Jo-Anne Stayner was planning to get married at Jericho Beach in August 2007, a fact she told the saleswomen at a wedding-dress store in Toronto. The 31-year-old had traveled there on business, and wanted to check out the collections in Canada’s largest city.

“They kept bringing me these big dresses with sequins and rhinestones on them,” Stayner told the Georgia Straight during an interview at Wed Bridal (3882 Main Street), the store she opened in October 2007, partly in response to her own experience of trying to buy a dress. “I was wondering if any of them had been on a beach before.” She had asked to see the less-fussy bridesmaid dresses in ivory, but the saleswomen refused to show them to her. For Stayner, that was the defining moment. She knew she had to open her own store.

Stayner, like many local brides, is trend-aware but fiercely independent. Her own wedding was a blend of the bridal magazine–promoted “trends” of the year and her own individual tastes. Although still in the minority, beach weddings are not unusual in Vancouver. About half of couples are married by a nonreligious official, according to the B.C. Vital Statistics Agency. More and more weddings are happening in low-key places: city parks, humble back yards, and yes, public beaches. It’s a “trend” you won’t find covered by most wedding-industry media, which usually focus on extravaganzas.

The covers of bridal magazines this season are bent on defining what the trends are. Lace, engraved invitations, bold colours, eco-friendly weddings, cupcakes, yellow, and Polaroid guest books all show up on “trends of 2008” lists.

In the Lower Mainland, though, we’re a different crew. Our tastes rarely hark back, as so many wedding mags do, to the “old money” look of the U.S. East Coast. Instead, local brides mix it up with cross-cultural influences, nature, and true “green” choices, alongside the mass-marketed visions of Martha Stewart and others.

For Judy Zhu, a Vancouver wedding coordinator who specializes in Canadian-born-Chinese and fusion events, mainstream trends are a little irrelevant. “More traditional couples do not have trends,” she told the Straight in a phone interview. “The cake, the dress—Chinese [Canadians] don’t really care about what’s going on.”

That said, modern Chinese Canadian weddings have developed trends of their own, Zhu said. The morning starts with traditional tea ceremonies at the homes of the bride’s and groom’s parents. Then, a western-style wedding ceremony is performed; there is no traditional Chinese equivalent, she said. Receptions, Zhu noted, are usually held in big Chinese restaurants. Brides need three dresses: a traditional, closely tailored cheongsam for the morning, a western-style white wedding dress for the ceremony and the beginning of the reception, and a dancing dress—usually in the wedding’s theme colour—for the party. As there’s little mainstream media aimed at negotiating the details of a respectful fusion wedding, Zhu’s clients look to blogs for advice.

As for her same-sex clients, trends usually go out the window.

“They really break with tradition,” said Zhu, whose company can be found at www.kitsfish.com/. “I had one lesbian couple who are very romantic, but they didn’t want any white at their wedding. It was all red and black.”

Still, according to Stayner, most of Vancouver’s diverse couples are at least slightly influenced by the wedding industry. Most brides, she said, buy a thick stack of magazines for reference and ideas.

“Colour schemes, favours, decorations—these are all things people look to the magazines for,” she said. “But your dress and your location are the least vulnerable to being influenced. If you dream of a church wedding with a big poofy dress, that’s what you’re going to have.”

Stayner’s business specializes in designer gowns, from Palazzo, Modern Trousseau, Liancarlo, and Renella De Fina. The dresses in the collections she carries reflect some of the trend hype: lace, champagne and blush colours, smaller silhouettes. But although bold colours are a runway hit this season, Stayner doesn’t think they’ll be a hit with actual brides.

“I think it’s hard to pull people away from the white dress,” she said. “Even when I was on a buying trip, I talked to a designer about a couple of bold-coloured dresses I loved. She said, ‘They’re just editorial.’ They were just designed for the runway and magazines.”

In other words, even the designers aren’t really expecting to sell their vision. So Vancouver’s wedding trendsetters are truly the individual brides of 2008.