Men don't be cheap when it comes to choosing an engagement ring. Men you should spend at least two months salary on an engagement ring. There are many factors that can prevent this especially with the economy today. However, you can still put money aside even if it takes you three years. Take her to many jewelry stores to see what she likes. There are women who prefer simplicity over fabulosity and vice versa. Bottom Line- Give the woman of your dreams what she deserves and nothing less.

Register Now To Win $500 Of Products  from InfaCity.com 
 

Here's your chance to increase your wedding budget by $500!  InfaCity.com is giving away $500 of products of your choice to one lucky bride.  Each bride must register and submit a short essay describing why she deserves to win. Please submit your essay by email to mcdowell@infacity.com or by mail to 1440 Coral Ridge Dr. #426, Coral Springs, FL 33071.
 
 

The winner will be announced December 1st, 2008 on InfaCity.com, by email, and in writing
 
Starting in November InfaCity LLC will be giving away wedding products every month.

Visit us now: http://www.infacity.com

Weddings are expensive, but they don't have to end with massive debts. Be smart about what you spend and get your marriage off to a financially healthy start. Read More...

So you’re engaged and thinking of eloping!  Congratulations on finding your life mate.  As you well know there are a number of reasons to elope:

• Need to get married fast
• Want to avoid family drama
• Want to save money
• No interest or time in planning a wedding
• There aren’t enough people in your life to make it worth a wedding

While we believe weddings are a great way to gather family, friends, and community to celebrate a union, we would never tell anyone to not elope.  Usually they are simply opting for many small occasions where they’ll celebrate a new marriage.
On the other hand, often couples who decide to elope meet reactions and emotions they are unprepared for:

• Anger
• Shock
• Confusion
• Sadness

Sometimes to appease the negative feelings, couples have a wedding reception at a later date to gather loved ones.  But they are shocked when a simple reception turns into the wedding drama and stress they were trying to avoid.  All the emotions people have about showing off the new member of the family, about their son or daughter tying the knot, or about their lack of control over your decision to elope may result in madness around the reception.

Whatever the reason you chose to elope, trust that you are not escaping family drama.  It may show up just before you elope, at the first major family birthday or holiday after your elopement, or at your one year anniversary.  Rarely do families accept a new “in-law” without complex emotions and attitudes. 

Wedding planning, on the other hand, is often an extended view of the first years of marriage where every stakeholder in your life comes out to express their opinion about you and your relationship, about everyone in the extended clan, and about your life decisions.  By eloping you may be forcing those bottled emotions to spring forth in surprising ways.  Be prepared!  While some people make horrible mistakes in wedding planning that haunt them for years into their marriage (attacking in laws during a wedding planning meltdown moment, for example), the choice to elope may be an equally dramatic “mistake” in the eyes of your family.

Our book Take Back Your Wedding helps you navigate the landmine of emotions you are about to create or have already created.  It’s really about how to be married as a couple with your families—and things to avoid early in your marriage.  Because no matter how the paperwork gets signed, you are creating a new family for each other and making in-laws out of your parents and siblings with your new mate.

An important tool for any engaged couple is to take Premarital Education.  Many faith communities require it but outside of that arena, too few couples take advantages of this terrific learning opportunity.  We have just the tool for you to get exposed to premarital education.  We offer a premarital inventory called The Couple Check Up, created by one of the nations top marriage inventory companies. For only $30 you will get a personalized report of your relationship, areas of strength and areas of growth opportunity.  I took it with my husband and it was an eye opening experience to see how you "stack up" against millions of other couples.
All our best for your marriage and beyond.

- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.  

 

I remember the money talk when I got engaged.  My now-husband and I each made good money, but we were only 25 and 26 when we met—hardly time to build a financial stockpile.  We both wanted a real wedding, no question about it.  We also knew the expense would be great.

Even in our best-case scenario (our parents were each still happily married after 30+ years), I had no idea whether my parents were interested in paying anything towards my wedding day.  Ask any wedding coordinator or wedding vendor and they will agree that wedding etiquette is all but gone.  Almost anything can be done these days and at best, wedding etiquette is a quickly moving target as new trends override former wedding taboos (such as registering for a honeymoon or having a “man of honor” on the brides side.)  Prior generations often can’t keep up with today’s fast-moving wedding etiquette changes.  The result can be great conflicts between the generations around money and the wedding itself. 

Because of increasing wedding costs and differences in family expectations, it’s crucial to figure out what money means to you as a couple.  Here’s how we suggest moving forward.

Step One: The Couple Decision

My fiancé and I talked and agreed that we could either afford to buy a house OR have a wedding, but couldn’t do both.  There was no question, however, that we were going to have a wedding.  It is just who we are.  Our values were around family and community embracing us at the start of our marriage.  We had to be prepared to make the wedding happen on our small budget and to hold no resentments.

Step Two:  The Approach (or Non-Approach) the Parents

With the potential for apartment dwelling for years to come, I approached my mom during a casual time together. This is often how things go in our family. “I can’t believe we’re finally engaged! Mike and I were talking about money.  We realized we can’t afford a house and a wedding so it is one or the other, but we really do want the wedding.”  The unspoken question was “are you able to help out?”  I said my words casually, conversationally, without a hint of “Woe is me.”  In other words, I knew my parents well, I knew our family dynamic, and I knew this would the best way for me to approach the subject with my family. 

You and your parents have your own unique family dynamics around conversations, money issues.  Trust your gut on the best way to approach the topic.  Perhaps like me you start with one parent first to let them talk with the other parent in a non-conflict mode and then come back to you, as my mom did, with their decision on what, if any, dollars they’ll put towards your day.  She also had time to talk with her friends and get a sense of how much weddings cost, so the amount my parents were comfortable with was realistic in today’s wedding world.

Most of the wedding advice out there suggests sitting down and asking both parents if, and how much, they can contribute.  That can work well in some families.  Just keep in mind simply asking “Can you help pay for the wedding?” won’t resolve the subtleties of who, how, and when the topic of who is paying for the wedding should be broached in different families.  Some parents need to know everything down to the final dollar amount before they will open their wallets.  Other parents have a ballpark range, and still others are going to hash out old money resentments with an ex-spouse and play off whatever that person is willing to contribute. 

In any case, if money is coming out of their wallets, have you discussed how decisions will be made about each wedding task, what power they have or don’t have over the end decision, and what their expectations are?  My parents gave a ballpark range and trusted me to make it happen.  My in-laws had already told my husband at his sister’s wedding that they will be paying for his rehearsal dinner.  Things were clear enough for us, but for other families this may be a really bad way to approach.  There is no one right way to handle this sticky money topic.

In your family it may be wise to not even approach your parents about money, and instead proceed with excitement and no bitterness about paying the entire thing yourself.  Should they wish to contribute they can speak up when they feel comfortable.

If you can predict your parents’ reaction, plan your approach accordingly.  If they have no money but a lot of pride in being the parents of the bride, then you know they may very well take offense at you deciding to pay for your own wedding.  You also know your vision may not fit their budget.  This is one of many potential landmines in wedding planning that requires the diplomacy of a United Nations ambassador. 

