Wedding Help

While many brides planning their wedding just choose flowers and colors that they like and different effects that can be done on a budget, many other brides look at the recent trends from celebrity weddings. Celebrities pay for experts and wedding planners who will transform their wedding into just what they’ve dreamed, and they pay enough to make sure that they are keeping up with the most current trends. So if you are wanting a trendy wedding, but still keep your budget in check, then check out some of the details that have been prevalent in the most recent celebrity weddings for some ideas. The Today show posted an article a few weeks ago about some great celebrity wedding trends we’ll be seeing in the near future. It got me to thinking about how easy it would be to copy those looks for cheap. So, here are some of the top celebrity trends for weddings, and how you can easily copy them for a fraction of the cost.

Landscape Wedding Centerpieces

There have been many different styles for wedding centerpieces in celebrity weddings. At one point the trend was large centerpieces that were only one color, and more recently wedding centerpieces turned into lots of little centerpieces on one table for a more interesting look. But now, according to Today, landscape centerpieces are a great new trend for your wedding centerpieces. What does this mean? Look for some beautiful potted plants or flowers with moss. Today even suggests these helpful components for creating a landscape wedding centerpiece, pretty bowls, moss, mushrooms, or any other large potted plants or flowers. You can visit your local florist for some potted flowers and replant them into decorative bowls that won’t cost near the amount of buying flower arrangements from your florist. Plus, you can use them later on.

Shorter Wedding Veils

In celebrity weddings, don’t expect to see too many long and flowing wedding veils. Many celebrity brides are going for the shorter wedding veils that look a little retro for their wedding ceremonies. A short wedding veil adds an excellent romantic and dramatic appearance to your wedding day look, so it’s something to consider. I purchased my wedding veil from a lady who could make some beautiful veils herself. I only paid about $10 for my veil, and it’s pretty easy to go this route. If you are handy with a needle, then there are several bridal books in craft stores that will show you how to create a wedding veil, and tulle is only about a dollar a yard.

Groom’s Wedding Cake

Now, according to the article written by Today, groom’s cakes are really only a Southern tradition. Living here in the south, I had always assumed that every wedding had a groom’s cake. But I just never thought about it before. Groom’s cakes are great way for the groom to personalize the wedding a little bit. At my sister’s wedding, her groom’s cake had a fire truck on top since she was marrying a fire fighter. The cake should pick up on some special thing about the groom such as a favorite sport or team, home town, occupation, or even a nickname. Since a groom’s cake is less traditional than the white wedding cake, it doesn’t have to be done up as fancy, so you can buy a regular sheet cake and have it decorated to your specifications.

Wedding Favors of the World

Wedding favors are a great way to thank your guests for coming out to support you. Many celebrities are making their wedding favors support some kind of international theme, such as chopsticks, colorful bangles tied with a ribbon, or even a blend of your favorite spice from a particular region. You can find many wedding favors on the Internet with an international theme that really don’t cost very much. Another solution, visit a nearby oriental market and pick up different packs of beautifully decorated chopsticks, and then separate them and tie a set together with a nice ribbon and a note.

With the bleak outlook on our economy and the nervousness that consumers feel, the bridal industry has taken a bit hit. Many experts predict that the average spending for an American wedding will be down this year as brides are looking for ways to save money on their big day. It never hurts to look for deals, as nothing in your wedding will have the price tags for your guests to see. But a little bit of planning ahead and research can help give you the trendy wedding you’ve been wanting at a price that won’t take your breath away.

Tags: celebrity weddings, trendy wedding ideas, Wedding Planning

If you haven’t felt it already, the stress on your wedding day will be unlike any other stress you’ve ever felt before. All the work and time that you’ve put into planning your wedding is all coming together on your wedding day. And yes, it is a very exciting time, but if you’re not careful you could let the stress put a damper on your wedding day - and that is something you definitely don’t want. So I can’t stress just how important it is to keep your head and be able to manage your stress. The first thing you’ll want to do is (if you don’t know already), learn to delegate some of the work to close family and friends that you can depend on. This really will help you alot, and will give you some time to relax on your wedding day as well. The other thing you need to do is create a wedding day checklist so that you can be sure you’re not forgetting anything. I’m a big fan of lists. A wedding day checklist made in advance can help you relax on your wedding day knowing that everything is taken care of, or will be taken care of. Here are some important things to remember on your wedding day checklist so there are no surprises later.

