Photos by George Torode and Victoria Nightingale
The offbeat bride: Mia, Social Media Fondler
Her offbeat partner: Martin, Company owner and all-round computer geek
Location of wedding: Fulham Town Hall for the ceremony, Martin’s parents back garden for the party, London, UK
What made our wedding offbeat: For a start, we got engaged in June, and set the date for August. We didn’t see the point in a long engagement since we didn’t want a traditional white wedding. It seemed just a case of organising a party. We made a point of making everyone refer to it as “The Party” and tried very hard to remind everyone it wasn’t a big deal. We had already decided we were going to spend the rest of our lives together — this was just a formality, and an excuse for a big party!
On the other hand, we did want to include lots of our traditions and quirkiness. I am Russian, but was brought up in Scotland, and now live in London. Martin grew up in the English countryside but is half-Scottish. We’re both keen skiers, and had spent the previous winter in Canada doing just that.
Martin’s a computer nerd and I’m obsessed with Doctor Who, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and polka dots. I wanted all of that to somehow be included without being too tacky.
I had a Man of Honour, my bridesmaids didn’t match, and Martin only had one usher, his best man. We didn’t invite anyone except immediate family to the reception, much to a lot of people’s displeasure.
We had our party in Martin’s parents’ back garden. Instead of having a marquee, we had a teepee, which we decorated ourselves with bunting, pom-poms, and balloons. Our centrepieces were potted multicoloured flowers which doubled up as wedding favours since we spray painted “m?m” onto them. We printed our own wedding invitations using an XKCD cartoon strip. [Editor's note: yay for Creative Commons licensing!]. We had no DJ and instead there was a Cilidh band, a bouncy castle, and an old-fashioned bicycle ice cream van.
Tell us about the ceremony: Our ceremony was the bog standard-type of affair. During our party, we had a traditional Russian Bread and Salt ceremony where the groom’s parents welcomed me into their family by presenting me with a loaf of bread and some salt, which Martin and I were supposed to feed to each other. Another family tradition we seemed to have upheld was rain on our wedding day. Martin’s parents had a rainy wedding day too!
Our biggest challenge: My biggest challenge was probably my dress. I had decided to go for a ’50s-style prom dress with polka dots and lots of petticoats that I bought from eBay. My mother on the other hand, had kept a picture of the exact wedding dress she wanted me to have in a drawer by her bed for about ten years, and got very emotional when I refused to get a “real” wedding dress.
I finally agreed to try it on. The problem was that all that my mum had was a picture ripped out of a magazine ten years ago. I had to go on a wild goose chase trying to find this wedding dress. But with my mad search engine skills, I managed to find the dress! I warmed to it because it was made by an independent, local designer. So we went down to the shop to see about trying it on.
As the wedding was about five weeks away at this point, we weren’t very optimistic. But the girls in the shop did everything they could to squeeze me in and it was finished about three days before the wedding. So it was a little stressful, but at least I definitely knew I wasn’t going to change shape before the big day!
The other obstacle to do with the dress was that I didn’t tell my groom that I would be wearing it. I had to go to all my fittings in secret, and he never guessed there was something going on until I walked in to the registry office. The look on his face made it worth all the stress.
My favorite moment: I didn’t think I would get emotional, but when we were pronounced husband and wife I was so happy, I just laughed and laughed. Our recessional song was “So Long and Thanks for all the Fish,” so I think most people thought I was laughing at that, but I was just so happy.
After the wedding when we went back to a hotel, we were so exhausted we decided to just have a bath. But we ended up flooding our room with bathwater and had to run around trying to find all the towels in the room.
My funniest moment: Apart from nearly flooding our wedding night hotel room, the whole reception was hilarious. My dad and his best mate got absolutely plastered on vodka. Since both of them are crazy Russian scientists, they decided to explain to everyone how a thermonuclear reactor works using the samovar (a traditional Russian tea urn) as a prop.
My Dad’s speech was in the form of a PowerPoint presentation because that’s all he’s used to.
My Maid of Honour decided to just propose a toast to honour (to getting on her, to staying on her, and if you can’t come in her, come “honour”) in front of Grandma!
Was there anything you were sure was going to be a total disaster that unexpectedly turned out great? I wasn’t really sure about the cake. I couldn’t make it in advance because it was a sponge, but if it was a disaster, I wouldn’t have time to make another one. I started making it at around 11:30 p.m. the night before the party and had to ice it on the day. My mother-in-law ended up helping me with the icing. She was a total lifesaver because I only then realized I had no idea what I was doing!
What was the most important lesson you learned from your wedding? We really do love each other a hell of a lot, otherwise we could never have survived the stress. While we were both completely calm and laid back about the whole thing, everyone around us was running around like headless chickens. I think if we had a long engagement, we probably would have ended up eloping because six weeks of stress was more than enough!
There were a few people who were overly involved and became upset by our choices. It really got us down, so at that point we decided we weren’t going to listen to what anyone said and just got on with things our way. We were very happy with the result.
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
- Wedding dress: Stephanie Allin
- Flowers: Alison Bentley. I found out the day before that my florist had actually done the flowers for John Barrowman’s wedding. The Doctor Who connection made me squee!
- Photographers: George Torode and Victoria Nightingale. Toey and George were truly fantastic, and my best mate took a lot of photos too.
- Cake toppers: Etsy seller VirtuosityClay. I LOVE them so much!
Enough talk — show me the wedding porn!
To see the slide show, head to Mia & Martin's backyard teepee party wedding.
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We designed and did pretty much everything ourselves. I designed the Save the Dates and invites and the artwork for our beer koozies (viva Adobe Illustrator!). Kyle and I bought all the decor ourselves, and designed all the tabletop decor. 
We had four bands play our wedding so it felt more like a show at our favorite bar than a stuffy wedding. Punk Rock Dance Party! Our wedding party walked down the aisle to “Final Countdown” (when the music started everyone went nuts!); I walked out to “Walk the Line;” and our recessional was the theme from “Rocky!” 
Tell us about the ceremony: Here are our vows, which we obviously wrote ourselves: 
Our biggest challenge: Our biggest challenge was negotiating the guest list. We had to keep it small to be within our budget, but it was hard not inviting people that we really wanted there. Also, lots of people didn’t RSVP so we didn’t know if they were coming or not. 
My favorite moment: We had friends that came from all over for our big day — as far away as Japan! Knowing that people wanted to see us get hitched so much meant a ton to us. 
Was there anything you were sure was going to be a total disaster that unexpectedly turned out great? Our cake! One of my friends told us pretty much the second that we got engaged that she would make our cake as a gift to us. Unfortunately, almost a year later and a month before the wedding, she bailed. We hadn’t even looked into the cost of cakes since we thought it was taken care of and we were shocked by the price! (Especially since we wanted something creative to go with our theme). We pretty much crossed having a cake off our list, until Kyle’s good friend, Becky, came through and delivered us an amazingly rad (and super tasty) cake! 
My advice for offbeat brides: Realize that everything won’t be perfect no matter how OCD you get. People will be late, people will get drunk… roll with it. 
Care to share a few vendor/shopping links?
We got a lot of our decor during Halloween (and at sales after!)
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