If your parents are awful with their money, break promises often, and encounter unexpected shortfalls on a regular basis, be aware that their wedding money may never actually surface.  Don’t act surprised, hurt, or angry a month before the wedding when their contribution falls through, as it has so often in the past.  The safest bet is to thank them for their generosity while never expecting to see a dime.  Plan the wedding accordingly and if they surprise you with cash, that’s a wonderful bonus.  You could also ask for money at certain key points, such as having them write the checks for the deposits so at least that money is taken care of and they can’t backpedal later. 

Step Three:  How are decisions made and who is a stakeholder?

A big trap for many couples these days is to think that it is – no matter what – 100% their day, anything they want, nobody else should even express an opinion.  At its extreme there is a name for it: bridezilla.  We are sympathetic to couples who think the day should be all about them since that is the strong cultural message today.  There is little wisdom on how to do the negotiation dance while keeping your stand as the central figures in the big family drama of the wedding.

Money itself is just a piece of paper.  What money stands for is the important question.  In your family and your fiancé’s family, money may represent:

• Showing what is important
• Having choices
• Making it as a successful person
• Saving as much as you can
• Impressing other people
• Having beautiful things around you
• Security
• Pride

No matter who pays, wedding planning decisions you make reflect on your parents because they are the ones who raised you and instilled the values in you today.  This means that no matter who pays, if you are acting in a way that your parents find troubling, they likely are going to speak up (or feel very tense from not sharing their real feelings.)  This doesn’t mean they should always win a disagreement.  It is in your best interest to listen, reassess your decision, decide if it’s a key value in your wedding planning, and then let some things go so they reflect a part of the people who raised you and will be there for your big day.

In our wedding we did not want a reception line after the ceremony.  There were many reasons for this and we were adamant.  Our parents did not have a problem with this, but they felt very strongly that our guests should know the flow of events and where to go after the ceremony was over.  After much discussion whether this was a valid concern (and silliness on my end since they have been guests at dozens of weddings while I had only seen a handful), we compromised.  We put a note at the end of the program letting guests know to proceed immediately to the reception and after our photos we would greet them.  I might not have found it necessary but it made my parents happy, and I’ll admit – it is a nice gesture to let guests know where they should be next without everyone standing around in confusion.

Step Four: Expected the Unexpected

It’s very easy to get caught up in wedding planning.  A technology term that applies well to wedding planning is “scope creep.”  This happens when you state a simple wish or plan and end up much deeper and with a lot more complexity.  Every home-owner can relate to scope creep.  We wanted tile in our bathroom and ended up with not just new tile, but a new cabinet, which meant a new sink, which meant new fixtures, which meant new lighting.  One simple tasks ends up quite complicated, time-consuming and expensive. 

At the start of my wedding plans, I didn’t think invitations, food, or location were “key” elements.  The tone, emotional atmosphere, size, guest list and music were more important for us.  We did not want to succumb to the wedding madness that we saw around us.  Surely we were above it all.  But of course, we weren’t.

One scope creep in our wedding started with the idea of printing off my own wedding invitations.  Just simple, classic wedding invitations off our computer was all I thought I needed.  But then found the most gorgeous invitations in a magazine ad.  They turned out to be 40% of my entire wedding budget, ouch!  Those invitations touched something in me that made me “need” to find really nice, unique invitations.  My simple $30 wedding invitation budget had suddenly swollen to hundreds of dollars.  Welcome to scope creep.  A throwaway decision ended up involving hours of research, hundreds of dollars, and a rearranging of our wedding costs.

Because most people are only part of planning a very small handful of weddings in their lives, opinions and notions of what you want and how much they cost almost always result in a bulging budget, disagreements on where things should be spent, and stubbornness about refusing to pay for things that seem too expensive.  And let’s not forget spending hundreds of hours on do-it-yourself projects that end up “costing” you more than the dollars you saved.

Whether people are putting actual money on the table or are simply watching their adult children plan a wedding around the values they were hopefully raised with, the question of who pays is ongoing and always fraught with emotion.  Never assume one conversation, early in wedding planning, is all that you need.  There is going to be a constant reassessment, a constant need to review your values and vision for the big day, and a constant need to clarify who is really paying for this day through their wallets or emotional stake. 

An early decision today could have major impacts on the budget later or on other decisions that strike key emotions in family members.  Haven’t we all heard of the bride who is just about ready to send out invitations and her parents or in-laws start sending her handfuls of new names to invite?  The reception is booked, there is no more space, and who in the heck are these people I’m going to be shelling out $40 a plate for at the last minute?  Conversations had clearly not happened way early in the process to clarify who should be at the wedding, how much things cost, who is paying and what decisions do they get to make.

For a comprehensive look at the complex dance of family and wedding planning, read our book: Take Back Your Wedding: Managing the People Stress of Wedding Planning, available on Amazon.com.  We also have a DVD or classes offered around the nation that go in greater depth on issues about working as a team and dealing with your families around wedding planning.  And if you have really stressful problems, we have marriage and family therapy counselors-in-training at www.weddingstresscoaching.com who are available by phone or instant messenger to help you sort things out as coaches, for a lower cost than traditional therapy.  Our advice helps couples, parents, wedding coordinators and vendors, and premarital educators/clergy.

We wish you all the best for your wedding and marriage.

- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

Wedding checklists, planners, books, and magazines are extremely useful.  The ideas, creativity, and expertise of wedding vendors are amazing and hard to stop reading.  Every where you turn is a new trend, a new twist, a new product to make your wedding more beautiful, more fun, more unique. 

So why are we suggesting you stop for a moment when you have so many decisions to make and not enough time as it is? 

Perhaps you’ve already learned an important rule of thumb:  checklists can’t predict which wedding tasks and which people in your life have an emotion, opinion, or stake in how that task is completed.  And to make matters worse sometimes the person with the emotion or opinion doesn’t even know it until a FINAL DECISION is made or it’s too late. 

An example of this in my own wedding planning was the arrival of our wedding invitations.  It is a very exciting day to finally see, in print, that you are actually getting married.  My father had not seen them nor expressed any interest in them up to this point.  I did not think to include him in any part of the decision since we both knew he didn’t care.  We were in his living room and I show him one in excitement.  He takes a look at the wedding invitation and panics, moving from room to room.  They are too hard for him to read no matter what lighting he is in!  They are unique invitations with red ink on red paper, orange ink on orange paper and yellow ink on yellow paper.  We have a ton of middle aged and older guests who will have similar eyesight to my father.  This means they may not actually be able to read the wedding invitations.  Disaster, anyone?

Meanwhile I’m looking at getting these invitations out within the next couple weeks and they were expensive!  I can read them just fine and have my heart set on this style and look.  It sets the tone of the entire wedding.  I can’t back down now.  It would be a huge waste of money, a huge stress to find new invitations and have them ordered and back in time to send out and ultimately isn’t this MY DAY, MY DECISION? 

