Fun New Wedding Show: “Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta”

I am a sucker for wedding shows in general, and especially the ones which show the brides shopping for their gowns. If you love seeing brides try on mermaids, ballgowns, and all the rest in the quest for that one perfect wedding dress, then there is a new show you will love. The fun new wedding show of the season is “Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta”.

Southerners love a good wedding! This must be true based on the multi-generational clans which accompany the brides to Bridals by Lori in Atlanta. If picking out a dress to please your mom seems daunting, imagine also having to please your grandmother, your aunt, your sisters, your best friend, and oh yeah – yourself! It is a major undertaking, and sometimes it is a miracle if the bride finds a dress that the whole family can agree on.

The families on “Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta” are opinionated! And they are not shy about expressing their feelings on the bridal gowns, veils, and wedding jewelry, either. On one recent episode I saw, the bride was a stunning Atlanta Falcons cheerleader who was seeking something to wear for an outdoor wedding at an historic style location. But did the bride’s mom care about any of that? No way! The mother of the bride had decided that if fitted was good, skin tight was better and that if delicate beading was good, than an all-out sparkle explosion was the only way to go. The staff at Bridals by Lori got “madder than a wet hen” watching the mother shoot down everything her daughter liked, while the patient bride went home empty handed.

Sometimes those great big families can pull together to support the bride, even if it takes them a while to come around. That is one of the things that is the most fun about “Say Yes to the Dress Atlanta”. When a bride has tried on a gazillion gowns and she is about to tear her hair out, suddenly the fashion director or consultant pulls out a dark horse: a gown that is nothing like what the bride thinks she wants. She slips it on and the magic happens: moms start crying, stern grandmothers melt, and sisters cheer. This is the moment that makes all the drama worth it, for brides and the staff at the bridal salon.

Ethnic Wedding Reception Menus - Dos and Don’ts

Serving ethnic cuisine at your wedding reception can be a marvelous way to honor your heritage while putting your own personal stamp on the event. However, there can be some potential pitfalls to serving an ethnic menu, ranging from poorly prepared dishes to excluding guests who come from other ethnic traditions. This is a look at the dos and don’ts of ethnic wedding reception menus.

Do: Consider both the bride and groom’s families when planning an ethnic wedding menu. If you share a heritage in common, this may be a piece of cake. Although even then, each family may have their own ideas about the proper way to prepare certain signature dishes. When the bride and groom hail from very different cultures, be very careful about favoring one tradition too heavily over another. You might end up with some very hurt feelings, not to mention one half of the guest list who is faced with utterly unfamiliar food.

Don’t: Assume that any caterer can prepare your special menu. If you are looking for fairly standard Italian-American dishes, you might find that most any wedding caterer can deliver good food. But if you want something more specialized, you would be wise to seek out a caterer who has experience in preparing classic Indian food or traditional Chinese dishes. If your goal is a wedding which honors your cultural traditions in every detail from wedding jewelry to music to the ceremony, you might wish to consider seeking a wedding planner with experience in planning weddings with couples from your heritage.

Do: View your wedding as a wonderful opportunity to teach your fiance about your heritage and to learn about his. The cultural traditions of the bride and groom are a part of who they are, and are definitely worth learning more about, even if you have a pretty classic American style wedding. Try to include some of the customs from each side of the family in your wedding, even if it means having some wedding reception stations serving spanakopita and others serving corned beef and cabbage. At least it will be a chance for each family to learn about the other, and that it a very good thing!

Honeymoon Planning 101

Just getting started on planning your honeymoon? Great! Before you make any arrangements, get the tips you need to make planning a romantic and memorable honeymoon trip a breeze. Welcome to Honeymoon Planning 101.

When it comes to a memorable honeymoon, the most important thing is to do something that you both enjoy as a couple. The beach honeymoon is very traditional, but if neither of you enjoys the sun or water, it would be a poor choice! Perhaps your style is checking out all that a big city has to offer or maybe you have always dreamed of seeing Alaska. A festival could be just your cup of tea or perhaps you have both always longed to see your ancestral homelands. Think about what would make the trip really special, and plan it based on that, rather than tradition.

Knowing what to bring on your trip is also important, as is knowing what to leave at home. Check the local guidebooks for your honeymoon destination to find out how casual people typically dress. Make an effort to look your best; it is supposed to be a romantic trip, after all! A few common packing tips include bringing nice shoes (no sneakers!) and skirts or pants instead of shorts for a tour of Europe. Beach vacations are usually fairly low-key, but you should definitely bring along a pretty dress and some of your wedding jewelry to wear for intimate dinners. Then there is what not to bring: anything very valuable, especially very flashy jewelry or watches. Bring a minimum of jewelry; the earrings and necklace from your wedding jewelry set should be plenty, especially if you will be spending most of your time lounging on the beach.

