with your non-children-of-the-night relatives.
By Ariel Meadow Stallings
From Offbeat Bride © 2007 by Ariel Meadow Stallings. Used by permission of Seal Press. All rights reserved. This book is available through local bookstores and online booksellers.
Related Story: “The Anti-Bride”