Rational thinking flew out the window – dad isn’t a man who exaggerates things.  Of course he can’t read them and of course others might have problems too.  But that wasn’t the point, in my mind.  My mom and groom thought they were fine so he was outnumbered, even if he was right.  Welcome to emotional bridal land where many different perspectives collide and a solution has to be found. In this case my mom made a similar version to send to the grandmothers and a few other elderly people so they would for sure be able to read them.

Just ask any bride a week, month or 12 months into wedding planning what they are experiencing and underneath the “it’s my day, my way” mentality is the desire to have a joyous wedding planning experience.  Nobody enjoys making their mom angry, their dad stressed out, upsetting their friends or frustrating their groom.  Some brides even get so stressed out trying to maintain their ground that they just give up and let someone else have the final say in everything (the opposite extreme of the bridezilla.)

So why don’t all those people just shut up and let you plan your Cinderella day?  Why don’t the checklists warn you about the landmines of emotions that can erupt at any point up to and including on the wedding day itself?  How on earth could I have known dad would have an opinion on my wedding invitation style, of all things?!

Regular event planning is generally a linear process with a logical checklist.  Ultimately a wedding is a huge event, but there is a reason for wedding planning specialists – it is not your every day event.  You could hire a wedding coordinator for a non-wedding event but you would be unwise to hire an event planner who had never planned a wedding before. 

Let’s take a normal event example and play out the checklist.  The guest list emerges out of the events purpose (annual holiday parties, for example, are going to include all employees.)   A date and location are quickly arranged (often the date and location don’t change year after year.)  Then you have budget (set in an accounting spreadsheet without room for negotiation), theme, invitations, entertainment, etc.  There was a party last year so you have an easy template for this year and can crank this event out with minimal stress.

So why don’t wedding checklists work as easily as an annual holiday party?  Here are a few of many reasons:

• You are bringing two distinct people, with distinct families and friends together for the very first (and probably only) time.
• Unlike other events, births, weddings and funerals celebrate a high-emotion, high-stakes change of life. 
• Most of us will never plan another event for 100, 200, or more people in our lives.  Our inexperience mixed with the event “guests” being our loved ones with their own notions of how the wedding should go is a potential recipe for disaster.
• Unlike other events, the outcome of the planning and wedding day itself will stay with you and your loved ones forever.  It can change your relationships for better or worse and set the stage for how you go through life in the future.
• Weddings are now an anything-goes event with few cultural norms and expectations.  This may easily rub up against notions of etiquette and wedding propriety from prior generations. Few other events have such emotion tied to how things go (birthday parties, for example, are open for complete freedom.) 

So how do you manage the wedding checklists knowing there is a lot more going on then just planning an event?  Through hundreds of real life wedding stories, we have culled the wisdom on how to work together as a couple and how to work with your own, and your fiancé’s family.  These principles have been filtered through a marriage and family therapy model of thinking based on how people actually behave, not on how we wish they would behave (those with divorced parents or other difficult relatives can appreciate this distinction.)  Our perspective is filled with empathy and compassion for everyone involved in the wedding process so you can have a wedding you want but don't steamroll over your loved ones in the process.

We’ve presented these principles to many engaged couples and the feedback has been heart-warming.  Weddings are not about right and wrong, do this and don’t do that.  Planning your wedding is more of a dance between all the people in your lives as you and your spouse-to-be figure out your visions and dreams for the wedding day and how those fit into your values around family, friends, and your community.  Getting to the first dance is a huge task as a young couple.  We wish you all the best and are here to help you on the journey.

- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

You would think as the daughter of a marriage and family therapist, professor, and writer of family life that when I became engaged it would not be so startling.  After all, my father wrote a classic piece called “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas…or Else,” describing the hilarious first holiday season with my mom and their fight about tinsel on the tree.  It was about the colliding traditions a new couple experiences, often in unexpected situations (like throwing versus placing tinsel on a tree.)

I even remember when I was very young (age 6 or younger) coming home from visiting friends and describing to my dad how different their family life was.  He commented to me then how young kids have access to families that no adult could ever have because kids are “invisible” in a way, letting parents and families act normal.  After childhood, the only other time you will get full, unfiltered access to another family is when you get married.  But even then it isn’t the same.  There is often a politeness that feels more awkward than with a friend’s family because you’re creating lifelong bonds with perfect strangers.  The intimacy isn’t there but the relationship through their child has been solidified. 

Welcome to the awkward dance of engagement.  The family may not get loose fully for months or years, depending on how well your personality and theirs mesh.  Even today, 5 years into a relationship my husband, he knows, but can’t quite comprehend, how vastly different his sense of humor is from my family’s.

With my entire childhood spent discussing marriage and family life, including family rituals, I was in a rare position to fully understand the transition from single life to married life.  So you’d think the transition would be easy.

It wasn’t.

So what did I learn about marriage through wedding planning that I didn’t already know from growing up with a family therapist father?  More than I could write here, but I’ll give some highlights.

