Wedding Tactics

It’s summertime folks and summer wouldn’t be complete without a good old chick-flick wedding movie. Mamma Mia!, starring Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan and Amanda Seyfried isn’t getting the best reviews so far, but no fear… it’s about a wedding! If you need a little wedding-chaos-comedy to make you thankful for your own nuptial plans, check show-times at your local theater.

I’ve been writing for Wedding Tactics for a full year now. When I started maintaining this site I didn’t know what it would become and how long I’d be writing. In fact, at the time, 451 Press was still just getting off the ground. In fact, its been pretty amazing watching the network grow along with my site.

My first posting discussed the differences between a marriage and a wedding. The first few months following this entry I used the planning of my own wedding as a guide for what to write about.

A few times I mentioned the issues in gaining a new set of parents and specifically, the mother-in-law.

I wrote a lot about dresses and veils and accessories.
And for a few months I had featured columns on certain days of the week, Trends on Tuesday and Traditions Thursday. I used these headlines as a means to explain traditions like the tossing of the garter.

April was a very popular month on this site. My stats went thru the roof, but that was a very popular wedding time of year. I get asked frequently about the Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue thing. The meaning and its history are detailed here.

One of my all-time favorite posting was about what guests should wear to a wedding. I noticed during the Spring months that several clothing stores were featuring lines of dresses for wedding guests. This is a good guide to style options depending on the wedding venue.

I got married in May. Then, I started a new job in June and my postings got a bit less frequent for awhile. Meanwhile, I did profile some great summer wedding themes.

As the year went on I tried to focus on all the different issues surrounding weddings, including mens clothing, or, tuxedos and a few funny stories too, like this one about a guy who lost his wedding ring.

And, finally, the most recent repeating column, Wedding Tactics: On Location, features vendors and venues in random cities. By featuring actual wedding business providers across the nation, I hope that readers from all states will be attracted to read and follow along and also to ask questions and participate in the Wedding Tactics dialogue. The On-Location feature can be seen here, here and here. And also here.

Thanks to all the readers who made this a successful year for me and 451 Press. I look forward to another even better year here.

Happy New Year!

A … A-line skirt. Invented in the 1960s, it refers to a skirt that is slightly flared at the bottom, creating a very nice line for many body types.

B … Best Man: the term given to the head male assisting the groom in a wedding. In current times, a best man is generally responsible for planning a bachelor party, helping on the wedding day, holding the rings during the ceremony and providing friendly moral support to the groom and the couple.

C … Cut, Color, Carat, and Clarity The cour C’s of a diamond. Cut refers to the shape of the diamond, is it round, oval, pear shaped or emerald cut (rectangle). Color refers to the clearness of the diamond. Not all diamonds are alike. In fact, they are ranked on a scale of color from D to Z. But, for a ring, color usually only goes up to about a J. Anything higher and the stone will have a deeper yellowish to brown color. It is still a diamond, just not a clear diamond.

D … Diamond Engagement Ring

E … Engagement! The average first marriage engagement lasts 9-12 months and the average second marriage engagement lasts anywhere from three to six months.

F … Flowers! Most wedding ceremonies have many flowers as decorations. People use fresh, silk and dried flowers of all different colors and textures to create relaxing, romantic atmospheres for their wedding ceremonies. When it comes to choosing wedding flowers, the sky is truly the limit. You can spend as little as a few hundred to as much as thousands.

G … Guests. GUESTS. Guests can make a wedding the party that you want it to be. They give gifts and come to celebrate with you. They cost you the bulk of your wedding budget in food and alcohol and too often people decorate just to amuse the guests. Without guests, you really don’t have a wedding. It’s a catch-22. This article here talks about how to be a good guest, in a not-too-patronizing kind of way. This one here talks about what NOT to do, as a guest.

H … Honeymoon!!

I … Investment. Consider investing some of your wedding gifts so you can create a nest egg or just a small savings for household projects or future vacations.

J … Jewelery. In many cultures married people wear a wedding band as a sign that they are married. For many, this is as simple as a solid metal band made of gold, platinum, silver or titanium. Others prefer a fancier approach and their rings include diamonds and other stones. To see some modern day matching band sets, click here. And, to read about why should NOT take your ring off, ever really, but in public, click here. And read all the way to the bottom for ring cleaning instructions.

K … Kippot, or, yarmulke. In a Jewish wedding you will see the groom and all male guests wearing a head covering called a kippot.

L … Love. Don’t marry someone unless you really do love them. Marriage is not easy at times. Loving the person unconditionally will truly help in the tough times and make the good times even better.

