Dos and Don’ts for the Maid of Honor
Do: Offer to help the bride. Planning a wedding is a huge job, and no one should have to do it all alone. Be a good maid of honor by offering to help your bride with jobs large and small. See if she needs someone to pick up her grandmother at the airport for her bridal shower or offer to help her address and stamp the wedding invitations. Talk to florists with her, go with her to shop for wedding jewelry and her bridal gown, and help her tie ribbons on favor boxes. It’s all part of the job of being a best friend or sister, let alone a maid of honor too.
Don’t: Push your opinions on her. If there is one piece of wedding advice all maids of honor need, it is not to overwhelm the bride with opinions. Sure, she values your input, but it is still her wedding, not yours. A good maid of honor will listen and help the bride plan her idea of the perfect wedding, not what the maid of honor thinks is perfect. If people start calling you a “maidzilla”, you know it is time to back off!
Do: Give suggestions for the bridesmaid dresses and jewelry. Picking a bridesmaid dress can be a very stressful job for a bride. She has a vision in mind, she wants your dresses to match her dresses, she wants you all to like it, and so forth. Finding one dress that meets all these requirements and is also flattering and affordable is a monumental task. Ask the bride what she is generally interested in seeing the bridesmaids wear, and then help her out by finding some samples for her to check out.
Don’t: Act like the final choice about the bridesmaid dresses is yours. Being made of honor does not give you the final say about what the bridesmaid dresses will be. That decision can only be made by the bride. Give her your input, but understand that in the end, being maid of honor means wearing whatever dress your friend the bride chooses. Being a great maid of honor means telling the bride you love the dress she chose, no matter what you privately may think of it!
Filed under Bridesmaid Jewelry, Wedding Planning | Tags: bridesmaid dresses, Bridesmaid Jewelry, maid of honor, wedding advice | Comment (0)Spring Wedding Bouquets in Every Color
Pink: The most feminine of all colors, pink is a lovely choice for a spring bouquet. Lush pink peonies are a favorite flower of late spring brides. They combine wonderfully with fresh garden roses to make gorgeous bouquets. Ruffly pink sweet peas are a special blossom to include in a vintage inspired wedding, while vivid Stargazer lilies are great for a big showy arrangement. A simple hand-tied bouquet of tulips in shades ranging from ballet to rose to deep pink is a lovely classic style for a spring bride. Other pink choices include anemones, ranunculus, and delicate lily-of-the-valley.
Yellow: As cheerful and fresh as a sunny spring afternoon, there is something about yellow that is just perfect for a spring wedding. Many of the best loved spring blossoms come in wonderful lemon or sunshine shades, including tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths. Papery ranunculus are also available in yellow, as are creamy garden roses. One of my favorite spring wedding planning ideas is to combine cheerful yellow blossoms with blue flowers in the bouquets for the bridesmaids.
Blue: More rare than other flower colors, blue is a highly sought after hue for floral arrangements. Spring is a bit early for blue hydrangeas, but you can get anemones, delphiniums, and hyacinths in shades of blue. Small muscari (also known as grape hyacinth) are one of the most intense naturally blue flowers available, and they work very well in mixed arrangements.
Purple: Purple has become a very popular color for weddings in recent years. Purple flowers can range from pale lilac to deep aubergine, and everything in between. Some lovely spring blossoms are available in shades of purple, including sweet peas, hyacinths, and tulips. Fragrant lilacs grow in the most marvelous shades of purple, of course, but the season for them is limited and they are quick to wilt out of water so they require care.
White: Of course many brides like the classic all white bouquet, and you can create a delightful springtime arrangement using white blossoms. The most classic of all blossoms is white lily-of-the-valley, which are available in May. Tie a small posy with a wide sage green satin ribbon for a heavenly little bouquet to carry with a lace gown. Other springtime favorites such as peonies, ranunculus, sweet peas, hyacinths, and tulips are also readily available in white.
Filed under Wedding Planning | Tags: spring wedding bouquets, spring weddings, wedding bouquets, wedding planning ideas | Comment (0)How to Match Your Bridal Shoes to Your Wedding Dress
When you start shopping for your bridal shoes, you want to keep in mind certain things about your wedding gown to get a good match. The color of your dress is one thing. If you wish to match it, definitely get a swatch you can take shopping with you. However, do not feel like you are limited to white or ivory shoes; a lot of brides these days are making a splash with blue, green, red, or metallic footwear. It is a fun way to add personality to your attire and also makes the shoes more likely to be worn again after the wedding. And if you are splurging on a to-to-die-for pair of designer heels, every little bit of justification for the price helps!
The style of your dress is also very important, particularly if you are wearing a vintage inspired gown. Pumps, slingbacks, peep toes, and D’orsay pumps look wonderful with classic 1950s inspired wedding dresses. If you wearing a flapper inspired beaded sheath, you might consider a high heeled Mary Jane in a champagne silk color. More cutting edge modern gowns can carry off really wild shoes, so shop with abandon. You can consider high heels with a slight platform (a high platform tends to make it hard to walk without stomping), crystal encrusted stiletto heels, patterned shoes, or whatever else captures your fancy.