1. Dating is fun, marriage is work, and wedding planning is even more work because it’s a transitional phase.  Dating rarely involves parents and you have a pretty low intensity daily life.  But once you get engaged, the upcoming wedding starts to bring parents and others into your inner private relationship.  You’re in the most intense, public eye as you try to merge two families around one big day.  Parents of course have their own range of intense emotions.  Your parents you may understand but you’re probably getting your first look at your future in laws in all their full, emotional glory.  My in laws live halfway across the country so when we visited it was extra intense to spend morning, noon and night with people who didn’t get to see their own son very often.  Welcome to marriage – you’re new, your spouse is their child.  It can feel like a bad case of being a third wheel on a date.
2. Weddings bring out feelings about extended family and community that you don’t get when you’re just dating.  Wedding planning is an eye opening view of who is important in the lives of you as a couple and with each set of parents, as everyone figures out who should be on the guest list.  Keep your eyes and ears open since the things you learn about family (the way they talk about them, the stories they share, etc.) are going to continue to impact you in your married life.  The crazy uncle who ruined his sister’s wedding may be sobered up but his family hasn’t forgotten and may reignite the war for your wedding.  I was told by my in-laws which family members might not attend our wedding (or even RSVP) because of family history.  On my side of the family we had to figure out who was expecting an invitation and who was not, since that extended family network was large and all lived near each other but across the country from us.  We didn’t want to step on toes but we also didn’t want to pressure distant relatives from having to attend my wedding.  Sadly I’ve heard more than one case (including in my husband’s family) of a relative planning a wedding on the same day as someone else in the family, forcing the family tree to split and figure out whose wedding to attend across the nation from each other.
3. Weddings bring out many of The Family Rules around rituals (since weddings are one of the BIG rituals of life.)  It can be startling, especially if you’ve been dating for years, to learn of relatives you’d never heard about but who MUST be invited. You may naturally get annoyed at $50/person when you’re supposed to invite these folks.  But, alas, part of many family wedding rituals is to dig up all the long lost relatives and bring them together.  Weddings, like funerals, are often non-negotiable in families.  You go no matter where, when or how much it costs to get there.  In my case, my husband is from a small town and there is a lot of reciprocity in wedding invitations.  We sent out as many invitations as people we expected (150 invitations for couples/families, but only expected a total of 150 individuals.)  I could have flipped out since we would be over fire code for the reception if too many accepted the invitation, but fortunately my mother in law forewarned me about how many invitations were social only, with no chance they would make it.  Community is especially important in small towns and I knew better than to tell my mother-in-law who she could or could not invite (when few would come anyway.)  The wedding is but one of many, many family rituals you will be exposed to over your married life, but it’s probably the most intense one and occurs at the beginning of your relationship!  If only we could have our wedding after being married 40 years, we’d have a much better lay of the land. 
4. While my father waxed poetic over the years about how weddings and marriage are ultimately public institutions, it did not hit me until I was planning my own wedding.  You are marrying someone’s child and joining a family – the only other family outside your own (post-childhood) that you get a full-on view, wrinkles, zits and all.  All the sudden your intimate family is introduced to a “stranger” and has to rearrange itself.  If that isn’t exhausting enough, you have to readjust to someone else’s family and their ways of doing things.  Women in particular get the brunt of wedding planning expectations of female family members.  This isn’t easy when the groom’s family comes from traditions you don’t share.  I’ll never forget trying to describe my dress for my in-laws’ small town newspaper.  I was clueless!  I knew, from reading wedding magazines, that it would be called “a-line.”  That’s about all I knew other than it was ivory.  I gave up and let my mother-in-law, who had seen the dress, rewrite the entire newspaper article.  This was important and not something I could ignore or mock even if I was totally unprepared to handle this tiny task.  (Mocking this local custom could have sewn seeds that would grow weeds in my relationship with my in laws for decades.)  We also had my mother in law review our registry to make sure it fit social propriety in her circle and made sense from a practical standpoint (do you get 8 or 12 place settings?)
5. Finally, what I would never have truly appreciated pre-engagement was how every wedding checklist item is ultimately about your values, about communicating those values with your spouse and about, well, married life!  Weddings, like marriage, involve hundreds of routine decisions, big and small, involving small and large sums of money, and require a lot of work.  Something like the wedding registry seems at best the most all-American consumer part of the wedding planning, but really underneath it’s a precursor to married life.  How?  Well, what do you register for?  Registries have to do with how you grew up, for example, did you grow up with pretty, expensive things or cheaper, casual things.  They also relate to your vision of the future.  Whether or not you had nice things growing up, do you see yourself owning nice things now?  What about what your family or guests expect?  My family isn’t a fine china-owning clan but my husband’s is, and they were asking what china pattern we had picked out almost as soon as we were engaged.  I eventually came to appreciate what fine china meant to my husband and his family and agreed on a set.  If I had married someone else, I probably wouldn’t have even thought to get fine china.  How do you negotiate cultural differences between the family if one side thinks registering for china is snobby and the other side expects it?  These are issues you’ll continue to face well into your marriage.

Wedding planning is thrilling, exhausting and makes you want to curl up with your spouse-to-be and hide.  Families are difficult, and it’s tempting to want to work around them.  No wonder most of us resonate to the “It’s all about you” message about wedding planning that’s so prevalent in our society.   But I can tell you three years into marriage that wedding planning is just the beginning of a long journey that involves many more public decisions (where to live, when or whether to have kids, how to raise them, who to visit for the holidays, etc.).  My dad was right: marriage is not mainly a private relationship. 

Everyone says that marriage is hard but they are usually vague about specifics.  If they would only say that wedding planning stress is an actual example of why marriage is hard, more of us might make fewer mistakes along the way, and certainly we would avoid thinking that wedding planning is just a time of temporary insanity.  Instead, it’s the first wake up call about being really married.  The great part is that instead of just gaining a spouse, you are potentially gaining a whole new family and support system who will be there for you.  When I gave birth to my daughter this past spring I damaged my heart.  Needless to say it was an extraordinarily difficult time.  My mother-in-law called to say that a group of women in her church were making me a “prayer shawl” to let me know they were thinking about me and wished me good health.  A perfect stranger to me but friends of the family who are now in my life and here to support me through all that life throws at me.  I now have double the support and double the love.   That is what marriage is about.

- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

You would be hard pressed to find a couple who hasn’t experienced surprise, anger, hurt, or disappointment about who did not come to their wedding and who did not RSVP without having to be asked (after the deadline.)

What is going on with people?  Why aren’t they able to fill out a stupid card with a stamp already on it and tell you they are going to come or not come to your wedding?  And then show up if they said they were coming!

The RSVP deadline is where the rubber meets the road in wedding planning.  Until this point you can live in fantasy land.  You dream of the big day, you count everyone you want to be there and budget accordingly, finding the right reception space, deciding on the food and festivities surrounding the big day.  The mythical princess moment is just around the corner and soon you will have The Final Guest List or the final cast of characters to witness your Cinderella moment.  Getting those RSVP cards in the mail every day can be as exciting as the actual wedding gifts. 

Ironically this is often the small window of life when you diligently RSVP to friends’ weddings.  When you’re single you have no clue about the enormous task of wedding planning and when you’re married you either get amnesia or you’re busy having your last pre-child moments or being pregnant or raising children.  A simple RSVP card is just another item on a busy checklist of activities for those marrieds/singles.  I remember a married with kids coworker of mine said to me about RSVP cards, “I figure if I don’t respond they know I’m not coming.”  I wanted to strangle her!

I admit I’m in the amnesia camp with the exception of one guest who was unreachable until after the final catering count and who, to add some extra blood pressure, was also bringing an uninvited guest (someone he barely knew but had a crush on.)  This was two days after the catering deadline, plus an uninvited guest.  This person is still living because he was a guest on my husband’s side, so I stayed away from him (with the strong warning of my parents and husband to chill out.)  The woman he invited was the only person at our wedding who did not have a clue who we were, and never did end up dating our guest.

The bubble bursts when you find out that your Cinderella day turns out to be just another day for most of your guests.  Your rational side knows this is not the biggest day to them, but you are shocked that they can’t just respond or you are hurt and disappointed when they decide not to come for lame reasons. (I recently heard about guests having a lot of household chores that weekend, so they wouldn’t be able to make it.  I was at a wedding with a half empty reception hall because a full 70 people RSVP’ed yes and no-showed.  There was clearly some family drama going on there!)  Hopefully you have enough cheerleaders to keep you from being weighed down by the emotion of it all.

How do you then rethink your wedding when you estimated for 200 and only 100 will make it?  Or when you have a huge ballroom and it will be half empty instead of brimming full?  Or when the reasons cherished guests give for not coming are shockingly pathetic and dismissive of your big day?  Or when they don’t show and don’t bother to call you to explain?

First of all, I hope this article normalizes what you’re going through.  You are not alone -– far from it.  For any story you have there is going to be someone else with a way worse story.  Then it’s a matter of letting yourself feel whatever you are feeling about it.  Your emotions may range from “Oh well, the important thing is I’m getting married” to “what a flipping idiot!”  to “I can’t believe someone would be that rude!”)

