Are you ready for something really different and pretty flipping spectacular today? Well, my dear, you are in the right place because Gregg and Lisa’s desert wedding is guaranteed to blow your socks off. They were married outdoors, on public land, and set up a little ‘camp’ where they they celebrated with their friends and family. The entire wedding cost them less than $5000.
“Our wedding was a desert party wedding with Burning Man and Asian influences”, Lisa explained, “We served sake at the bar and let off lanterns. Gregg also really wanted us to get married on a platform, I didn’t understand how tall he wanted it until he stood on our landing in our townhouse…about 8 feet off the ground! I knew it was going to be epic. He wanted to put our love on a pedestal! So we obtained permits with the BLM in the Dixie National Forest in Utah, a chainsaw, and drove 3 different times to cut (already down) cedar wood to build it. Gregg and our unofficial best man Edwin built the alter on site with no screws or nails, just parachute chord.”
“As this was both our second times to get married, we didn’t really feel the need to do ‘what was expected’ as some do when they get married the first time”, she continued. “We just wanted it to be outside and have a big dance party after! We are hippies and just wanted the wedding to reflect our love. We perform enough as it is in the show we work in so we just wanted it to be meaningful. I guess it was kind of like Burning Man, but we weren’t able to burn our alter like we planned because it was too windy.”
“It’s hard to pick just one favorite moment because the whole thing went pretty well (considering one of the porta-potties tried to blow away, one of the shade structures was demolished, and our wedding certificate was found the next morning trying to fly away!) But probably when our good friend and poet Sean Critchfield read a poem he wrote for us. It was so beautiful and from the heart, I think everyone had tears in their eyes. I loved our guest book too, we made a wooden heart that hung from the alter and had people sign it. We now have it hanging in our home instead of shoved in a box somewhere.”
“We spent most of our money on power tools to build our alter!” she laughed, “that and our photographer. I wanted great photos (who doesn’t?) so that’s where I splurged and I couldn’t be happier with the shots we got. We saved cash by not having to rent chairs or having to pay for a land permit. We asked everyone to bring camp chairs to sit in. The DJs were all friends so they were kind enough to offer to play for free. The only thing I would have wanted to have done differently was to not worry about the set up of the site, where the bar would be or where the alter would get set up. That is what we argued most about and in the end didn’t really matter too much. We overestimated how much food we would need, so ordering less would have been a good idea too!”