M … Marriage. Wikipedia says marriage is an interpersonal relationship with government, social and religious recognition. Huh.

N … Nuptial. Nuptial is the adjective of Wedding. According to Wikipedia, it is used more in zoology to refer to mating season coupling, however, nuptials are also a marriage ceremony.

O … Outdoor weddings. Outside weddings are increasingly common and are a lot of fun. Usually reserved for the warm-weather months and more common in areas where the scenery is worth celebrating and can be incorporated as decoration in and of itself. Beach weddings, water-front weddings, boat-ride weddings, English-tea garden weddings are all very common wedding experiences.

P … Petals. Rose petals. Consider sprucing up your ceremony site by having rose petals line your aisle. It is a relatively inexpensive way to add some romantic detail to your ceremony site.

Q … Queen! At least you are for one day, so be sure to act like it! Remember that this is your wedding day. And you only get one. You have spent a lot of time planning and dreaming about this day, not to mention you have spent a lot of money on this day too. It is OKAY to be a little demanding and expect that people will put aside petty issues and just celebrate with you. Keep this in mind when dealing with annoying relatives and unruly vendors. You are paying the vendors to do a job for you and you have a right to expect that things be done according to plan and on time. From family members, you have a right to expect that they will put aside petty differences for a few hours for your sake. If they don’t, ask them to deal with these issues tomorrow because you would like the party to be a party.

R … Royal Doulton. Creators of china patterns and casual tableware.

S … Square Diamond.
Or, Princess Cut, as it is commonly referred to as is a very common style of engagement ring.

T … Tuxedo. Most men get married in a tuxedo. The most formal of men’s suits, tuxedos are easy and affordable to rent from a number of local and nationwide stores. Plan ahead and choose a tuxedo style and pattern about four months prior to your wedding so that all the groomsmen and fathers have time to get fitted and secure their rentals.

U … Unwind. Be sure to take some time prior to your wedding to spend some relaxing time with your family. It’s a special time and it will help you relax and focus on your big day ahead.

V … Vera Wang. Not only making dresses these days, Vera Wang has a line of household goods including china, silver and glassware.

W … Winnie Couture

X … X-tras! Be sure to keep an eye out for extras in your wedding planning. Ask all your vendors if they have seasonal specials or even reduced prices for holding your event at less popular times, like Sunday afternoons, Friday evenings and after a holiday weekend.

Y … Yolanda Couture.

Z … Zzzzz…… Sleep! Be sure to get some sleep the night before your wedding. It will help you keep going strong all day and make you feel better too. If you haven’t gotten much rest during your months spent wedding planning, be sure to plan a relaxing honeymoon where you can get plenty of rest. On a beach, in a hammock, on a boat, in the sun, in bed on a rainy afternoon …. many couples spend the first day or so of their honeymoon catching up on much needed rest.

Today is the first day of November. A very popular month in the blogging world because of NaBloPoMo, or, National Blog Posting Month.

I’m making a monumental effort to post every day on my personal site - and not just crap entries, but real thought, and of course, I thought it would be good to make sure I post something valid here every day during this month too. First of all, I owe it to my loyal readers who stop by here every day and I owe to 451Press to help increase my traffic. I’ve been blogging here for almost a year now and it’s been a great year. Sometimes I’m lagging in post material and it shows, so, this month, I will make up for that with more postings, more details about wedding events, better topics and new topics never covered before on this site.

A few other 451 Press blogs are participating in NaBloPoMo too … Click here to read one of my favorite sites.

Please submit your wedding-related questions and thoughts and I’ll do my best to keep the conversation flowing and delightfully opinionated, but fair of course.

I have a new thread I’m introducing this month too. Mainly for the benefit of NaBloPoMo, but also for all the readers and to keep the ideas flowing, each day during the month there will be a posting entitled Wedding Tactics: On-Location - ???. It is always easy to find information and to write about weddings from the perspective of my own hometown, Washington, DC, but I want to try and reach out and focus on other parts of the country as well. It is easy to find details about major cities, but I’m doing my best to focus on a city in every state. I will feature a wedding vendor in that city who has a website that attracts me, as a wedding consumer. If you are a wedding vendor, or know a wedding vendor who should be featured, please send an email and I will do my best to incorporate them into a featured posting.

Television and Hollywood weddings are usually dream weddings. They are sensationalized and overdone, often costing in the hundreds of thousands and even into the millions. ABC paid a well-known four million dollars for Ryan and Trista’s wedding just a few years ago. Even I couldn’t help but think, don’t overdo it on the pink, when planning my wedding, as their wedding looked like a truck carrying Pepto Bismol had exploded somewhere near their wedding venue.

