Posted on: November 15, 2007
'I Planned a Day I Hope Will Make My Grandkids Laugh’
She didn’t want a white dress. She didn’t want bridesmaids. Ariel Meadow Stallings had issues with just about every wedding tradition in the book. Maybe that’s why, after her own offbeat nuptials, she rewrote the book.
By Christina Owens
CTW Features
The bride, above with the newly formed clan, admits the idea of marriage seemed ‘weird’ to her at first, but she warmed up it. Guests at wedding hula-ed the night away, right.
The Couple:
Ariel Meadow Stallings and Andreas Tillman Fetz
The Day:
Saturday, Aug. 4, 2004 6 p.m.
The Place:
Bainbridge Island, Wash.
The wedding was at a bed and breakfast, Holly Lane Gardens, and the reception was just down the dirt road on my mom’s property, Sacred Grove.
In Attendance:
About 40 guests. I wrote my book “Offbeat Bride” (Seal Press, 2006) as one giant thank-you to all my friends and family.
Planning:
It took us about six months. It was very much a collaborative process. We picked the things that were important to us.
A Change of Heart:
I foresaw gold monogrammed napkins and a princess dress and knew it just wasn’t in the cards. Marriage seemed weird to us with our gay families and both of our sets of parents divorced. But one Christmas the three lesbians in the room (my mother, aunt and aunt’s partner) all commented on the irony that Andreas and I – a straight couple who could get married – would choose not to enjoy the rights for which so many committed gay and lesbian couples fight. By the time our third wedding anniversary rolled around, my thoughts on getting married had shifted.
The Community:
What we needed more than more stuff was friends and family to help us make the wedding fabulous. If our wedding had a theme, that was the theme. Most of the gifts we received were gifts of time and skill. The guests were really a part of the wedding. It was a kind of community endeavor. There were parts of our wedding that were beautiful in ways that I never could have thought of. There were really amazing gifts from people that were way better than a set of towels.
Ariel and her friends spent a few months making the “muglies” that the couple gave guests as favors, left. Below, the happy en route to saying ‘I do.’
Opening the Presents Early:
Our caterer and bartender were gifts from friends in Los Angeles. She cooked. He poured drinks. Two friends served as kind of wedding coordinators. One handled the reception and one handled the wedding and dinner venue. That was their gift to us. Two friends helped with location management, handling crews of people putting up decorations. One friend acted as bridal bodyguard. There were people out in the woods collecting ferns and cedar boughs to make table displays. One family stuffed tomatoes. I’m a big proponent of creative wedding parties.
The Accommodations:
Our guests started showing up Friday night and showed up with tents. People camped out on my mom’s property.
The Dress:
I had a bustier-style purple corset top with a matching ribbon headpiece worn around two large buns in my hair, and layered, green-and-white skirts. Later, my mother wore my corset at her wedding.
The Rehearsal Dinner:
A campfire with marshmallows.
The Ceremony:
Our ceremony was very short, only about 15 minutes from start to finish. The traditional wedding just doesn’t really offer me much.
The ‘Oops’:
I forgot my vows half way through. I stumbled on one line that I just couldn’t quite remember. But our minister, my godmother, had given me a tip beforehand that it was perfectly fine to pause. So I just stopped for a second and took a breath and paused to see if I could remember what came next. I couldn’t, so I just went on to the next sentence.
The Save:
The truth is that I forgot my vows, but many of the guests thought I had paused because I was choked up. It was seen as a really touching emotional moment. This apparently was the point at which all the guests started crying. For me it wasn’t touching at all, it was really more panic-inducing.
Something Borrowed:
We actually really liked the Jewish tradition of Yichud, where immediately after the ceremony the bride and the groom have private time together. More than anything else it was just us having a quiet moment, just the two of us. So we imported a tradition.
The Menu:
A vegan buffet. Andreas decreed that we would have an all-vegan dinner at our wedding. I put up a tiny argument (“But I’m not vegan!”) but ultimately I sympathize with the fact that he is very rarely in an environment where everything is vegan. If there’s any event that should cater to his diet, it should be ... our wedding.
The Cake:
Our wedding cake was a gift from my best friend in high school who’s a baker. I thought, as long as it’s carrot cake and it’s my friend making it, who cares? The cake was made in the shape of two rings intersected almost like an infinity symbol. One of the rings was vegan for Andreas and one of the rings was not vegan, and we fed each other cake.
Stemless Glassless Glassware:
Our wedding favors were these things we called “muglies.” My friends and I spent a couple months before the wedding buying old mugs from second-hand stores. We put stickers on each of the mugs and wrote an explanation. And that was their drink container for the night. It was sort of this way of saying these aren’t just ugly mismatched mugs that cost 25 cents, this is a symbol of the beautiful diversity and eclecticism of our family and friends.
They Danced Until:
3 a.m. to music provided by three different DJs.
The Year of the Wedding:
We wanted it to feel like 2004.This is a slice of exactly where Andreas and I were when we got married. For some people, the motivation for planning a wedding is, ‘I don’t want my grandchildren to laugh at my pictures.’ I want my grandkids to laugh.