The next choice is how you are going to set aside strong negative emotions, temporarily or permanently.  You can’t let these people ruin the build up to your wedding.  Are you going to forgive or forget or stew?  You can ask yourself if this is worth altering a friendship—maybe yes, maybe no.    For sure, now is not the time to make nasty phone calls or worse, write flaming emails.  I encourage you to talk with your spouse-to-be.  Life is full of disappointments and hurts and this is a perfect time to remind yourself that you are marrying this person for his or her support.  You can let them know what you need in the moment.  Sometimes it’s as simple as, “Honey, I am going to vent right now.  Please just listen!” or you may want to actually ask to get a rational perspective on why the wedding will still be wonderful and life will go on with or without the offending persons or the modified guest list and altered plans.

Once you have wrapped your head around the new wedding guest list, remind yourself of the love and support you are getting from everyone who will be there in person or in spirit.  Weddings are a community event and the number of people who are there has nothing to do with the quality of your supportive community.  Most of us would take one great friend over 10 acquaintances.  Your wedding day is a huge day for you and nobody can change that by their inconsiderateness.  Bask in the glorious day surrounded by those who love you and are witnessing the beginning of your married life.

- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

We’ve heard the nightmare stories.  My introduction to problems with vendors was my sister-in-law’s wedding.  I had just met my future husband at the time so I didn’t travel across the country to the wedding.  But years later it still brings up a lot of emotion for my mother-in-law.  She planned a beautiful wedding, great food, great reception space, and the photographer destroyed it all.  He took so long that the bride almost fainted twice with heat exhaustion and when they all got to the reception, guests were actually starting to leave.  The couple never got to see the food, let alone eat any.  The care, time, attention and planning my mother-in-law put into her only daughter’s day was, in her mind, hijacked by this awful photographer.  She didn’t even like the photos that he took – adding salt to the wound.

Most readers of this article have probably met with at least one wedding vendor.  Hopefully the meeting went well and perhaps you even signed contracts.  This is the best case scenario in a long process that feels like dating all over again: do my fiance(e) and I have similar views for the wedding, do we feel this is the “right” vendor for this important part of the wedding.  For those of us who don’t like conflict or pressure, we cringe at every vendor meeting or perhaps we want to run and hide when our more assertive partner speaks up and asks either “stupid questions” or starts to rant about the prices.  We all assume we’re hiring the vendor but in some ways they’re hiring us to show off their goods or services.   We have weaker hand of cards because this is our first/only wedding compared to their tens or hundreds.  They know the drill and the trends, and know how we stack up to their prior customers.  Thus the struggle for control begins.  The trick, I have learned, is figuring out when to take control yourself and when to yield to greater experience.

My husband and I had been forewarned by married friends how challenging meeting with vendors can be because it brings out your personalities in spades – both individually and as a couple.  They were so right!  Neither of us tend to want to create stress or conflict so we often let bad waiters ruin our meal and never say anything (except spend the entire meal and entire ride home complaining).  This is not a good couple character trait when you’re planning a hugely expensive day and meeting with countless people who are trying to pitch their goods and services to you.  In the case of my sister-in-law, they all felt helpless on the actual wedding day because if they complained about how slow the photographer was going, he might end up going even  slower (he wasn’t very competent and was actually a last minute stand in for the man they had hired.)  They wanted the photos he was taking, so walking out would only hurt them more.

My first experience with a controlling wedding vendor was getting my wedding dress.  I went in, like many women do, saying I wanted simple, no frills, no lace, just a classy, simple wedding dress.  When the sales lady started pulling these over-the-top wedding dresses off the shelves, I felt unheard and frustrated.  But I felt completely out of my element and went along for the ride.  She was also middle-age, had worked there for a long time, and I figured she must know a thing or two.  I was taken by surprise by her obvious desire to find the right dress for me, but she had her own views of what looked best on me – even if the styles didn’t match my personality or wedding vision.  I laughed when I left with a less-than-simple dress than I had gone in dreaming about, and she laughed saying, “happens all the time.”  And she was right – I just looked awful in a simple dress and only certain people can really get away with that look.

Wedding vendors have been witness to countless weddings.  They see the good, bad, and the ugly.  It makes sense they have their opinions on the best ways to make things as smooth as possible for their part of the wedding.  They also have to stay on top of the latest wedding trends both to meet the demands of engaged customers and also to ensure they are competitive in their industry.   So how much does the vendor have a right to say how things should go?  I wasn’t given any guidance on this when planning my own day.

The aha moment for me was meeting with the caterer and going over the flow of the entire event to make sure we had everything lined up. The catering owner was the one meeting with us.  She was extremely high energy, enthusiastic, experienced and funny to boot.  After getting the nitty gritty figured out, she casually starts with the entire flow:  “So after the wedding and wedding photos you’ll head downstairs, get introduced with great fanfare, and the head for the cake cutting …” and we stopped her right there.  “WHAT??” we asked.  She explained how it’s easiest to cut the cake straight away, get the photos done, and let the servers get the cake ready for after dinner.  My husband and I at this point were over our vendor-timidity and immediately said, “No!” 

For us the cake represented the symbolic dessert of a wedding, NOT a photo shoot.   It felt completely screwy to us to rearrange our entire wedding to make the photos turn out the best or to make the life of our servers a tiny bit easier.  The catering owner looked at us a little goofy but let it go.  I’m guessing she sensed in our voice raw confidence and conviction.  That said, she refused to partake in the idea of a “sweetheart table” (the couple sitting by themselves) and she also immediately pushed against the idea of a sit down dinner.  She had many good reasons as a caterer about why these ideas were not the best for our situation.

What was going on here?  When do we know when to back down and when to stick up for ourselves?

It is said so often it’s rather trite: plan a day that represents your values.  But what does that actually mean?  Sometimes knowing our values is only possible when we get resistance to our ideas.  Then our emotional reactivity prompts us to reassess our ideas, articulate ourselves more, and ultimately helps us clarify what we want.  While I wanted the sweet heart table (to me it actually made sense because we wouldn’t be at the head table for long so why not let our wedding party sit with their dates and friends?), the caterer, with her 20+ years of experience and knowing the space we had to work with, thought it was just a bad idea.  Her conviction was greater than mine, so I knew it wasn’t something I valued deeply.  But knowing how strongly I felt about not letting the photos control our day, we confidently refused to cut the cake before dinner. 

My brother and his new wife had a similar “stop!” moment on their actual wedding day.  They hired a fabulous photographer who was doing his absolute finest work.  At the point that all the “must-have” photos were taken and pictures kept being taken, my brother and his new wife had to finally say, “stop!”  They wanted to get back to their guests and felt these extra photos were not necessary.  It’s hard to tell whether the photographer felt obliged to keep taking photos or whether he was relieved.  Either way, my brother and his wife got back to their wedding and the photographer was given permission to stop doing what he was being paid to do.

I love talking with wedding vendors in my local networking meetings with the Association of Bridal Consultants.  What fascinates me is not only how much experience wedding vendors have but how they are at the mercy of engaged couples who make demands that end up not working out, and how some engaged couples try to put all the control onto the vendor.  Many DJ’s are asked to control alcoholic relatives with music and microphone access.  Some are fine with this, others say they are being paid to play music, not be a family counselor.

