The Offbeat Bride: Logan, Chef and Prototype Builder

Her offbeat partner: Gary, Bartender and Model Designer for LEGOLAND

Date and location of wedding: Friend's house in San Diego, CA - June 6, 2015

Our offbeat wedding at a glance:

Our theme was just "Logan & Gary." We run a local supper club and are sorta famous for having a super quirky house packed with trinkets and cheeky touches, so we wanted to make sure that our personalities were represented. We wanted everyone to remember why they were there every time their eyes rested on something. That said, as a couple who is in their 30s and funded the event ourselves, we cut and pasted all the elements we wanted to make the day ours. We wanted to not only represent ourselves, but all the incredibly talented people in our lives.

We had three caterers (as a chef, food had to be impeccable and full of heart) and a bar stocked with homemade wine, local beer, and house barrel-aged cocktails. We hired a falcon ring bearer. I wore a custom-made floral wedding gown that I helped design. Being sized out of all straight-sized gowns I liked was an emotional roller coaster with an incredibly positive outcome, and I would recommend looking into a two-piece option for a busty bride. We designed a skirt + bodysuit, and it was perfect.

Our programs were barf bags, we had karaoke at our reception, and we had our guests sit on the ground for the ceremony on blankets. We didn't have colors, and our decor was tinged with maps. The garland, table runners and sign ("LOGAN & GARY, FUCK YEAH") that hung behind us were all made of them.

Tell us about the ceremony:

We are very into music so we decided to forgo all the standards and put our own in. When we first met, I gave Gary a mix tape that has since become the soundtrack to our lives, so we interjected as many of those songs into the ceremony as we could. The pre-processional song was "These Days" by Nico, processional was "Heartbeats" by Jose Gonzales, bridal march was "First Day Of My Life" by Bright Eyes.

I wrote the ceremony, as we are not religious and also practicing poly, so a lot of the traditional wording didn't apply. The Offbeat Bride posts on writing a ceremony were INVALUABLE. At one point I had all the posts printed and spread across my desk.

We were married by our ex-con fishmonger and our rings were flown down the aisle by a falcon to my husband's gloved arm. Our recessional song was "Do You Realize?" by The Flaming Lips, followed by "Give A Little Love" by Noah & The Whale.

We collected blankets to lay on the lawn for seating. I was nervous about this decision, as I had never seen it done before and anything I read online was very negative toward this idea...but it was wonderful. It looked incredible and had the perfect, unstuffy vibe. Our guests had an unobstructed view of the ocean behind us. We also made the controversial decision to open the bar pre-ceremony (I tricked our guests by quoting the start time as 30 minutes earlier than planned), and it was such a good call.

Tell us about your reception:

Our reception was so fun. We had a cocktail (well, wine and beer hour since they drank all the cocktails) hour with our favorite foods: Rabbit Rillettes, Chicken Liver Pate, and Spam Musubi (one of our caterers operates a small scale rabbit/chicken farm). We also had a sushi bar which was generously gifted by an epic local restaurant ( Wrench & Rodent Seabasstropub).

Cocktail hour music was all '50s and '60s doo wop. We sat down for dinner, which was all family-style, beautiful, local, organic ingredients to accompany the whole roast pig from a local farm. The guests ate off vintage mismatched settings, etched glassware, and silver flatware we had thrifted. Dessert was Peach and Berry Cobbler with fruit grown on the venue's grounds.

Our dinner playlist was the remainder of the mix tape music, and our first dance was to "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes. "All My Friends" by LCD Soundsystem was the perfect kickoff to the epic dance party where EVERYONE was dancing, even our family members! Our dance party was made even more awesome when we started karaoke. Our favorite performance was one of my bridesmen who sung the theme to Family Matters completely from memory. Our last song of the night was "Love You 'Til The End" by The Pogues, and we took off in a vintage Ford to our after party at the Red Fox Room, a piano bar that is connected to the Lafayette Hotel, where we and our guests were staying.

What was your most important lesson learned?

We plan events as a hobby, and this proved to be mostly a benefit to us. We had a clear vision, and a ton of amazing vendor friends. If there's one thing we have learned in our lives together, it's that if you surround yourself with people who you admire and respect, work hard to live up to those standards. Through the help and support of our talented friends, we were able to have a $100k wedding with a $25k budget.

As for challenges, the hardest part was about three months prior when we came out to our families as poly and myself as queer. It was a much more difficult and challenging thing to maneuver than we thought it would be. Things are getting better every day, and we hope that it will be normalized for them soon, because our poly family is incredible. Hopefully in the next few years you'll be seeing a second wedding between myself and my amazing genderqueer partner, Abby!

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