Micarah Tewers wore three dresses on her wedding day, and she made every one of them herself. The reception gown, feathers and all, cost about $17. Then there are the shoes, which might be the sweetest detail of the whole day: Dan sculpted them into birds and finished them with feathers her pet bird had shed over the years.
More than three million people subscribe to Micarah’s YouTube channel to watch her sew, and Dan is a sculptor and the director of the Mazza Museum of International Art from Picture Books at the University of Findlay, so the two of them built their wedding the way they build everything: by hand, with a bird or a turtle hidden in nearly every detail.
“Everything was very historically inspired,” Micarah says. “The ceremony leaned sort of Victorian.” That ceremony was at St Michael’s Downtown Chapel in Findlay, Ohio, the church down the street from her childhood home, and the reception, which was meant to feel like a Renaissance feast, took over The Hardin County Armory in Kenton. Caroline Stiers of Asteria Photography photographed the day.
Getting Ready
Micarah did her own hair and makeup, a call she worried she might regret and ended up glad she made. “I think the silence and solitude in those first couple hours of the morning were the perfect fuel for such a long, extroverted, exciting day,” she says. Her bird was right there beside her the whole time.
The road to this morning was bumpy. An emergency surgery put Micarah in the hospital on their original wedding date, the wedding was postponed, and when their marriage license expired during her recovery she turned the hospital gown into a getting-ready outfit and a garter, then wore the outfit to renew the license. “Seeing as how the material for the garter cost more than the entire wedding itself (I wasn’t on Dan’s health insurance yet), we decided not to throw it,” she says. “I’m hoping the garter can be passed down for many generations, ya know, to really get our money’s worth.”
The Ceremony Dress
The ceremony dress is Micarah’s take on the 1870s, and the flowers covering it did not come from a florist. They came off an old centerpiece that sat on her family’s dinner table while she was growing up. The boned corset bodice and the wide off-the-shoulder band are the period scaffolding; the flowers are the part that is only hers, clustered at the shoulder and the hip where a Victorian dressmaker would have put silk roses anyway. Same placement, different roses: hers came from home.
Tucked in with the roses and dahlias in her bouquet are feathers, too: some her pet bird has shed, and some she saved from every chicken and duck she has loved over the years.
She also designed, sewed, and dyed every bridesmaid’s corset from thrifted fabric, in burgundy, copper, teal, and blush, and made smaller ones for the flower girls.
Dan’s Look
Dan wore a retired theater costume sewn by Kathy Newell: a crimson tailcoat with black velvet lapels and a tortoise brooch, his half of the birds-and-turtles thread. His sister Adrienne made the ring bearer’s suit.
How They Met
Their story starts at the cutting counter of a craft store, where Micarah worked. Dan walked up and asked for ten yards of red felt so he could make a Santa hat for a giant lake monster sculpture. “Needless to say he caught my attention and I never stopped thinking about him,” she says. Years later she moved into his neighborhood, went roller skating, and “literally crashed into him! That’s how we reconnected.” And the lake monster is still around. They held their rehearsal dinner right underneath it.
“He dug me a pond!” Micarah says of the proposal. She’s a big fan of Tangled and The Little Mermaid, especially the “Kiss the Girl” scene, so Dan dug a pond in his backyard by hand, built a boat to look like the ones in those films, floated it, and proposed to her in it.
They skipped the limo and rode to the church in Micarah’s RV, playing Bananagrams the whole way there.
The Ceremony
“Getting married feels like the most natural thing in the world,” Micarah says. “We went through so much together; especially the month before the wedding. Dan saved my life by being my advocate in the hospital and he nursed me back to health after. So to me, he was truly a husband (and an amazing one at that) before we ever even said ‘I Do.’”
Somewhere between the altar and these steps there was a moment with no camera in it.
Our Favorite Memory
For me is was the moment we had alone together right after the ceremony, when it hit me that we were truly finally married. For our guests, though, I think it was the father-daughter-hoverboard dance.
The Reception Gown
The reception gown was sewn from secondhand fabrics and antique feathers, and Micarah puts the total cost at around $17.
Where the ceremony dress leaned Victorian, this one reaches back three more centuries. The Elizabethan ruff is the cue everyone recognizes, and rendering it in white feathers instead of starched linen turns it from costume into wedding dress: feathers move, they catch light, and they tie the collar to the birds in every other corner of the day. Underneath, ivory-on-ivory damask, with silver beading and lacing up the front.
The Armory was chosen for everything it did not dictate. “They allowed so many freedoms as far as catering, decorating and drink services,” Micarah says. “With us both being artists, a blank canvas is the most exciting thing you could hand us!”
A few weeks after the wedding, they got dressed up all over again for more portraits with Caroline. “I was so present and excited to live in the moment on our actual wedding day that posing for pictures wasn’t at the forefront of my mind,” she says. “It gives you more time to think about what shots you really want, and takes away some of that stress/pressure on the wedding day itself.”
Take a closer look at those shoes. Dan sculpted them into birds, and every feather on them came from Micarah’s own bird.
The Renaissance Feast
“We wanted the reception, on the other hand, to feel like a Renaissance feast,” Micarah says. A fully armored knight showed guests to their seats, the DJ worked the night in a court jester costume, and the drink servers wore ye olde tavern attire. Dan drew a custom family crest for the invitations; Micarah turned it into hanging tapestries, and Dan turned it into the sculpture above the antique thrones the two of them reupholstered.
They walked in to a medieval cover of “Gangsta’s Paradise.”
Our Musical Choices
There were two cakes. Dan sculpted a large prop cake, and Micarah’s friend Lynnae baked the one they actually cut. Dinner was a buffet from Grape Leaf diner out of Toledo.
The Afterparty Dress
Dress three is an homage to Barbie Swan Lake: strapless tulle, tea-length, feathers at the bodice, a bird crown and faux-ballet shoes. Short enough to dance in for hours.
In one corner sat a table of art supplies, blank paper, and coloring pages Dan drew of their own story: the craft store, the time they were chased by an elk, the proposal in the pond. What was not in the room was gifts. Micarah is a recovering hoarder and was adamant that no gifts could come into her home, and she says that turned out to be surprisingly controversial.
It started with the bridal shower, which she announced as lunch and games, no gifts or cards. “Some people told me I needed to reconsider. A few even requested that I cancel the shower due to the fear that it’d be too awkward without gifts! I had a lot of good cries about it,” she says. “I was so afraid of being rude, or being perceived as rude.” She went ahead with it. “Everyone had a fabulous time! I have not regretted it for a second. (Added bonus: no stress of writing thank-you cards!)”
The Father-Daughter Dance
Then the hoverboards came out, and her dad had one too.
Her advice is the only part of this wedding that is not elaborate.
Our Advice
Sounds cliche, but focus on what matters. Ask yourselves what will you — and your guests— actually remember years from now? What do you want to remember?
Congratulations, Micarah and Dan! All the best from GWS.
Wedding Vendors
Photography: Asteria Photography // Venue: The Hardin County Armory