Finally, be sure you make plans to capture all of those beautiful honeymoon memories. A good camera (bring extra batteries!) is a must. You may also wish to bring a small travel journal to record your memories and impressions, as well as a folder to save tickets and other memorabilia for scrapbooking. Meaningful souvenirs will help you to remember your wonderful honeymoon for years to come. Skip the tacky tourist stuff like t-shirts and pick up one or two really special local items, such as a piece of Venetian glass from a honeymoon in Italy. Even a collection of seashells would make a lovely honeymoon memento when artfully displayed in a shadow box. Choose that special something that will always remind you of your first ever vacation as husband and wife.

The Ins and Outs of Wedding Receiving Lines

The receiving line might seem like an antiquated or outdated tradition, but the truth is that they still have an important role to play in a wedding. For a celebration of any size, a simple receiving line is by far the easiest way to ensure that the host greets all of his or guests, which is a must. Conversely, it is also the simplest way for every guest to have a chance to extend best wishes and congratulations to the newlyweds, which is a must for guests. With the reasons to have a receiving line at your wedding clear, this is what you need to know about how to arrange one.

First of all, a receiving line should never be held inside a house of worship. That is because you cannot act as host inside God’s house. There are two very good options for the receiving line location. One is to have it at the reception venue as guests arrive. The other possibility is to receive your guests outside of the church immediately following the ceremony. This is often the easiest thing to do logistically, as so many couples will have photo sessions during the cocktail hour of the reception, making it hard to find a good time to arrange a receiving line at the reception site.

There is much uncertainty about who should participate in a receiving line. The people who absolutely must be there are the bride, the groom, and their mothers. The fathers of the happy couple will often stand in the line as well, but they may duck in and out to mingle if the line is long, especially if it is being done during the cocktail hour. If any of the parents of the newlyweds have remarried, their new spouses should absolutely be invited to participate in the receiving line. Deal with any animosity between the exes and the new spouses by separating them in the receiving line. Although customary, it is not absolutely necessary for the entire group of bridesmaids to participate; if you are trying to keep the line moving, it would be okay to ask only the maid of honor to stand in the line and set the other ladies free.

There are some standard things to say in a receiving line, and of course, you may personalize them if you wish. Always offer best wishes to the bride and congratulations to the groom. Tell the bride’s mother how beautiful the ceremony was and tell the groom’s father what a lucky man his son is to have found such a wonderful bride. It is always appropriate to tell any of the wedding party how pretty they look or to admire their wedding jewelry. When introducing yourself to a stranger, a few words about how you know the bride and groom would be nice. As for the people in the wedding party, they should thank all of the guests for joining them and express appreciation for their kind words. Other safe comments include telling a guest how pretty her dress and jewelry are or saying how perfect the weather is for a wedding. Don’t worry too much about being original, as long as you are pleasant and brief, the receiving line will be a success.

Sticky Wedding Attire Situations

These are some of the most common sticky wedding attire situations, along with suggestions about how to resolve them.

Problem No. One: Your wedding colors are pale pink and lilac and your bridesmaids are demanding black cocktail dresses. While it is always lovely when the bride is considerate of what her attendants would like to wear, the reality is that they need to fit with her vision of the wedding. The best you can do is choose a color that your bridesmaids can stand (perhaps a neutral like champagne). Perhaps the bride could also mollify her bridesmaids by giving them a lot of say in the style of the dress, if not the color. Ultimately, though, being a bridesmaid means wearing the dress of the bride’s choosing, so the bridesmaids need to grit their teeth and politely wear what the bride wants!

Problem No. Two: Your flamboyant mother-in-law always has to be the center of attention, even on your wedding day. She never got the memo that the mothers of the bride and groom should look pretty without upstaging the bride, and has decided to wear a fire engine red dress with a neckline cut down to her navel. The bride really cannot tell her mother-in-law what to wear, so the groom needs to be involved in this.  If the groom cannot or will not get his mom to wear something less flashy, there is nothing much to be done about it. Yes, it will drive you crazy that she sticks out like a sore thumb in the group wedding photos, but in the end, it will do nothing to detract from the joy of your wedding or marriage.

Problem No. Three: The bride and her mother cannot agree on a wedding gown…and mom is paying for it. This problem is incredibly common, and also incredibly frustrating. Sometimes another person, like a sister or aunt, can help to convince mom that the bridal gown which she thinks is all wrong is really perfect. The bride can also show a willingness to compromise by offering to let her mom pick out her veil and wedding jewelry. If none of that works, you either have to go back to the drawing board and look for a new gown or buy the one you really want with your own money.

