If you are in the financial position to do so, there are many ways you can give back to the community and charity organizations at your wedding.
Ask that your guests contribute to a charity of your choice instead of buying wedding gifts. Many celebs have done this in recent years, such as Christina Aguilera, who requested her wedding guests make donations to Hurricane Katrina victims.
Make a donation to a charitable cause in each guest’s name. At the reception, present each guest with a printed card, along with a very inexpensive wedding favor, explaining about the charitable gift.
Arrange for leftover food from the reception to be donated to a local homeless shelter and flower arrangements to be brought to a nearby nursing home or hospital.
Donate your bridal gown, accessories and even wedding supplies to Goodwill or another charity in your city.
After all the hard work you put into planning your wedding, you definitely deserve a relaxing honeymoon. As a modern bride, though, you might (just might) end up having to plan that too.
I know you’re excited now. You’re honeymoon is supposed to give you a break from the everyday; it’s supposed to be a time for you and your new hubby to enjoy your first few days (maybe even the first few weeks) of your marriage.
As nice as it would be to go gallivanting all over the world, sometimes that’s not the best option. Do you have a passport? Do you have enough time to attain a passport before your wedding? Do you have an extensive budget to accommodate a Caribbean getaway? Do you have family or work that can be accommodated from afar?
Clearly there are a lot of things to consider before you even decide on the location of your honeymoon! In any case, for one reason or another, it might suit you and your hubby-to-be a little bit better if you choose to remain stateside rather than jetting off to some remote location.
You might be a little disappointed to find you can’t or shouldn’t cross an ocean for your honeymoon, but you really have a lot of options if you choose to stay here in the U.S. Think about it, the United States is home to beaches, mountains, national parks, historical cities, and even islands. Really, it’s a world of endless possibilities if you just use your imagination!
That said, there are certainly a lot of places you could go, but maybe you’re not so sure where you should go. To help you decide, we’ve decided to include the top 10 stateside honeymoon destinations courtesy of About.com. Take a look at these locales and let us know which one you choose! Enjoy!
Hawaii
Las Vegas
Florida
California
Texas
Georgia
Virginia
New York
North Carolina
Colorado
(Note: These top stateside honeymoon destinations were acquired from About’s Vacation Travel Spots USA. Their data was derived according to page hits on About’s Honeymoon information website.)
When you are planning your wedding, you might be overwhelmed by all the information available on the Internet and in wedding books on how to cut costs. There are probably a thousand ways you can trim your wedding costs. Don’t freak out and try to do it all. Just keep it simple.
Here are some basic ways to cut costs:
Schedule your wedding on a weekday. Vendors oftentimes charge more than double for their services on a weekend evening than they do during the week. If you are really against a weekday weekend, an afternoon wedding on the weekend will also be cheaper than a weekend night.
Make your own centerpieces. Centerpieces can be simple yet beautiful. You can save money by saving your own. They don’t have to be floral centerpieces either. You can use picture frames, mirrors, candles or even a bowl of fruit as a centerpiece.
Have cupcakes instead of cake. Enlist a friend or family member to bake cupcakes and then arrange them in the shape a cake. You should still have a small cake on the side to cut during the cake cutting ceremony.
Cut down your guest list. Gasp! I know it sounds horrible but you don’t really need to invite your third cousin’s boyfriend, or a friend of a friend of the family.
Have a sponsored wedding. A sponsored wedding is one where much of the wedding costs are offset by allowing a particular business (or businesses) to advertise in some manner during the wedding ceremony or reception.
Buy affordable wedding favors. I would never suggest you skip favors all together. After all, they are a small way to thank your guests. However, you can make or buy cheap favors. One of the most affordable favors is to buy mints, candy hearts, Hershey’s Kisses or Jordan almonds and then package them in wedding favor boxes, bags or tins. At Truly Wedding Favors, you can even find some favors for under $1.
We all know that a red rose represents love, a yellow rose expresses friendship, and a white rose symbolizes truth and purity. But what does a platinum rose represent? And what about gold or silver?
Believe it or not, you can now add gold, silver, and platinum to your wedding color scheme options, and you can order your roses to match your metallic theme! After a little bit of web searching, we found some interesting floral options at Love is a Rose, an online merchant offering 24 karat gold, sterling silver, and pure platinum dipped roses.
So if your theme includes platinum, gold, or silver hues, you could always show your diva side by carrying a bouquet of metallic flora down the aisle. The best part? You can be certain you’ll have at least one memento that will last forever.
