Unlike most males in America, I already have my entire wedding planned out in extreme detail. This is not because I am anxious to get married, but rather because I want this special day to be deeply rooted in everyone’s memory as The Most Peculiar Wedding ever!

My wedding is as follows:

The Locations:

The wedding is structured like a tour and takes place over the course of one week. Instead of requiring the guests to travel long distances to meet us, we will travel to meet the guests. The tentative locations are as follows:
Monday Morning: San Francisco
Monday Afternoon: Los Angeles
Tuesday: Chicago
Wednesday: Boston
Thursday Morning: New York
Thursday Afternoon: New Jersey
Friday: Florida
Saturday Morning: Trinidad
Saturday Afternoon: Tobago

The Wedding Party:

The wedding party will consist of my bride, her maid of honor, her bridesmaids and me. I won’t have a best man because I believe that the groom should be the “BEST” man at his own wedding—no one can be a better man than me at my own wedding. I’m toying with the idea of having a zebra as a groomsman, but I am not married to the idea yet. My brother will be part of the wedding with tithe title of “deputy.” He won’t walk down the aisle and he won’t have an outfit– he’ll simply be “deputy.”

The Processional:

A slow loris will be my ring bearer and he will walk down the aisle with one ring on each arm as they remain outstretched in the air (like this guy). In lieu of a flower girl, we will have 100 baby-blue, baby bunnies that will run down the aisle in the cutest way possible. This will require the coordination of an animal trainer who will train the bunnies to run in perfect synchronicity at 2.5mph. After the baby-blue, baby bunnies, the DJ will cue my wedding march, which will be the rap song, “Here Comes the Groom (remix)” and I will ride down the aisle on a white horse, zebra, giraffe or elephant wearing a tuxedo and a fitted cap. Then the bridal party will walk down the aisle in their usual fashion and the bride will walk down the aisle in any way that she’d like, to any music that she’d like because I want to give her the freedom to do whatever she wants in her wedding*.

The Ceremony:

Our ceremony will last a total of 5-10 minutes. I will write my own vows, which will include the phrase “I promise to only purchase Apple computers, unless I start my own computer company.” When the pastor says, “you may kiss the bride” I will kiss my bride, pinky swear, and then do our secret handshake. Immediately after the sealing of vows, we will turn to the crowd of 10,000+ people and simply say “thank you” as we prepare for our exit.

The Exit:

At the end of the wedding, my deputy will bring a Ducati motorcycle to the stage and my wife will tear off the train from her dress. Then my wife and I will mount the motorcycle and speed directly down the center aisle and out of the church. Then we will drive to an awaiting helicopter, which will take us to the airport, where our jet will take us to the next city on the wedding tour.

The Reception:

My wedding will not have a reception. Everyone will receive a meal ticket for $5 worth of products at a local fast food establishment. This will stimulate the economy and give all of my friends a nice-ish venue to discuss the wedding. A fleet of trucks will be parked outside of the church to transport our wedding gifts to our new house in New Jersey.

I’m not sure when this wedding will take place, but you’re invited! Be sure to stay tuned to this website to find out more details as the time draws near! I am not sure who the lucky lady will be, but one thing I know for sure is that she will be a fan of Peculiar weddings!!

* Within reason, as long as it doesn’t conflict with everything that was laid out in this wedding plan.

I recently finished one of the funnest design experiences that I’ve had in life, which resulted in the creation of my newest product— “Peculiar Steps.” With these shoes, my painstaking attention to the subtle design details made the creation process last a total of five months…five wonderful, sleepless, caramel macchiato fueled months.

A year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to customize my favorite sneaker on the planet: the Nike Air Force One. In doing so, I had to make sure that the shoe wasn’t only attractive, but also easy to clean, created with quality materials and could be worn with a variety of outfits. It took me a total of about five hours to design this sneaker and I had a deep reasoning behind every color and material that I chose. The shoe was intended to be striking, but yet subdued without drawing a lot of attention, and I enjoyed designing it.

After this experience, I wanted complete freedom to design a shoe shoe out of anything that tickled my fancy—even play doe! I started my search for shoe companies that would allow me the freedom to be the artistic, control freak that I am, and after interviewing numerous companies I settled on a good match. Shortly after initiating the business relationship, we worked together on a daily basis for weeks in order to turn my concepts into reality, but in the process there were two main challenges that emerged:
1) Language: The company was located in China, which meant that there was a slight language barrier when discussing complex terms. As a result, I picked up a little bit of Mandarin Chinese and they learned A LOT of English. This language barrier caused some pretty hilarious telephone calls where I couldn’t stop myself from hysterically laughing in the middle of our conversations. 對不起!
2) Time: Due to the location, there was a 12 hour time difference between us. This caused me to spend long nighttime hours at a Starbucks that I grew fond of, which was 30 miles away from my house . This also meant that they had to work longer hours to accommodate my schedule.

The result of our long hours of work resulted in this shoe that I call “Peculiar Steps: Volume 1.” As with the majority of my designs, this shoe features a high-contrast design of a white rubber sole and a black genuine leather upper. It is designed as a fashionable casual loafer that features a slight sheen to the leather and a bright white sole that is easy to clean with soap and water on a rag. These shoes have extra cushion on the inside so they’re comfortable to wear and it has the Peculiar PPL insignia on the insole.

Since this is my first Peculiar shoe from scratch, I ordered a limited production run of 50 pairs of shoes. Of those 50 shoes, I will be donating a few of them to high-potential, Peculiar PPL who are in-need, and I will sell the remaining pairs on PeculiarPPL.com beginning Friday, April 13th. I call this shoe “Volume 1″ because there will be additional footwear products in the future, in which I will use the lessons learned while creating this shoe to improve on the final product. In addition to creating a pair of shoes that I’m proud of, I am currently working with the manufacturing company in order to enhance their order fulfillment and quality assurance process. It feels good to have such a great impact with something that started as a seemingly impossible dream

I started this process thinking that it would be incredibly difficult and nearly impossible to create a shoe if I wasn’t a shoe industry professional, but after breaking the barriers between myself and a new industry, I am confident that I can do it again and again. This aligns perfectly with the vision of the Peculiar PPL brand, which is “To make High-Quality, Peculiar Goods for High-Quality, Peculiar PPL” Because of this, I will continue to match the best quality goods with a great customer experience in order to keep making steps (pun intended) towards a well-rounded product line of essential, Peculiar Goods for life!

This shoe is the beginning of something great and I’m enjoying the journey!

Quite a Peculiar week!