People tend to feel very strongly about their clothing, even more so when it comes to formal attire. This is why so many sticky situations can crop up when planning a wedding. Hopefully, you now have the tools to manage any wedding attire dilemmas that come your way!

Have a Bug-Free Summer Wedding!

Summer is high season for outdoor weddings, but it also happens to be high season for pesky bugs. Don’t let mosquitos, bees, and other flying insects ruin your wedding! Take a look at these tips on how to have a bug-free summer wedding.

Any wedding location can be improved, even if it is fairly buggy to start out. To deter bees, choose your flowers wisely, avoiding those with fragrances that draw bees. A good tip for the bride is to select a jeweled hairpiece to match her wedding jewelry, instead of a fresh flower in the hair, which is known to attract insects. If you are concerned about bees coming around the food stations and dinner tables, there are a few things you can do. First, keep food covered as much as possible, and locate trash recepticles away from where your guests will be congregating. Another great tip is something which you frequently see at restaurants with outdoor seating: set up open cups of sugar water along the perimenter to draw the bees away from where your guests will be eating. It works like a charm!

Lakes make for beautifully scenic backdrops for weddings, but they also tend to have a lot of flying insects around them, epsecially mosquitos. For very buggy areas, try renting one of those propane powered mosquito traps which has a quiet fan and lures in the bugs by releasing carbon dioxide. There are similar devices which have electrical plugs and lure the mosquitos to their death with ultraviolet lights. People swear by these devices, and if the area you are trying to clear of bugs is your own backyard, you might even want to buy a couple. Ideally, they should be set out well before the start of the wedding, so that most of the mosquitos in the area will be cleared out before your wedding guests arrive.

There are also some proven low-tech ways to help keep flying pests at bay. Set up tiki torches around the perimeter of your reception space, as the smoke helps (somewhat) to keep mosquitos away. The old standby citronella candles can also be used on tables and set out in areas where your guests will gather. Place them in attractive candleholders to make them a pretty addition to your wedding. (Keep in mind that some guests may not like the scent of citronella, so don’t overdo it.) For a tented wedding, you could even have net sides that are rolled down as dusk approaches to keep your guests comfy and happy inside.

Adults Only Wedding Receptions

Is your vision of the perfect wedding an elegant soiree with everyone dressed to the nines in tuxedos and cocktail dresses and dazzling wedding jewelry while sipping sophisticated drinks? If so, a bunch of children running around might not fit in with your idea of the perfect reception. Pulling off an adults-only wedding reception without angering a lot of your guests can be tricky; this is how to do it with grace.

When you decide to have a child-free wedding, it is important to be absolutely equitable about it. Set a cut off age, like 16 or 18, and stick to it across the board. While some people may not like it, at least if you are fair, they have no legitimate complaint. The real drama arises when the bride and groom start making exceptions for individual children. Then the parents of the kids who were excluded will have real reason to feel offended.

The easiest way to have an adults-only wedding is to plan an evening event. When the ceremony does not start until 6pm and the main meal won’t be served until 8 or 9 o’clock at night, it is pretty plain to see that this is not an event where kids belong. Bill it as chance for the parents to get all dressed up in their best clothing and wedding jewelry and enjoy a date night without their children. Then make it a party they won’t soon forget, with great food and drinks, sophisticated music, and elegant decor.

Many brides wonder if it is acceptable to write “Adults only reception” on their wedding invitations. The answer is that it is not polite to do so. The proper thing to do is to very clearly address the invitation to the guests whom you want to attend by name. Anyone not named on the invitation is not invited. To make it even more clear that extra people are not to be brought along, consider making response cards which are customized with the names of the individuals with a space to check “will attend” or “unable to attend”.

In the end, there will always be some guests who decide not to attend an adults-only wedding, either because they are irritated or because they could not find appropriate child care. However, if you handle the whole thing gracefully, those no-shows will be few and far between, and you will be able to have exactly the sophisticated wedding reception which you envisioned.

Create Your Own Wedding Inspiration Board

When you are trying to plan a wedding which has a cohesive feeling, it can be great to lay everything out in one place. Besides, while you are looking at wedding websites online, you are sure to run across tons of gorgeous details that take your breath away, and it is nice to have them all together. The solution is to create a wedding inspiration board. It is a lot of little squares put together into one large square, each with a tiny jewel of an image in it. Whether it is strictly electronic or something that you put together on paper, an inspiration board is a fun and easy way to design a fabulous wedding.

There are countless things which a bride can include in her wedding inspiration board, as long as the key word is remembered: inspiration. These should be the things that make you drool or dance with joy when you see them. Never mind that you cannot afford that Vera Wang gown or that tulips are out of season for your October ceremony. The inspiration board is a design technique, and it should be a feast for the eyes. The wedding design board is about the dream. Even if you cannot have the exact piece of wedding jewelry or the very same cake that you saw in a magazine, you can still use your fantasy objects as the basis around which you select the items you will ultimately use.

