The Offbeat Bride: Kelly, Graphic Designer

Her offbeat partner: Daniel, English Teacher/SAT Tutor

Date and location of wedding: The North Ritz Club, Syosset, NY - May 24, 2014

Our offbeat wedding at a glance:

Inspired by The Princess Bride, our wedding was a combination of romance, action, medieval fiction, and humor!

Tell us about the ceremony:

Our ceremony was at the reception venue. Guests were greeted with rainbow rose floral arrangements, a handpicked romantic-acoustic-geek soundtrack (consisting of songs from , Zelda, and Conan the Barbarian soundtracks), and our signature cocktail called an "As You Wish." The procession was accompanied by The Princess Bride theme song.

Tell us about your reception:

The table decorations included rainbow floral wreaths, fiction and romance novel centerpieces, and rainbow cloth napkins to match the bridesmaids dresses. Escort cards were handmade miniature Medieval fantasy-inspired paper books. The table numbers were sigils representing each member of the bridal party's attire color and favorite animal. The favors were a duo of a custom-made bookmark of the bride and groom (available with multicolor tassels) and a gold foil jewelry box re-purposed as a candy container filled with rainbow M&Ms.

Our reception entrance included children's replica title belts to Hulk Hogan's "Real American." Our cake featured Macho Man Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth action figures. My bouquet toss song was WWE Diva A. J. Lee's "Light It Up" and the garter (handmade by the bride) toss song was Shawn Michael's "Sexy Boy" with signature dance performed by the groom!

What was your most important lesson learned?

I never fantasized about my wedding when I was young, and we waited over a year after getting engaged to actually start planning, so I had no idea what I wanted to do. I wish I took more time while we were engaged to brainstorm and use my imagination to play with different ideas so that there wasn't as much pressure once our date was actually set. After hours of internet research and getting tours of 19 different venues on Long Island, I felt that using a checklist with deadlines helped me organize my thoughts.

I learned that weddings can cause a lot of drama and disagreement, and that listing out your priorities and figuring out compromises is incredibly helpful.

As a graphic designer, I was also able to save a good amount of money creating all my own stationary and using VistaPrint.

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