Why I No Longer Want to Be an “Offbeat Bride”

If you’ve read my first post then you know that I started this blog after I got kicked off of the Offbeat Bride Tribe for something inane. I loved the community and liked being able to talk about wedding planning with a group of mostly like-minded individuals, but the moderators at OBB are very heavy-handed and there’s a lot of censorship there (though they’ll never call it that). Of course, I’m still free to browse through the blog, but there’s a TON of sponsored posts (generally for things that I could never afford) so I tend to avoid it.

When I started this blog, I thought that it would be a kind of substitute for OBB. I really expected to mainly be blogging about wedding planning, since that was all I could think about at the time. Looking back, getting kicked off of OBB was actually a really good thing for me. For one, it’s allowed me to step back from wedding planning. When that’s all you’re surrounded by, even if it’s just in an online community, that’s pretty much all you think about. My life is so much more than a wedding though. I’m a full-time law student for one, which keeps me pretty busy even if it’s not the sort of thing non-law students really want to hear about. I’m a wanna-be musician. I craft all the time (and now have an Etsy shop). My fiance and I had little adventures in our free time. I’m far more than a date in September.

Our wedding will be wonderful and unique, even without mason jars

Not constantly surrounding myself with wedding stuff online has allowed me to realize something else – other people don’t really care about my wedding. It’s not that they don’t care that I’m getting married; they’re very happy for me. What they don’t care about is the minutiae that goes into weddings. No one who is actually going to be at our wedding is really all that concerned about our centerpieces, whether we fold 1000 paper cranes, or any of that stuff. They love us and want to celebrate our union with us. None of them are going to be silently judging us for our lack of mason jars.

We really don't have to do this

Another revelation is that we don’t have to out-weird all of the other “offbeat” couples. Nor do we have to do something just because it’s considered offbeat (see: mason jars). Reading wedding blogs that feature a lot of real weddings can really mess with your thinking if you’re not careful. With OBB it was almost like a competition to see who could be the most offbeat. I wasn’t the only one who felt that way either; there were a number of posts on the tribe from brides who were worried that their wedding wasn’t going to be offbeat enough. OBB coined a term for the less out-there weddings:  offbeat lite. To me, being labeled offbeat lite sounds like you’re not one of the pretty, popular girls, but you aren’t part of the edgy, rebel clique either. You’re like me – an awkward, kinda quirky girl who doesn’t really fit in anywhere. But you know what? I’m not in high school anymore (okay, middle school was actually much worse for me). I can be myself without fearing the disapproval of any clique of popular girls or cool girls. I’m marrying a wonderful man who loves me despite (or is it because of) all of my quirks and awkwardness. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone on my wedding day. We’re not having a wedding for the benefit of an online community, and we’re certainly not having one so that some blog can hopefully judge out wedding worthy enough to post.

These guys are still in

I’m not saying that our wedding is suddenly going to be a traditional affair. We’re still a quirky, geeky couple and we want our wedding to reflect our personalities. We’re still going to have a ton of geeky references, we’re still going to have a TARDIS chuppah, and, of course, we’re still going to have our Dalek cake toppers. Not because some blog told us to, but because we love Doctor Who and that was actually something that brought us together in the first place (Doctor Who and keeping my former roommate up by singing Queen into the wee hours of the night).

I still read wedding blogs, but now I tend to prefer the ones that are just about real brides planning for their weddings. I want to read about other people going through the same things I am, not be told what my wedding should look like or what vendors I should hire because they’re the only option for a truly offbeat wedding. For some good, authentic wedding blogs that just follow their authors as they navigate the treacherous waters of the wedding world check out The Bitchy Bride, Frugally Wed, Rogue Bride, and Wedding Planning Isn’t for Sissies to name a few.