Fashion and beauty are almost always a key part of a wedding inspiration board. In fact, you might even want to have a couple of style boards; one for fashion, one for decorations and flowers, and perhaps another with close ups of unique details that delight you, like a gorgeous style of calligraphy. On your fashion board, the natural things to include are bridal gowns, wedding jewelry and veils, bridesmaid dresses, shoes, bags, hairstyles, and headpieces.

On your decor style board, focus on pulling together elements which create a beautiful color palette. Laying it all out on paper is a great way to ensure that the vision in your head will look just as pretty in reality, especially when it comes to mixing and matching colors. The beauty of the wedding inspiration board is that it is all for fun, so you can take chances and experiment until you find an overall style that you know you will love for your wedding.

Creating a Modern Wedding Registry

These days, bridal registries go way beyond the department store. You can register for almost everything, from electronics to your wedding jewelry  to your honeymoon. With registries scattered so far and wide, it can get hard for your guests to find them, which is why it is smart to include links to your lists on your wedding website. Never include registry details in a wedding or shower invitation, as that is considered to be quite rude. Limit yourself to two or three places maximum; anything more can come across as greedy, even if that is not your intention.

Every home needs beautiful things to fill it. While china might not suit your lifestyle, a great set of handmade pottery might be just the thing. This is your chance to upgrade the cheap chipped plates you have been using since college with something more durable and stylish. Or perhaps a set of dishes designed by a modern artist is your taste. Cool and unique place settings can be found at stores ranging from traditional department stores to discount shops to upscale home boutiques. If you opt for a store which is local rather than a chain, be sure that it will be easy for your out-of-town guests to order from them, lest your wish list sit unfulfilled.

Barware is a key component of many modern wedding registries. People love to give wedding gifts which are festive, so anything that can be used for entertaining is very likely to be purchased from your list. Request cocktail shakers and tools, stylish ice buckets, wine coasters, and heavy glasses. Both short and tall cocktail glasses are a must (also called old fashioned and highball glasses), as are red and white wine glasses. You will likely want a set of martini glasses for your bar, and possibly other specialty glasses like snifters, cordials, and dacquiri glasses. Stemless wine glasses such as those made by Riedel strike the perfect balance between modern form and timeless quality. When selecting barware, always consider the feel of the glass as well as its appearance. Heavier glass or crystal pieces will be more costly in the beginning, but will prove to be far more durable over the years.

Finally, don’t be afraid to think outside the box for your modern wedding registry. Why not ask for a piece of art or a very cool modern chair from an artist’s gallery? You may or may not receive some of the less traditional items from your list, but if nothing else it will give your guests a sense of your taste to help them select something that you will be delighted to receive. If that is all that happens, your registry will have done its job well.

Choosing a Wedding Officiant

Naturally, if the bride or groom has attended a particular church for a long time, it makes sense to have their priest, rabbi, or minister as the wedding officiant. This is especially true if the bride or groom has some sort of relationship with their minister; it is always obvious during a wedding if the officiant knows the couple personally, and it adds tremendously to the beauty of the ceremony. It is always lovely to hear the pastor talking about the bride and groom and their life together in a way that is specific, rather than merely generic.

On the other hand, it is sort of sad to see the bride up at the altar in her gorgeous gown and spectacular wedding jewelry waiting to say the most important words of her life “(“I do”) and the officiant mispronounces her name. No matter how great she looks in her gown and jewelry, this is a cringe-worthy moment at a wedding. This is why it is far better to be married by your own clergyman, even if it means having the ceremony in a church which is not the most convenient location or the most grand. Better to move the reception, if it means having an officiant who knows you well.

In some cases, the bride and groom will opt to have a secular officiant for their ceremony. It might be that neither is particularly religious, they may not agree on religious denomination and choose to have a neutral wedding, or it may be that they want to get married in a setting for which they cannot have their usual clergyman present. Most Catholics, for instance, will have to get married in a church if they want to have a priest preside over the service; if an outdoor ceremony is the Catholic bride’s wish, it may be necessary to find a justice of the peace.

Another option is to have a close friend or family member certified to be a legal officiant. The rules and laws vary by state, so don’t just assume that your best friend can send away to become a mail-order minister the month before the wedding. Remember that even if it is not feasible for your preferred officiant to become legal to marry you, they can share the role with a justice of the peace who can make the marriage official. That can be a great solution which allows you to have the personal touch of a dear friend helping to marry you while still ensuring that everything will be legal in your home state.