These weddings are always sweet to watch. They give us a glimpse of what you can have if money is no object. They are romanticized notions of weddings and marriage.

This blog strives to always point out lavish and frugal sides of weddings because in the real world, a wedding lasts a day and isn’t listed on tens of websites and discussed for days on end at the company water cooler.

If you live for these special weddings read on.

This week on the ABC daytime soap All My Children there will be a wedding. Click here to read a great sneak preview.

On last Thursday night’s Grey’s Anatomy Cristina pondered what to do with gifts from a wedding that didn’t exactly materialize.

Wedlok reports that Michelle Pfeiffer says that George Clooney will marry. One day. And apparently, when he does, he will owe her $100,000. The two of them have a friendly wager going on. This was reported last week on a UK television show.

Just this past weekend, Pamela Anderson married again. This time to Rick Salomon, a man only known for making a tabloid sensation when he video-taped himself have sex with Paris Hilton. They married in Vegas in-between her shows as an assistant to a magician.

And, finally … Nicole Richie and Joel Madden aren’t marrying quite yet. He is still away on the Good Charlotte tour in Australia.

Keep it up Hollywood!
We love your wedding stories!

nicole richie, joel madden, all my children, abc soaps, george clooney, hollywood, wedding

A recent article in The Washington Post featured a newlywed couple whose wedding gifts were stolen by a well dressed wedding crasher.

Anthony and Jennifer Smith left Garden Grove, California for their honeymoon in Florida thinking they would come home and put their monetary wedding gifts to good use. They returned home to bad news; their wedding money had been stolen. At their wedding!

The wedding crasher was caught on surveillance video but so far there is no news on his capture. He even dressed like the wedding party. Perhaps he knew someone wedding?

Before you start thinking that you need to keep things secret or start suspecting your friends of any mishaps, consider an alternative to protect your gifts.

Most weddings have a gift table with some sort of box in which to deposit cards and checks. If you have a dependable wedding coordinator, family member or friend, ask them to empty the box periodically throughout the night and remove the cards and checks to a locked car. An on-location event coordinator will likely have an office in which to lock valuables. Also, tape your box closed. Be sure it sealed well so that cards can go in, but none can come out.

And, finally, before you head off for your honeymoon, although it does seem a bit mercenary, although it really is just safety insurance for you and your guests, set aside a few minutes when you and your new spouse can open your cards and collect the checks. This is especially important if your wedding is in a destination location and you cannot deposit your checks immediately, or if you are leaving the country. If you are leaving the country, don’t take the checks with you.

Marc and I got married in Florida, honeymooned in Jamaica and live in Maryland. We sent my Aunt home with our checks, and a full list of those checks and the amounts. She held them for us until we got home. And she only stole a few of them!

wedding, gifts, money, checks, stolen, safe keeping, how to protect

I just read an article this weekend about a local wedding that topped $800,000. It was held at the Mayflower Hotel and the bride wore a handmade oriental silk gown.

In case you didn’t see that correctly and I didn’t the first time I glanced at it, a wedding that pushed eight hundred thousand dollars. And these people were not celebrities or politicians or anyone worth knowing really.

In fact, the newlyweds are under FBI investigation for running a fraudulent mortgage-foreclosure business that stripped people of their entire home equity and not assisting them as promised to get a lower mortgage rate as promised.

They gave their attendants ridiculously lavish gifts, including a home, a Porsche and ten thousand dollars in cash. (And I thought an engraved paperweight was sufficient!)

I particularly like that her 42-foot train was “adorned with bling”. Because, what’s a forty-two foot train without bling? And by “bling” I totally mean, Swarovski crystals, not crap from Claire’s.

DISCLAIMER:
I feature this wedding for the sole purpose of making fun of their lavish choices. I do not in any way condone spending this much on a wedding nor do I feel it is even remotely necessary to have a satisfying wedding and a happy and productive marriage. Quite the contrary. And lastly, due to the questionably nature of the couple’s “business” I think it is a real shame that innocent people were possibly scammed out of their home equity and this is how the money was spent.

Oh, and 42 feet! Deep-sea fishing boats are shorter!!!

Prince George’s Fairy Tale Unravels For Woman at Center of Fraud Probe, jackson, fordham, 42 foot train, mayflower hotel, 0, 000, wedding, metropolitan money store, lanham, maryland

The emotional side of a wedding and an engagement isn’t often mentioned. I happened to pick up a book on an end-cap sale rack a few months ago and started reading it. At the time, I didn’t really understand all the things it was saying, but over time, and after I pulled myself out of a bad month-long depression, I realized, I AM what this book is talking about.

