'Offbeat Bride' by Ariel Meadow Stallings
This book offers taffeta-free alternatives for independent brides
By Anne Johnson
Published: May 31st, 2007 | 3:11pm
Planning a June wedding? Not finding yourself or your ideal wedding represented in the pages of Modern Bride? Are you finding yourself pushed into traditional gender roles? Could be you are having a "bridentity crisis." Seattle-based writer Ariel Meadow Stallings found herself facing such dilemmas when planning her August 2004 wedding. The book that resulted from her misadventures as a non-traditional bride, Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Bride, tells the story of said wedding and imparts some of what she learned along the way. This former raver's book could be just what you need to help you completely buck, or just merely tailor, tradition and to fight the power that is The Wedding Industrial Complex.
Stallings and her now-husband, Andreas, both the offspring of divorced, non-conformist parents, were both very ambivalent towards the institution of marriage despite having been in a committed relationship for many years. Pragmatism (read: health insurance) and a little family pressure eventually won out, and they agreed to tie the knot. The pair wanted their nuptials to reflect who they were and not some expensive, grotesque fantasy dreamed up by the Wedding Industrial Complex. The couple wed on Bainbridge Island, Washington, on the grounds of Stallings' mother's 10-acre hippie retreat and the neighboring bed and breakfast. The bride wore a corset and lime green organza; the groom wore torn tuxedo tails — and the reception was an all night dance party in the woods. "The wedding was so much fun: hanging out on my mother's property, and the music and the dancing and the getting people together." So much fun, that the pair hosts a party every year on their anniversary. The experience of planning the event raised so many issues; it was compelling enough material to produce this very entertaining, yet, very intelligent and useful book.
Offbeat Bride aims to be more of a "crazed cheerleader standing in the sidelines," as you plan your event rather than being a straight up how-to wedding book, but tips are sprinkled throughout the book. Yes, some tips are atypical — for example, you won't find advice on how to deal with people who get high at your wedding in Martha Stewart's Weddings, but that doesn't mean this advice won't be extremely useful to some. Mostly Stalling and her "lab rats," the other non-traditional brides and grooms whose wedding stories she includes, offer up very practical, level-headed advice that can be applied to any wedding, offbeat or not.
A self-described Web geek, Stallings proves to be a great counselor for planning a wedding in the computer age. Plus, she includes suggestions that are age old, but that have perhaps been thwarted by the Wedding Industrial Complex and proffers some wonderful suggestions for utilizing the various skills of your community, i.e. your talented friends and family that will save time and money. "You can involve your community in your wedding, not just because it was save you a fortune - although it will," she shares, "but because it's a way of really, really making your wedding a reflection of you and your partner and your friends and your family." While wishing to avoid sounding to "woo-woo", Stallings believes that, "when you delegate out some of that work to caring friends and family members, it really takes things to another level in terms of the energetic feedback loop between the community supporting the wedding—literally supporting the wedding by cutting up tomatoes, or arranging flowers, and the people who are actually there being there."
And just what exactly is this beast known as The Wedding Industrial Complex? According to Stallings, it's an industry whose major interest is "in feeding this fantasy day where you have everything you ever wanted just the way you ever wanted it and you're a celebrity day." Even more frustrating is that it's an industry with a big investment in the dreams of women specifically. "Maybe someday our daughters' fiancés will be grunting over Groom's Gear Magazine" she hopes, but, "at this point, even in progressive feminist relationships, a lot of the planning falls to women. Still."
A whole chapter, "Staying Sane: How to Keep Your Proverbial Shit Together" is devoted to the issue of wedding stress. "There's no denying that, even if you are doing your way, and really, really taking efforts to follow your own ideas on planning your wedding, it's still going to be an incredibly stressful event. When was the last time you had a party with a multi-thousand dollar budget? And when was the last time you hosted a family reunion?" Stallings emphasizes, "even if you are not getting caught in the trappings of tradition, it's still an incredibly high stress situation." Stallings had her own particular way of handling stress and, in an article posted on the book's concomitant website, titled Marry this Bitches, she offers this very sage advice: go read some world news. "It's just an afternoon party. It's a party. It's a party to celebrate how much you love someone" but, she makes very clear, "it's not starving children. It's not war crimes. It's just a party and as hard as it is to try, try, try to keep that in mind, it's really just a party and there are much bigger things for all of us to wring our hands over."
As you can imagine, Stallings has some terrific words to quell bridezilla-like behavior. "Yes, you will hit stress and yes, people are extra forgiving of you because you are planning a wedding," but, she points out, "there's really no excuse for bridezilla, awful, awful bride behavior because there are a lot of people watching and you are outnumbered and it's really important to always remember that." While it may be your special day, she stresses, "it's also a day that you have invited your extended friends and family to join you and you want to treat those people well and with respect and with the kindness that they deserve." Clearly, Stallings adds, "pitching fits over a slightly droopy centerpiece floral arrangement isn't a respectful, kind way to treat people who have come from afar to honor you and your partner."
And what of the alleged "indiezilla" phenomenon? "I think that all too often that there is this reflex that an offbeat or an indie wedding is just as over the top as a traditional wedding" but, says Stallings, "Offbeat doesn't mean extravagant, it doesn't mean having this ridiculous, huge theme wedding because you want to be different. It means having a wedding that really reflects you."
Promoting her book has taken an alternate path as well and the events are "as much of a comedy event as they are a reading." Does Stallings ponder the irony of becoming a part of the wedding industry? Of course she does. "Now, somehow, despite the fact that I don't really like the wedding industry, somehow now, I am sort of part of it," she observes, "it's kind of ironic that sometimes you end up doing that which you resisted initially." Fortunately, Stallings has chosen to be a very ingenious and positive part of the solution.
Seal Press, $15.95, 225 pages
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