Curator of the Moment: Offbeat Bride

We were lucky to pair up with some of our favorite advocates of personalized wedding and engagement jewelry and have them hand select some of their favorite gemvara pieces to showcase on our homepage. And since their offbeat world is so fascinating, we decided to have them tell us about it in their own words.

Tell us little bit about yourself and how Offbeat Bride was started:

“I started working with Ariel and her team as Assistant Editor for Offbeat Bride a little over a year ago. I work from my home office in Chicago, Illinois as a web consultant and designer. Offbeat Bride was founded by Ariel Meadow Stallings in 2007 as a vehicle for her book Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides. The blog eclipsed the book and Ariel had to bring on more staff to accommodate the growing audience.

What initially began as a book promotional project slowly grew into a completely different beast — a blog updated daily with tons of “wedding porn” (photos from real people’s really offbeat weddings), advice, and inspiration for couples who are working to create authentic weddings full of intention and personality. It’s now our pleasure to serve up inspiration for over 480,000 readers every month.”

Offbeat Bride is a part of the Offbeat Empire of sites including OffbeatEmpire.com, OffbeatHome.com, and OffbeatMama.com.

What is your favorite Real Wedding featured on Offbeat Bride?

Since I get to edit each real wedding submission, I get attached to quite a few. But if I had to choose, there was one elopement that had me swooning from its charm. The amazing video of the day certainly helped. Laura Beth & Jesse’s spontanous fun-filled elopement and “drunch” wedding.  Photo by Jennie Andrews

I also have to include a masquerade wedding featuring some fantastic artwork made by the groom. He hand-carved the statues based on a popular “Doctor Who” episode for their décor, and it looked incredible, as the entire wedding did. Phantom meets Halloween in this DIY masquerade wedding in Florida.  Photo by Palm Beach Photography

What are your favorite wedding trends for 2012?

I love seeing brides and grooms choose their attire based on loving the outfit and its ability to be re-worn. This gives us lots of short dresses, quirky suits, colorful dresses, etc to feature. It really lends some variety to our featured weddings and allows the bride and groom to choose something that really fits their personality. (photo by 2 Brides)

Additionally, I love how couples are incorporating other activities into their receptions: lawn games, karaoke, video games (go go Rock Band!), and even building a Rube Goldberg machine at one wedding! Photo by Kyle Hepp

How did you select the pieces for the Offbeat Bride Gemvara curator collection?

I tried to tailor the selections to traits I associate with our readers: fiercely independent and totally creative. Gemvara is ideal for personalization. Ultimately, a lot of colored gems and mixed metals came to mind.

• How important is customization and personalization when it comes to planning a wedding?

For readers of our site, it’s usually the ultimate goal. Almost all of our real weddings mention the desire to inject their personalities into a fairly rigid institution. We are continually surprised and inspired by the brainpower and creative spirits of our brides and grooms. When it comes to wedding bands, engagement rings, and wedding jewelry, it’s the same story. They don’t want a cookie cutter piece when they have the ability to make their mark with their own design choices.