Wedding Day Decorating

Due to my circumstances, I was unable to decorate my ceremony location and reception hall until the day of the wedding. But luckily, I had many family members come up early that morning ready to help make everything perfect. My wedding day checklist had to include everything that I wanted as decorations to be out, such as the pew bows, flower arrangements, prayer bench and aisle runners. So my list consisted of making sure that everything was where it needed to be for my family to decorate. Same with the reception hall. So if you have to decorate your wedding locations the morning of, it’s best to have all the decorations you need on your wedding day checklist so you can make sure you have everything you need in the right place.

Wedding Day Vendors

Another thing you’ll need to have on your wedding day checklist is the vendors that will be dropping off things for your wedding, and when they are scheduled to arrive. It’s best to have their phone numbers with you in case they get lost, or are running late.

Wedding Day Payments

Typically, your wedding day is when you’ll need to hand out payments and offerings for many of the vendors and other people playing a role in your wedding. Your wedding day checklist needs to say who should be getting a check, and how much.

Wedding Day Necessities

Most importantly, your wedding day checklist needs to include a list of necessities for your wedding day. Have a bag packed and ready with everything you will need to get ready for the wedding such as : your dress, hose, special underwear, shoes, bridal tiara, jewelry, and anything else that could apply. Also, your wedding day checklist needs to include what you will need for your honeymoon. You should have already packed for your honeymoon before, but make sure you remember your suitcase, boarding passes, and any other documents you’ll need for the trip.

When making your wedding day checklist, just remember to do the best you can. The more time and thought you put into it will help ensure the least amount of surprises you’ll have to deal with on your wedding day. Typically, there is always something small or trivial that you will forget - but with careful planning and delegating of responsibilites, you’ll be able to keep the damage to a minimum.

Tags: wedding day checklist, Wedding Day Tips, Wedding Planning

Planning a wedding by yourself can be difficult. If you have friends or family helping you out, then you are truly blessed, but typically even with help planning a wedding can be difficult. I had some help from family and friends, but a majority of the wedding planning details were left to me. Wedding planning is an exciting time of your life, but it can also be pretty stressful as well. In previous articles, I’ve advised many brides to buy themselves a huge binder or other organization helper to keep track of all of their wedding vendor information, quotes and pictures for the wedding. But personally, I think it needs to go a little farther than that. I think that by creating a personal wedding planning list that you can really help maximize your time, and make sure that everything gets done. Here are some great ways to create and use a wedding planning list to aid in your wedding planning.

Using a Generic Wedding Planning List

When I first started my wedding planning, this is what I used. I went on the Internet and found a free wedding checklist that went month to month on what tasks I needed to have completed in this time frame. This wedding planning list was helpful, but it wasn’t tailored to fit what I needed to have done in my wedding planning, so I could only use it so much. My only advice here, is that if you use a generic wedding planning list, be sure that most of the tasks listed in the list are items that you need to worry about…otherwise you could be forgetting something important.

Creating Your Own Wedding Planning List

While this option can be a bit more tedious, you can be sure that your wedding planning list has everything that applies to you. You can even use one of the generic lists as your guide and set aside what you need to do month by month. But when you create a wedding planning list yourself, you know what needs to be done and when, and every item on your list is something that applies to your wedding.

Using a Combination Wedding Planning List

As I mentioned above, I started out using a generic wedding planning list, and then quickly found out that it wasn’t going to fit what I wanted to have done for my wedding. So I ended up printing off the generic wedding list and crossing off the items that didn’t apply to me. Then, I added to that wedding planning list the items that weren’t on the original wedding planning list. It saved me a lot of time creating a whole new list, and everything applied to my wedding. Plus, there is some level of satisfaction in being able to cross items off of your list.

I’ve found that creating lists in my day to day life really helps me to stay on task and complete what needs to be done each day. The same applied to me with my wedding planning. I can’t imagine a time in someone’s life when they have more things to do and remember than when they are planning a wedding. My piece of advice for staying organized? Definitely create your own wedding planning list….it will keep you from going crazy and forgetting things later on.

Tags: planning a wedding, Wedding Planning, wedding planning list

I got the idea to do this post a few months ago. I’m not exactly sure where it came from, but in all the research and time that I’ve put into weddings, you can’t help but run across some pretty weird weddings. Seeing some of these weird weddings in action kind of makes me think, who are these people and what makes them want their wedding to be so out of the ordinary? I can understand wanting to make your wedding day all your own, but there’s a point when you need to sit back and wonder if it’s actually worth it, or if you’re just doing it to make people talk. Here are some examples of some pretty weird weddings out there that I’ve seen and heard about as well.