After all, a rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but precious metal isn’t a bad alternative!
In days gone by, women wouldn’t dare get married while pregnant. However nowadays, it’s not uncommon at all to see a pregnant bride or bridesmaid. If you are expecting and planning your wedding, here are few tips about what to wear on your wedding day.
The Gown
Most wedding gowns are obviously not designed with the pregnant bride in mind. However, one wedding dress style is very suitable for a pregnant bride - the empire waist dress. With these dresses, the waist is right under your bust. The bodice of the dress flows outward from there, draping loosely over your stomach and hips. The empire cut dress is very romantic and feminine.
If you want to flaunt your baby bump, you can be daring and choose a more clingy dress in stretch fabric. If you can’t find anything you like in bridal stores, consider buying a formal maternity dress rather than a bridal gown.
Here are a few online shops where you can find wonderful maternity wedding gowns and bridesmaids dresses.
The Shoes
Feet swell during pregnancy, so don’t make yourself uncomfortable with pointed pumps or high heel sandals. Choose wedding sneakers or ballet flats instead. You don’t need to stick to white, metallics and pastels also work well for bridal shoes.
You want your wedding to be unique, but it seems like everything different you could do has already been done before. Maybe that’s why some people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their wedding—so they can have an unforgettable, unique event and nothing but good memories for the rest of their lives.
Maybe, though, if you are creative enough, you can come up with a wedding plan that features something amazing without spending ungodly amounts of money. Something beautiful that symbolizes love; something that that you and your guests have likely never experienced before: a butterfly release.
Granted, a butterfly release is best suited for an outdoor wedding (I have no idea how you’d gather them up again if you released them indoors), but even if your wedding is indoors, there are ways to incorporate a butterfly release. If, for example, you are married in a chapel, the butterfly release could be timed to occur as you and your guests exit the building.
In any case, there are a few basics you might want to consider if you choose to have a butterfly release at your wedding:
Butterflies can be released individually or all together from a large box. If you’d like each of your guests to release a butterfly, you would want to look into the first option. If you have a young flower girl or ring bearer, however, releasing all the butterflies might be a very meaningful task for them.
The butterflies are typically kept chilled on ice until the time of the release. Just to make sure the release goes off without a hitch, you’ll want to let them thaw about a half hour before they are freed.
Many butterfly vendors also offer decorative cages where the butterflies can be viewed as centerpieces before they are released. If you are planning an outdoor reception, releasing the butterflies at dusk might be an ideal option.
Most butterfly vendors are actually butterfly nurseries where butterflies are raised. If you hope to plan a butterfly release for your wedding, make sure to place your order in advance: two to three months is ideal; six weeks is cutting it really close.
I’m not going to lie: I was a bit of a renegade bride. I picked the first dress I found (it looked fabulous though!), I insisted on only having a Maid of Honor, and I pretty much went with the flow of what everyone else thought would be a good idea. Don’t get me wrong; I put in my two cents if something someone put out there was ridiculous. But other than that, I had made up my mind to be a stress-free bride.
For the most part, it worked out well. Maybe my then-fiancé was more involved than most. Or maybe everyone who was involved in my wedding just went above and beyond to make the event amazing. I probably just lucked out, but I did enjoy the days up to my wedding a lot more than I would have if I was freaking out about every little thing.
I’m not saying to leave your wedding day up to everyone else. It could, and probably would, be disastrous! What I am saying is that you should make your big day as stress free as possible so that you can enjoy it. And the best way to make that happen: proper planning, of course!
One of the coolest things I’ve come across since I got married is the wedding website. There are tons of options out there, but the concepts are all basically the same. With a wedding website you can share your love story, announce your plans, and provide guests with all the information that will help them get to the wedding on time.
I’ve also recently found out that one of the most tactful ways to make sure everyone knows where you’re registered at is to do so through your wedding website. You can even provide direct links if you don’t want your guests to get lost in cyber-space!
So, since there are so many options for wedding websites out there, I’ve taken the liberty of finding a comparison chart of many of them, with information on pricing, free trials, and number of pages, so you can figure out which one is right for you. It might take a little time now, but if it saves you some stress in the long run, it’ll be completely worth it!
Check out bridal magazines and websites to get an idea of what you like before heading to the bridal salon.