I really recommend this book because it helped me understand why there were times when I wasn’t happy about getting married. Combining finances was SO difficult for me. At the time we did this, it seemed that no one understood. None of my friends were in that position. It was very hard to explain that I felt like I was losing control and independence but gaining financial security. It took awhile before watching my paycheck go to different accounts became second nature. Just recently, a friend of mine was combining finances with her soon-to-be-husband and she was complaining about the same feeling of losing something but gaining something else. This is really normal, just, no one talks about this because they are took busy asking what your dress looks like. Brides need to understand they are not alone. Planning a wedding can be fun and trying, but getting married is a HUGE change in lifestyle. You can’t expect to be happy about each change immediately, especially when there is a loss of control before the benefits kick in.

I highly recommend this book for any new bride-to-be, or even a recent bride who is just married.

Happy Valentine’s Day !!!

Sorry for the delay in this posting. It is due in full to a not-so-brief power outage we had in our little subdivision in Maryland. The five inches of ice and snow began to fall last night and accumulated quite well over night. However, we had two outages and I was unable to get posted.

In honor of today, Valentine’s Day, I will let you all in on a cute little wedding celebration that is held each year. Marry Me & Ski For Free Mountaintop Matrimony is an annual event at Loveland Ski Resort in Colorado. Loveland is located about an hour west of Denver. It is an excellent day-ski area being situated just off of Interstate 70.

Every year, Loveland Resort has a mass wedding ceremony. Couples can get legally married or renew vows, at the top of the mountain, and then ski down. The only requirements are that you have a valid Colorado marriage license and are able to ski or snowboard down afterwards.

At the conclusion of the thirty-minute mass ceremony, couples ski down the mountain and celebrate with food, drinks, music and prizes.

The wesbite has a variety of webcams. If you are interested, tune in at NOON, mountain standard time - which is two hours behind the east-coast.

I’m not so sure I would be comfortable skiing in my veil, and I know the garter would just be way to hard to remove!

I was surfing around on a well-known-wedding-site bulletin board this morning and just reading about all the ups and downs and stupid and very real problems from other brides. Some of it is very sad and real and you just want to reach into the screen and hug them. While there are other gals on there who make you glad you will never meet them.

I kept seeing threads titled things like, Where did you get your STD’s?

So, I’m like … alright, I don’t know everything, I learn something new everyday, they CANNOT possibly be talking about sexually transmitted diseases.

Well!

Your personal wedding tactics guru here, ahem!, ME…. is keeping up with the trends, lemme tell ‘ya!

If you find yourself perusing wedding sites and find other brides talking about their STDs … they are, most likely referring to their Save The Date cards.

‘Cause, duuurrrrr!

AND …

Save the Date cards come in magnets! They are only about $2 each, and there are dozens of templates and designs.

This is a scratch-off card! Sort of like a lottery ticket, no?
Anyway, I think it is adorable!!

First off, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

For all of you new readers, I’m very thrilled to be a part of the 451 Press team. I’m have some great ideas up my sleeve to keep you informed, entertained, laughing, and most of all, to keep you reading. These will all be unveiled over the course of THIS week.

I want to give a shout out to all the bloggers and readers who are also getting married this year. If you have questions, concerns or anything you think is relevant to an entry, send me an email or leave a comment and let’s get this forum really hopping. Also, a personal note to my good friend T, who is getting married in October, CONGRATULATIONS, YOU! ARE GETTING MARRIED THIS YEAR!

I’m really just an average gal. I’m not overly girlie; in fact, I sort of have to force the girly-ness sometimes. I’m very practical and down to earth, most of the time. However, when it comes to my own wedding, sometimes I am very concerned about the flowers and favors, sometimes I am not.

More relevant to this blog, I have been knee deep in research about wedding traditions around the world, random wedding facts, and lots of very irrelevant wedding related trivia. Stay tuned this week for an idea of what there is to come this year.

Of the myriad of things I will be discussing here is the relevance of a milk-bath in a Moroccan wedding ceremony, and why the bride and groom both kiss their parents knees in a Sudanese wedding ceremony and how the word “wed” is actually derived from the Greek word “pledge” and why that means that no matter in what country you choose to marry, if you wed, you are pledging yourself to someone else.

All of these random good facts and more are in the pipeline as well as tips and strategies for wiggling out of bad vendor relationships and tips for managing stress, talking with in-laws, combining and not combining finances, when to do it, and throughout all of this will be the laughable and tear-inducing truths of my own wedding-planning and marriage-planning endeavors.

Stay tuned.

Happy New Year!