Dressing in Character

If you think about it, the bride and groom are already dressing up in character on their wedding day. One with a big beautiful white wedding dress, and the other in a nice suit or tuxedo, to play the part of the bride and groom. But when the bride and groom decide to dress up as something else instead, to me that makes for some pretty weird weddings. For example, having your groom dress up as Elvis is just the start for the making of weird wedding. Or the bride and groom in afro wigs. Don’t laugh, I’ve seen it done. Another odd one to me is the Medieval weddings where not only do the bride and groom dress in character, but ask that all of their guests do the same.  You’ll definitely have some wedding pictures to show the kids.

Being Adventurous

I’ll probably never understand while some couples choose to pair their wedding and bungee jumping together. To me, they just don’t mix, and thus leads into another option when it comes to weird weddings. Do they realize just how risky bungee jumping can be, and that there is a chance that one of you won’t make it? I can understand wanting to be adventurous, and that a wedding is a “till death do us part” thing, but wouldn’t you at least like to make it the whole 24 hours before that’s fulfilled?  In my opinion, bungee jumping weddings and other weddings that include ‘life and death situations’ definitely make for some weird weddings.

Married in the Produce Aisle

Many couples want to go the romantic route for their weddings, and I can totally understand that. Romantic and weddings really go hand in hand. Also romantic is revisiting the place where you both met and remembering when you first saw him/her. But what if you take it farther than that? I’ve read about several weddings where the couple chose to get married in the place where they first met, and it’s a totally romantic idea….depending on where that is. I’ve read about couples getting married in grocery stores, bowling allies and other such crazy locations. To me, that translates into some pretty weird weddings.

Now I’m not trying to put anyone down who wants to plan these kinds of weddings. I understand that not every bride wants to have a traditional wedding in the church, and that they really want to make their wedding stand out and be memorable. But in the case of being adventurous, just be extra careful or you could be planning a funeral on your wedding day.

Tags: Wedding Planning, weird weddings

Unless you’ve been planning your wedding since you were five years old, there could be several factors in your wedding planning that can be a tough choice. One of those choices is choosing your wedding colors. They are the whole foundation of your wedding, and nearly every decoration, flower and wedding favor will be based off of the wedding colors that you choose. Your wedding colors could be based off of your favorite color combinations, but if you don’t really have one favorite color, then instead you could opt for some of the most trendy wedding colors that are being used today. Here are some of the top wedding color combinations of the year that you can use.

Deep Chocolate Brown

A rich chocolate brown has become probably one of the most popular wedding colors that brides are using today. In the past, brown was thought of as a cooler color for fall and winter seasons, but not anymore. Now brown is seen widely in spring and summer weddings as well, paired with a cooler color. You can pair brown with pale pink, light blue, lilac or mint green to create a striking color combination that will really make an impression. Plus it’s easy to add brown accents to your wedding decorations through the use of hang tags, ribbons, linens, flowers and even coffee beans. Check out my articles on pink and brown weddings, and using coffee beans as wedding decorations, for more information on using these great wedding colors.

Black and White

Black and white is another popular combination for wedding colors. Paired together they can put together a really elegant and attractive wedding. If you put your bridesmaids in black, they will really stand out next to you in your beautiful white wedding dress. Choose wedding decorations that are white with black accents, and you’ll find that this classic color combination will add so much elegance to your wedding that people will be talking long after it’s all over.

Various Shades of Pink

Pink is another widely popular choice for wedding colors. I mentioned pink and brown above, but pink lends itself well to many other color combinations that can make for a really beautiful wedding. Pair pink with black, brown, greens and blues, and you’ve great some great color combinations for spring and summer weddings.  If you love pink, you don’t even have to add another color - but instead have a totally pink and white wedding. Check out my article on pink wedding receptions.

There are lots of great color combinations for wedding colors that sometimes it can be really hard to make up your mind. You can talk to your groom and see if there are any colors that he prefers over the others, as well as your bridesmaids to make sure that the wedding colors you choose won’t clash with their skin tones. Then, if you still need help, check out my article on Choosing Your Wedding Colors.

Tags: brown weddings, Wedding Colors, Wedding Planning