Just as our parents have their opinions on our wedding, so to do wedding vendors.  The good part is that wedding vendors carry less emotional baggage than our parents, but the bad part is they can have more control over how well our event turns out.  As my father and I like to say, wedding planning is like a dance.  Many people are moving at the same time, often in different directions with different abilities and experience, but ultimately, if choregraphed well, the outcome is beautiful and the memories are everlasting.  The trick is knowing when to lead and when to follow.

 Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.  

Wedding planning for most of us is filled with highs and lows, a lot of difficult decisions (some trivial some very important) and through it all we have to live our lives.  We go to work, talk with coworkers, meet up with friends, attend family functions, perhaps even attending to a lot of weddings (since friends seem to marry in clusters.)  When I got into my own wedding planning, I had no idea that unsolicited comments and advice would be one of the most bothersome things I’d face.   It seems that people feel free to comment on what they think wedding should be like, and even whether weddings are worthy having at all, right in the midst of your telling them about your own plans. 

In my small social circle while I was engaged (small office of 18 people) I sure got an earful of advice about wedding planning.  I was wholly unprepared for these comments: 

“When my daughter gets married I’m going to give her some cash and tell her to go to the courthouse and elope.  She should use the money for a house, not a wedding.”

“I got married for only $5,000.  I can’t believe how much people spend on weddings!” (from a man married 25 years ago.  Inflation, anyone?)

“A friend took a few wedding photos for us and you know, we never even look at them  You just don’t care about wedding photos once you’ve been married for a while.”

“You should tell your parents to give you the money they are willing to spend on the wedding and then spend less and keep the rest of the cash.”

“If I had to do it all over I would have just eloped.”

And then there are the unsolicited observations about the wedding they want, which goes without saying is quite different from the one you are planning:

“I would never want that many guests.  I’m going to have a small, intimate wedding where I know everyone.”

“I just have too many friends and family to have a small wedding.”

“We’re going to have a rock and roll band so people can have fun dancing.  Jazz is just too boring.”  (Said to me while I was planning a jazz band for my wedding.)

“I’ve only invited my best friends to be in my wedding party so I get to avoid any family drama.  It is going to be pure fun planning this wedding with my best friends.”

 “I can’t wait for my outdoor wedding.  We’re timing it so the sun sets just as we say our vows.”

“I could never handle the pressure of the potential rain in an outdoor wedding, or of sweating through my makeup.”

Each of us brings unique desires for our wedding.  The problem comes in when single folks can’t appreciate the current wedding world, so they either trivialize your stress and choices or they throw out advice that shows how little they understand the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Meanwhile engaged friends are busying deciding how they want their “perfect wedding” to look and if it conflicts with yours, it can be difficult to navigate those conversations.  Can you easily say how perfect your wedding day is going to be when it’s 100% opposite from your friend’s?  And there are married folks whose advice often comes out of forgetting the wedding planning stress, or being married in a very different cultural time with fewer pressures (and fewer resources.)  Sure, they don’t look at their wedding photos, but they also weren’t given the amazing options we have today to record our big day via photography or videography.

So just how do you work around the comments and attitudes people express as you try to put on a happy smile and attempt to defend your decisions?  Here are some ideas.

Use language that allows other opinions to be equally valid.  “We know some people think it’s a waste of money but we’re really excited about our videographer.  We are excited about having a video of our wedding to show our kids.”  Or, “there are so many great ideas and products out there.  We have decided to go with this one because it feels like the best choice for us.”

Express your values behind your decisions.   It’s hard to be snarky to someone who explains what value they hold behind their decisions.  When people kept saying weddings were stupid and I should elope, I decided to defend the entire idea of a wedding.  I most often said, “I feel like the only time family get together is for weddings and funerals and I really want to have a happy occasion for a family reunion, not wait for a funeral.”  Nobody had a good response back to this one!

Chalk it up to your own personality.  One tactic is to say, “It’s just me.  I know I will look back and laugh at how stressed out planning this wedding, but it’s still important to me.  I know I would regret not having a big wedding celebration.”

Just grin and bear it.  Some people are never-ending experts on everything; no matter what you say they will always be right.  You can decide to listen and not engage.  If you feel you have to say something, you can say “To each their own” or ”Times are a-changing,” something equally bland. 

However you handle insensitive or competitive comments about your wedding planning, keep in mind that usually people don’t mean to be as insensitive as they sound. They’re just caught up in their own fantasies or memories. If you are equipped with non-defensive responses, you can let their comments roll off your back and get on with planning the wedding you want to have.

- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.  

 

Perhaps you’ve managed to tackle sticky situations such how to address the wedding invitations or who is going to walk the bride down the aisle.  You’ve survived the wedding showers with relatives you’ve never met and are ready for this wedding to happen already!

And then you realize you’ve got to orchestrate the first dance at the reception.  The first dance as a couple can be exciting or as stressful as the rest of the wedding planning combined, depending on who is in your lives as a couple.  Between divorces, remarriages, death of a parent, and other family dislocations, the first dance can be riddled with drama, tension and stress. 

Traditional etiquette, according to Diane Warner’s Contemporary Guide to Wedding Etiquette, says dancing isn’t required but if you have dancing, here is the traditional dance order for a wedding reception:

• The bride and groom dance the first dance, usually to their favorite song
• The bride dances with her father
• The groom dances with his mother
• The bride dances with her new father-in-law and the groom dances with his new mother-in-law
• The bride dances with the best man, and the groom dances with the bride’s honor attendant
• The bridesmaids and groomsmen join in, dancing with each other
• All the guests join those already dancing

What is a couple to do when this checklist doesn’t reflect issues of divorce, remarriage, stepfamilies, or cut-offs on one or both sides of the family clans?  If the bride was raised by a single mom and doesn’t know her father, while the groom has married parents, should the groom dance with his mom even though the bride doesn’t have a father to dance with?  What if your step dad basically raised you but your father is invited to the wedding?

These are issues for the age we live in.  Who decides and how to decide about the first dance involves your values around etiquette, family of origin, and marriage, as well as your sensitivity to the feelings and values of others involved in these sticky situations.  Even if you agree easily as a bride and groom, once family members start disagreeing, things can get ugly in a hurry.

There are many potential creative solutions to these problems, but here are few principles we offer on managing the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.

Principle One:  Operate from your values.  Knowing what values underlie your decisions allows you to resist falling back on etiquette that may not apply here or giving in to the demands of loudest person.  It is not very useful in the face of a hurt stepfather to simply say, “Well, the etiquette books say I dance with my father and you’re just my step dad.”  Instead, say why you have made the decision, perhaps because you want to honor your dad and do not want to embarrass him in front of his family and community.  If your step dad keeps insisting, you can let him know how important he is to you, and say how sad you are that he feels hurt by your decision.  But you stick to your decision because it’s based on your values.