The shoe fabric is another thing to consider. It should complement the material of your gown, but not necessarily match it exactly. If your gown is made of silk, a silk pump or sandal would definitely work. Dresses made of matte fabrics like crepe or chiffon tend to look better with non-shiny crepe fabric shoes. But you can also experiment with interesting textures. A simple A-line strapless gown would be great with an exquisite pair of lace heels. Or choose a metallic brocade to wear with a mikado dress. Generally speaking, if your gown is very textured, your shoes should be less so. Lace pumps with a lace dress would be overdone.
Look for shoes that tie in with the embellishments on your gown and in your bridal jewelry. If you are wearing a dress with a crystal belt and sparkly cz bridal jewelry, choose footwear with a gorgeous crystal brooch on the toe. If you are wearing a shredded chiffon gown and a feather fascinator tucked into your hair, opt for shoes with a fun feather accent. Brides who are pulling a signature color into their gown and bridal jewelry and also use that hue for their footwear. It is a great way to tie your whole look together.
Filed under Bridal Jewelry, Wedding Planning | Tags: Bridal Jewelry, bridal shoes, wedding accessories, wedding shoes | Comment (0)Determining the Ideal Timing for Your Wedding Day
The start time for your wedding ceremony may well be set in stone by your church. If they only do ceremonies on 1pm on Saturdays, then a 1pm ceremony it is. Knowing that, you will have to find a reception venue that can host your reception at a reasonably close time to the end of the ceremony. A typical marriage ceremony at a church runs for about 45 minutes to an hour. After that, there will usually be a receiving line outside and people may hang around and chat outside the church for a few minutes. The newlyweds and bridal party will also have pictures done at this point.
Long gaps between the ceremony and reception are often caused by extended photo sessions. A good way to prevent that issue is by doing a lot of the wedding pictures before the start of the ceremony. Some couples like to do a “first look”, where the bride and groom can get together to take some photographs before their ceremony. If you do not want your groom to see you before the ceremony, you can still do all of the formal pictures with your bridesmaids and immediate family to get those out of the way. That will limit the time you need to do pictures following the ceremony so you can keep the day moving forward on schedule. Besides, it is nice to get some pictures when you have just gotten into your bridal gown and elegant wedding jewelry while your hair and makeup are freshly done.
Cocktail hours typically last for 45 minutes to an hour. Anything less than that feels rushed, but if it runs too much longer, people drink too much. After about an hour, people are definitely ready to move on to the main part of the reception. Everyone moves into the dining room, and the bride and groom make their grand entrance. A lot of newlyweds will do their first dance immediately upon entering the room and being announced, while others will wait until after dinner to do the spotlight dances. You will need to decide if you will open the floor up to general dancing if you do your first dance in the beginning of the reception or move from there directly to the meal. People do not like to be kept waiting too long for dinner, so limit how long those pre-meal dances last.
The total length of your reception will be anywhere from three to six hours, depending on whether you serve a full meal or not, if there is dancing, and if you have a late night snack or Viennese hour. When you schedule your day well, your wedding will flow seamlessly from one part to the next, and everyone will have a fantastic time!
Filed under Wedding Jewelry, Wedding Planning | Tags: Wedding Day, Wedding Jewelry, Wedding Planning, wedding timeline | Comment (0)Wedding Dress Regrets
Shopping for a bridal gown, veil, and wedding jewelry is one of the highlights of planning a wedding. In fact, many brides have been dreaming about their wedding gown since they were little girls. But what happens if you buy a wedding gown and start having second thoughts about it? These are some tips on how to handle wedding dress regrets.
If there is one piece of advice every bridal consultant wishes engaged women would listen to, it is stop looking at wedding gowns once you have picked yours! There will always, always be another beautiful gown to admire, and you could shop forever, but then you would have nothing to wear on your wedding day. After you have placed a deposit on your bridal gown, the best thing you can do for yourself is to close the dress shopping chapter of your wedding planning. And besides, you will still get to shop for wedding jewelry, a veil, a headpiece, shoes, and lots of other gorgeous accessories.
But what if you just can’t shake the feeling that you have made a bad choice and ordered the wrong gown for your wedding? 99% of the time, this second guessing is simply pre-wedding jitters. Call up the bridal salon and make an appointment to try on the sample gown again. The chances are very strong that as soon as you put it on you will remember exactly what you loved about it. If you still are not sure, try on a few other dresses, and you will probably be reminded that your original dress is still the one for you.
With all these tips in mind, there might still be occasions when brides come to realize that they have definitely chosen a wedding gown that they no longer love. At that point, it is time to re-select. You only have one wedding day (hopefully!), and you deserve to feel incredible for it. You will also be living with your wedding photos for the rest of your life, and it would be a terrible shame to hate the way you look in your pictures. Some salons may allow you to transfer a deposit from one gown to another, but most will not. In that case, you can sell the first gown online and treat yourself to the wedding dress that you really love. Just promise yourself that you will really stop shopping after that!
Filed under Wedding Jewelry, Wedding Planning | Tags: bridal gowns, wedding dress regrets, wedding dresses, wedding gowns, Wedding Jewelry | Comment (0)