My Wedding, My Way

Go Your Own Way

By Timothy R. Schulte
CTW Features

There’s only one right way to do things for your wedding: your own. Here’s advice from the best independently thinking brides out there on how to make your wedding the best wedding ever, regardless of whether you do or don’t do that one thing you’re “supposed to”

An astonishing 97 percent of couples use wedding magazines to get tips and ideas for their weddings, according to The Wedding Report, a wedding-market research company.

Britt Hilgers fell into that other 3 percent. Consumer bridal mags, she says, were “just too focused on the traditional.”

“I had just looked at a few things and it was just so overwhelming, and I felt like I had to be the traditional bride. The big white dress and all the trimmings. I hated planning it. I did not like planning a wedding back then, but I like it now,” says Hilgers, who credits TheBrokeAssBride.com, AntiBride.com, RocknRollBride.com, and GreenWeddingShoes.com among her go-to wedding resources.

Hilgers is just one of the countless brides and bridal experts who have not just bucked tradition – some of it, at least – but also taken to blogging software to share their unique perspective with the wedding worlds, both traditional and nontraditional, alike.

Hilgers, who lives in L.A. and works on the television show “Psych,” spends her off-set hours not only DIY-ing the décor for her July 2010 wedding but also documenting the planning process on her blog, BowieBride.com.

“I’ve always been a [David Bowie] fan,” Hilgers says. “I kind of look at Bowie as this person who can be anything and any style he wants. He kind of represents being different; I kind of saw that as my personality and the way I want to plan a wedding.”

For Hilgers and her fiancé, Mike Hess, that meant one singular wedding party, not gender-defined groups of bridesmaids and groomsmen; a cupcake-and-pie dessert bar over a monolithic cake; and L.A.’s famous Kogi Korean BBQ taco truck serving up dinner rather than traditional catering fare. Still, they’re having a “regular” ceremony, with a traditional processional and a judge presiding.

That marriage, if you will, of tradition and personal expression is what’s it’s all about, says Ariel Meadow Stallings, author of “Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides” (Seal Press, 2010), currently in its second edition, and the brain behind OffbeatBride.com.

“The word ‘offbeat’ to me just means a kind of authenticity,” Stallings says. “I’m not against traditional weddings, but I feel like for many people they want to be an expression of who they are.

“So, for me, offbeat is about finding the most authentic wedding you can that’s a true reflection of you, your partner and your commitment,” she says.

Stallings points to wedding templates that outline what brides are supposed to do with the wedding – how to do the music, the seating, the vows, etc. “I think you get into offbeat territory when you find yourself questioning those supposed-to’s,” Stallings says, proffering the following queries: “Why do you have to have a ceremony at all? Why can’t people just have a reception?”

Or three, for that matter? Which is what Carolyn Gerin did.

When the author of the “Anti-Bride” series of etiquette guides and planners married her husband, Laurent, they piggybacked three cocktail parties onto their city hall ceremony: a lounge party in San Francisco for all their friends in their adopted hometown, an at-home soiree for her family and friends at her folks’ house in Washington, D.C., and then a “very French” gathering in Paris with her husband’s family and friends.

“Instead of one day where I didn’t get to talk to everyone, I did three days in three cities where I got to talk to everyone,” Gerin says. Pinpointing what is near-and-dear to you as a couple is first order of business, according to Gerin.

“I think what you need to do is focus on what you want to do and not what you don’t want to do,” she advises, a tactic Stallings recommends when handling some of the niceties of the wedding.

Say, for instance, your dad walking you down the aisle isn’t really the thing for you. Rather than focusing on how you don’t want him to walk you down the aisle, focus on how do you want him to read a poem during the vows. The proactive approach says “here’s the role I want you to have at the wedding,” says Stallings, and you can skip over the whole drama.

The online world of anti/indie/offbeat brides isn’t all about solving the etiquette question du jour or finding the latest, greatest DIY project. Sometimes it’s just about connecting with sisters-in-arms.

“We’re like a little community, it’s crazy,” says Hilgers, who started blogging in July 2009 but didn’t really attract a ton of visitors till her blog was included in the list of top wedding blogs by BrideTide.com. “I’m friends with a lot of the ladies outside of the blog world. “We’ve helped each other, just given each other advice in our darkest frustrations. I don’t know how I would have done it without them, actually.”

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