Principle Two:  When there is conflict, blood talks to blood. When a decision has been made and people are still upset, you do not cross family lines.  If the bride is furious about a decision made by the groom’s mother, it’s the groom who should approach his mother.  Similarly, if the groom’s mother is upset about something and approaches the bride, who often gets the brunt of all wedding related problems, the bride needs to send her future mother in law back to her son to resolve the tension.  Why? In-law relationships are fragile, particularly before a couple is actually married.  You do not have the history, the loyalty, or the battle scars of thousands of past conflicts with the in-law to bring to current wedding related tension.  We have heard too many stories of in-law wedding conflicts that haunt couples for years into their marriage.  You are setting the stage for the rest of your married life on how you deal with disagreements as a couple and with your families.  Tread these rough waters carefully.

Principle Three:  When people threaten to boycott the wedding if they don’t get what they want, reaffirm the values behind your decision and how you want them to be present even if they are unhappy with your decision.  If they chose to boycott your wedding it is THEIR decision and you have not let them pull you into past grievances and emotions that have little or nothing to do with you and your wedding.

For some couples, the first dance is just that—a dance that comes first at the reception.  But for others the first dance is very symbolic and important.  Much care should be given to decisions when the etiquette checklist doesn’t fit your family structure.  For more advice on managing the people stress around wedding planning or to share your stories, check out our book or DVD on our website.

All our best for your first dance and beyond.

- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

You’ve dreamed of this day.  You’ve finally met your prince and are ready to tie the knot.  Before the engagement becomes official you start to notice things more.  Wedding magazines are everywhere.  Engagement rings on the fingers of everyone from the cashier at the grocery store to the display rings at the local jeweler scream out to you, “Soon I could be yours.”  Everyone you know is engaged, just married or getting serious with a potential mate.  Marriage is in the air and weddings are on your brain.

Then it happens.

He pops the question.

OH MY GOD—you are ENGAGED!  It’s real and your hands are shaking to prove it.  You have the ring.  Your heart is soaring, your mind is on overdrive and you’ve never felt more alive.  It is official.  You are on the path to becoming a married woman.
Depending on where the proposal happens, it could be an hour or the next day when you start to share the exciting news.  Once the “I can’t believe we’re engaged!” emotion wears off a tiny bit, you look at each other and try to figure out who to tell, and in what order—first, second, third, and so on.

With this sharing, the “Hour of Bliss” comes to an end.  Sharing the news means you’re now inviting others into what was a private dating relationship.  Sharing means you’ve just made in-laws out of your parents and siblings.  The roller coaster ride of getting married now commences.

Nobody really prepares you for this part of the proposal, but here is where the first test of your marriage begins.  We believe that the moment you get engaged, your marriage starts. 

You now have a monumental tasks ahead of you, should you chose to accept it: bringing together the main people in your life based on your values around marriage, family, friendships, and community, to a wedding day that you will spend roughly a year planning.  You will make hundreds, perhaps thousands, of decisions to create the day when you cross the legal threshold from single to married.

It’s no longer about you and your boyfriend hanging out and having fun.  The hour of blissful engagement has ended and the real tasks of married life begin as you navigate who you are, what you want, who are your supporting cast members, and how you can work as a team to accomplish one of the most, if not THE most interpersonally complex events of your life.

- Elizabeth Doherty Thomas, is a co-founder of The First Dance, along with Marriage and Family therapist father Dr. William J. Doherty.  The First Dance was a Modern Bride Trendsetter award winner in 2007 for taking on the complex family dynamics of wedding planning.  Visit The First Dance for more advice on working through the people stresses of wedding planning as a couple, with your families, and how to strengthen your upcoming marriage through this enormous first task of married life.

Attire

   Wedding attire choices have become less traditional and more of personal preference. According to bridal salon owners, the trend for brides married in 2005, and those planning a wedding in 2006, calls for sleek and relatively simple gown or dress style. Favored are both plain yet elegant gowns or dresses and gowns or dresses adorned with crystal, pearls and lace.
The major contributors to pulling away from the fairy tale gown or dress styles, in favor of elegant simplicity as being the preferred choice for brides, can be contributed to:

Today's working, price conscious brides who want to adhere to a budget, do not     want to sacrifice style or beauty, but want a lot of value for their money.

The growing popularity of destination weddings. Brides appreciate that these     elegant yet simple styles can safely be transported and look fresh and clean upon     arrival at the wedding destinations.
The trend for men has also become more casual, offering a choice of a dark suit, or dark pants with a white dinner jacket instead of a tuxedo.
Theme wedding allow even more freedom of choice. For example:

Western attire is quite common in western theme weddings.

Victorian attire in Victorian theme weddings,

Reneasance garb in Reneasance theme wedding

Casual wear and sandal in Beach weddings, and so on.

Jewelry

Today's brides preferred to keep their and their bridesmaids jewelry to a minimum, choosing Swarovski crystal, classic pearls clusters and pearl strands necklaces, with matching earrings. Replicas of celebrity tiaras, as well as tiaras studded with crystal
and - or pearls are most popular.

Theme Weddings

Currently, more and more couples are planning theme weddings that express their interests and uniqueness.
Many combine their heritage, religion and - or traditions into their wedding theme, or use them as the central point of both ceremony and reception.
Others choose their theme to coincide with their wedding location.
Yet others who plan a family wedding concentrate on having their children represented.

Accessories for Theme Weddings

Whether dictated by the couple's interests, background or location, the bride and groom like to have their photo album, guest book, unity candles, pen set, flower basket, ring pillow, bridal purse - money bag, garter, cake top, centerpieces and decorations present their theme.
In fact, the trend is to have as many accessories actually match as a set or a collection, rather than just complement.

Where to buy wedding accessories and Choices

  
By Nily Glaser of A-wedding Day

There are many options to purchasing wedding needs, from attire to accessories. The most obvious and traditional being bridal salons.
However, with the enormous growth of the Internet and the high security of shopping carts, the trend is to check and comparison-shop online first.
Shopping for weddings on the Internet, can be done from the comfort of one's home or office, saving gasoline, precious time and money.
The Internet also introduces items available only on-line.
Some items are so unique they can be purchased only on a specific web site.
It is interesting to mention that A-wedding Day has experienced a surge in gift givers buying wedding items, including complete accessory collections, to be shipped with a gift card to a bride.

Whether you are a trendsetter or follow the current trends, I hope you gained some insight from this article. Copyrights © 2006 All Rights Reserved Nily Glaser, A-wedding Day and Gan Publishing

BYLINE Copyrights © 2006 All Rights Reserved Nily Glaser, Nily Glaser is the founder of A-wedding Day.
A-wedding Day is a very popular Wedding Resource and Information Center, and a discount shopping mall for wedding gifts, supplies and bridal accessories

Contributed by Nily Glaser

---

Many brides and grooms write to A-wedding Day requesting information about planning their weddings. The typical inquiry is as follows. " We just got engaged. What do we do now? Where do we begin?"

We are up to the challenge and are working new series;
"How to choose and work with wedding vendors, Professionals and service providers."
The series includes information and tips about how to best work with each of them, by category, as well as a comprehensive list of questions you need to ask before deciding on the wedding vendors, Professionals and service providers you feel most comfortable working with.

When you go to
http://www.2.a-weddingday.com/weddings/weddingplanningorganizer.html
You'll find links to the articles and questions geared for each different category.

