The Offbeat Bride: Kittie, Student (and Tribesmaid)

Her offbeat partner: Louis, Computer Specialist

Date and location of wedding: Royal Bath Hotel, Bournemouth, UK - August 24, 2013

Our offbeat wedding at a glance: Although much of the wedding kept a traditional kind of structure, we wanted to include things that we liked: Game of Thrones, Star Wars, The Elder Scrolls games, and Studio Ghibli. We mostly wanted our wedding to feel relaxed and easy-going, with the minimum amount of stress for our guests.

As much as we tried to keep costs down, we found that prices got ramped up as soon as the dreaded "W" word was mentioned. In the end, we decided to DIY several things, including origami favour boxes (after 60-odd, we were certainly questioning our sanity) and the name cards and table cards.

Tell us about the ceremony:
Throughout the planning, both of us had been really against having our officiant ask my father to give me away, so we spoke to the registrar and changed the line to "Will you help Katherine begin this new journey with Louis?" We thought it was a bit more appropriate for us, as the former line gave us the impression of beginning a marriage on uneven terms (me being given to him) rather than choosing, as two consenting adults, to get married.

We also discussed with our registrar about leaving out the line defining marriage as being between "one woman and one man" as our belief is that marriage should be between consenting adults, regardless of gender, religion, etc. We also had guests who were gay, lesbian, and transgender, and I myself am bisexual/pansexual, so we wanted to respect our guests and our own beliefs by omitting this definition.

I walked down the aisle with my dad to Halo 3's "Never Forget," as Lou and I, and a fair number of our guests, are huge Halo fans. Lou and I walked out to Barry Louis Polisar's "All I Want Is You."

Our biggest challenge:
My biggest challenge for me was my anxiety and keeping it in check on the day. Lou and I made sure that there were times in the day that we could escape for five minutes. If I felt it was getting too much, we had a subtle signal between us so that we could make excuses without offending any of our guests. These moments were so helpful with curbing panic and anxiety for both of us and led to some really lovely moments of peace in amongst the chaos.

My funniest moment:
It was quite windy during the ceremony, as we were in a venue right by the sea, and I kept having to tame my veil as it had a tendency to blow into my face. But a massive gust lifted it vertically upwards which was met with loud laughter from our guests. I thought for a few seconds that the veil was off across the sea to France, but the wind settled and it began to behave itself again.

What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding?
Personally, I learnt that I could only fully enjoy my wedding retrospectively. Being an anxious person, I was used to feeling nervous, but I was not prepared for the onslaught of anxiety on that day. It lasted from as soon as I woke up and lasted until the afternoon of the following day. I expected myself to relax after the ceremony was over, but the residual adrenaline hung around for a very long time and I found that in trying to force myself to be calm, I was making it worse. My advice would be to allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling on the day, despite any previous expectations.

Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?

Enough talk - show me the wedding porn!