Make appointments with two or three salons to try to find the best one for you. If you find the gowns are out of your price range, the customer service is poor, or just don’t get a good vibe from the salon … move on. You bridal gown may be one of your biggest wedding purchases. Therefore, you should take your time and make sure you are totally satisfied before making your final choice.
Bring your sister or girlfriends with you while shopping. They’ll be able to help you get in and out of the gowns, and of course, give their opinion on your selections. But remember, the final decision is yours.
Whether you want to design your bouquet yourself, or you plan to have it made for you, you’ll definitely want to know what your options are. After all, you’re not the only one carrying a bouquet!
You have the ultimate say in what type of bouquet your bridesmaids will be carrying too. So whatever the situation may be for your wedding, here’s some basic bouquet-arrangement terminology that’s bound to help you out:
Cascade: Every bride has seen or at least heard of this bouquet style! The cascade is a round of flowers trailing into a long, thin V-shape at the front. The length of the cascade can vary, from just long enough to cover the hands to reaching as far down as the floor.
Nosegay: A nosegay is a small, compact bouquet that usually consists of one type of flower with no greenery between the blooms.
Hand-Tied: The hand-tied consists of a cluster of flowers tied at the stems, usually with the exposed stems showing beneath the point where they are held. This is a very contemporary styled bouquet used in many weddings today.
Round: The round is a more traditional bouquet made up of flowers, greenery, and filler with no trailing elements. Rounds can also be made of just flowers and filler, with no greenery, or of a single type of flower, like a cluster of roses for a more contemporary look.
Presentation: The presentation bouquet (also called an arm bouquet or arm sheaf) is usually made of long-stemmed flowers that are held in the crook of the arm. It’s not very traditional, but it can look beautiful.
Tussy-Mussy: A Victorian-style bouquet in that accentuates a decorative holder. Generally, the holder is made of metal (and might very well be antique), and the bouquet is designed to show the holder rather than trail in front and cover it.
Now you’re all set! Head out to the florist of your choice and impress everyone with your extensive knowledge about flower arrangements while you pick out the perfect bouquet for you!
Have you ever thought of making your own wedding invitations?
I never would have even considered it until I saw this video.
Melissa Nyssen, owner of FormalInvitations.com, explains how you can create very unique, expensive-looking wedding invitations for less than a dollar each.
You select a background card and printable overlay paper, then connect it together with embellishments like sheer ribbon, a minature silk flower, or a cute metal charm. You can buy all the supplies you need to make the invitations from FormalInvitations.com.
Another plus is these invitations are eco-friendly. The handmade petal and silk papers from Formal Invitations are from recycled cotton, while their other papers use post-consumer fibers and are processed chlorine free.
Watch this video to learn more how to make the invitations, it’s very cool.
If you are in the financial position to do so, there are many ways you can give back to the community and charity organizations at your wedding.
After all the hard work you put into planning your wedding, you definitely deserve a relaxing honeymoon. As a modern bride, though, you might (just might) end up having to plan that too.
When you are planning your wedding, you might be overwhelmed by all the information available on the Internet and in wedding books on how to cut costs. There are probably a thousand ways you can trim your wedding costs. Don’t freak out and try to do it all. Just keep it simple.
We all know that a red rose represents love, a yellow rose expresses friendship, and a white rose symbolizes truth and purity. But what does a platinum rose represent? And what about gold or silver?
In days gone by, women wouldn’t dare get married while pregnant. However nowadays, it’s not uncommon at all to see a pregnant bride or bridesmaid. If you are expecting and planning your wedding, here are few tips about what to wear on your wedding day.
You want your wedding to be unique, but it seems like everything different you could do has already been done before. Maybe that’s why some people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on their wedding—so they can have an unforgettable, unique event and nothing but good memories for the rest of their lives.
I’m not going to lie: I was a bit of a renegade bride. I picked the first dress I found (it looked fabulous though!), I insisted on only having a Maid of Honor, and I pretty much went with the flow of what everyone else thought would be a good idea. Don’t get me wrong; I put in my two cents if something someone put out there was ridiculous. But other than that, I had made up my mind to be a stress-free bride.
One of the most exciting parts of planning your wedding is trying on dozens of wedding gowns, looking for the perfect one just for you.
Whether you want to design your bouquet yourself, or you plan to have it made for you, you’ll definitely want to know what your options are. After all, you’re not the only one carrying a bouquet!
Have you ever thought of making your own wedding invitations?