So, you got engaged and are looking forward with anticipation, to your dream wedding but do not know where to start and what to do. You are not alone! This article is dedicated to the many engaged couples facing this dilemma and those who want to be focused.

To be focused, you must be organized. That is, you must have the things you need when you need them. As you plan your wedding you will accumulate among other items, brochures, phone numbers, vendor estimates and bids, song sheets, contracts, receipts, pictures, contracts and receipts. You'll surely collect pictures of wedding gowns, bridesmaids' gowns, flower arrangements, centerpieces and bridal bouquets, jewelry, photo samples given you by photographers, wedding accessories and other pictures that will help you plan your dream wedding. You'll also need to schedule appointments with different wedding vendors, professionals and service providers.

To be organized you need tools. All are easily accessible and inexpensive. You'll need:

A large wall calendar and attached pen and - or

a computer or other device that is easy for you to enter detailed information in

To do lists (add the information to your calendar).

A 3 ring binder with dividers and sheet protectors inserted in it.

THE CALENDAR

Actually your calendar and to do lists go hand in hand. Not only your appointments but your to do lists are time sensitive and should always be available to you. Whether you need to make a phone contact, set an appointment or go to interview a potential vendor, professional or service provider you need the information at your finger tips. It is better to enter too much information than not enough. If you contacted a vendor, write down your FIRST impression. This will help you later with your selection. If you received recommendations enter them too and so on. Do not forget to mark the calendar with the dates and times of special celebrations honoring you and your upcoming wedding.

THE TO DO LISTS

Planning a wedding is laden with details large and small. You will need to check out many magazines and catalogues, visit wedding related web sites, purchase items, contact a myriad of professionals, set up meetings with your wedding attendants, just to name a few. Always keep your to-do lists with you. Be ready to add your ideas for tasks you need to accomplish and to mark the ones you completed.

THE 3 RING WEDDING BINDER

Using a 3 ring binder for your wedding planning, affords you an easy way to be organized keeping all your wedding information in one place. It also saves you money, time and aggravation. 3 ring binders come with various spine widths from ½ an inch to 3 inches. Choose the one that is right for you.

Since it will eventually become a keepsake, you may wish to purchase a 3 ring binder that has a top window so you'll be able to enter a pretty cover or your wedding picture. In the folder, place top insert plastic sheet protectors to serve as pockets for all the wedding-related papers you've accumulated.

Additionally, insert dividers and a 3 hole zippered pocket for pen, pencils, paper clips, etc...
Mark the dividers tabs with the wedding related category such as: Bridal Gown, Ceremony Site, Reception Site, Catering, Photography etc… with the most active or most current in front, so that each topic will have a specific area in the binder allowing you quick referencing and retrieval.

In addition to sections dedicated to vendors, professionals and service providers, you need to allocate sections to important aspects such as:

Wedding planning time table,

Favorite wedding web sites,

Do it yourself - make your own....,

Tips and ideas,

Recipes,

Crafts and decorations,

Guest lists,

Guest replies,

gift lists for pre wedding gifts and for wedding gifts,

E-mail address and phone numbers of all your bridal attendants,

Seating charts,

A print-out of your registry,

Lists of thank you notes you need to send - sent,

Lists if gifts you want to give family, attendants and other important people,

And even fabric swatches for wedding attire and or decorations.

To benefit from your 3 ring binder be sure to:

label each category and each section

Place new papers or new information in the correct pocket of the correct section of     your binder as soon as you receive them.

Clean your binder once a month. Toss any information that is no longer relevant.     Keeping it will clutter your binder and cause unnecessary confusion.

Do not take your main binder with you to interviews. Use a separate binder divided into categories, in which you place all the information, including our articles and most importantly the questions to pose to each vendor, professional and service provider. Keep all the information you collected in any category, so you can make educated decisions based on a comparison of the available packages, prices and services.

What to carry to the Interview

Always carry a note pad and pen to write down important information and questions that may arise during your interview. Have your list of questions to pose to the wedding vendor, professional or service provider with whom you meet.

In order to comparison shop and select wisely, interview at least 3 wedding vendors, professionals or service providers in each category before you choose the one you feel will accommodate you best.

After each interview, insert your notes and answer sheets in your 3 ring binder so they are available to you when you need them.

Copyrights © 2004 All Rights Reserved A-wedding Day

Nily Glaser
is the founder of A-wedding Day.
a very popular Wedding Resource and Information Center, and a discount shopping mall for gifts, wedding supplies and bridal accessories.

 

We recommend that if possible, both bride and groom will attend all interviews.

First things first! Always carry a note pad and pen to write down important information and questions that may arise during your interview.

In order to comparison shop and select wisely, interview at least 3 Florists - Floral Designers.

The tips, questions and ideas you gathered in Part I
"How to choose a florist or a floral designer",
provide a wonderful preparation for your interviews.

What to Expect of the Contact Person:

A business card of each person you will work with.
Complete contact information including name, address, phone, fax, cell phone, email and web site address.
A brochure that shows samples of floral designs, explains what is available, what is their specialty if any, specials, exclusions, and options.
References. List of satisfied customers willing to be contacted.
Samples of their work in their specialty category or preferably in each wedding flowers design category - traditional, original, exotic, contemporary and the current trends in wedding flowers.
Samples of their work in each wedding flowers arrangement including but not limited to altar and aisle arrangements for the ceremony site, guest book table, memorial table, cake table, decorations and centerpieces for the reception site, bridal bouquets, other bouquets, boutonnieres, corsages, head dress, garlands, flower arrangements decorating wedding cakes, other decorations they offer such as seat covers, ribbons, balloon arrangements etc...

Questions for the Contact Person:

Please note that the questions are general. Some questions may not apply in all situations. How do you work?

When do you deliver the poem?

Can we make changes?

What if I want an entirely new poem?

How do I pay?

May I see samples of your work?

Can you do special requests?

How long in advance do you need the information?

What is your turnaround time?

Do you accomodate and do you charge an additional fee for rush orders?

How long have you been accommodating weddings?

How many wedding clients have you served?

Are gratuities included in the price?

Are taxes included in the price?

What additional expenses may be charged? (other than rush order)?

Will you print the poem and frame it?

What backgrounds can you use?

Do you require a deposit?

How much and by when will we need to put down the deposit?

Do you offer any discounts?

Do you accept checks and credit cards?

Do you offer any guarantees?

Will you provide us with a written contract?

Does the contract include a 3 day cancellation clause?

What are your cancellation terms should we cancel after 3 days?

Once you made your choice, you need to receive a written contract signed by the person in charge, and dated. The contract must include all of your responsibilities and all of the responsibilities, warranties and guarantees offered by the poetry vendors above the line. Be sure that you understand it fully and agree with all the terms. If you have questions, concerns, or are uncertain, contact them for clarification.

Copyrights © 2004 All Rights Reserved Nily Glaser, A-wedding Day and Gan Publishing

BYLINE Copyrights © 2004 All Rights Reserved Nily Glaser, Nily Glaser is the founder of A-wedding Day, A-wedding Day a very popular Wedding Resource and Information Center, and a discount shopping mall for wedding gifts, supplies and bridal accessories.