Manolo for the Brides

Remember Omnibus Driver? She wrote to ask a favor of us and it’s such a little thing that I think we should all do what she says (and no one gets hurt).

Please spread the word among your readers about this effort to help out a Chicago police officer who was paralyzed in the line of duty and the lovely lady who has been the rock by his side every step of the way. Come on! Help them get the wedding of their dreams!

Here’s the skinny: Densey and Mary want to win the Ultimate Wedding Contest. Yes, they’re already married, but they never had their dream wedding and now medical bills have pretty much made it an impossibility.

On May 27, 2009, my fiancé Densey, a Chicago Police Officer, was paralyzed in a head-on collision while responding to a burglary call. He was in a coma for four weeks, but we were married in the hospital when he awoke. Almost a year later, Densey grows stronger daily, but our lives are forever changed. With mounting medical bills, we can’t think about our dream wedding on a beach in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Densey has a machine that helps him stand for 30 minutes. To see him waiting for me, words cannot describe the feeling that would give me.

Here’s a pic of Densey and Mary:

You can vote for Densey and Mary here. Yes, you have to create an account, but it doesn’t cost anything and I think if anyone is deserving of a dream wedding, they are. Or just do it because Omnibus Driver is a cool chick.

When I was small, grape hyacinths were my absolute favorite flower. They grew in abundance in our neighborhood, and I routinely found myself in trouble for picking them in neighbors’ yards. As tiny as grape hyacinth blossoms are, I never really considered how they might be used in wedding flowers like bridal bouquets and reception centerpiece arrangements. Until, that is, I came across a beautiful photo of a grape hyacinth and paperwhite bouquet created by Flowers by Paula Cosgrove in the hands of a bride.

Pretty sweet, yeah? I love the delicacy of the flowers in the bouquet, and especially how they contrast with the thickness of the base of the bouquet. I was inspired to look for more grape hyacinths being used in weddings and, while there’s not much out there in terms of photographs from real weddings (since it’s not the most popular choice), I did find some imagines that you may find inspirational.

What do we have here? Have a look (in a clockwise direction):

1. Grape hyacinths in a recycled clementine container from Real Simple – this would be such an easy DIY centerpiece at a semi-rustic wedding!
2. Grape hyacinth invites from The Botanical Concept
3. A bouquet of naught but grape hyacinth In Style Weddings
4. A bright and colorful grape hyacinth centerpiece in tin from BHG
5. Grape hyacinth boutonnieres by Belle Fleur of New York
6. And grape hyacinth wedding favors laid out on table settings

When I went searching on this very blog for the overlap between weddings and wood (get your mind out of the gutter!), I did not think I’d find as much as I did. We all know that trees give their lives so that we can have wedding invitations that look like wood, but how about wedding invitations that actually are wood, like those from Oslo Press? From there, I found:

• flowers made of wood
• wood wedding cake toppers
• ring “pillows” cut from wood
• wood-covered guestbooks
• and wooden wedding bands

I never did think I’d see a wedding cake of wood. It’s not real wood, of course, but according to Melody Brandon of The Sweet and Saucy Shop, the bride and groom wanted it to look as much like real wood as a cake possibly could.

I’d say that she certainly captured the essence of real wood in this most unusual wedding cake. There were other cakes and sweets at the wedding, so the wood wedding cake isn’t all that big, but there’s a part of me that wants to think of it as being, oh, about as big as a pile of railroad ties.

With this level of detail, wouldn’t a giant wood wedding cake be ridiculously impressive? If not a bit odd to dig into…

To start off the week, I wanted to feature some pics from a wedding designed by the awesome and amazingJesi Haack. I’m pretty sure that if a genie came to me and told me I could go back in time to attend three wedding, this would be one of them. It just looks like it was so much fun, and how often can you really say that about a wedding?

The venue was in L.A., and the bride and groom really worked the whole Hollywood angle to good effect. Think movie posters as reception table names and centerpieces.

Here’s where I simply must ask how many brides would be brave enough to hang their wedding gowns on a street sign for a photo op? Maybe the same kind of bride who rocked the karaoke mic at her reception?

I know, I know, more deets. How about this: A vintage ticket booth served up the seating assignments! I’m not sure who the kid is, but what a cool way to include him in the wedding!

L.A., you crack me up. Apparently there was no shortage of photo opportunities involving freaky-deakies. Props to the bride and her maids for taking advantage of the scenery — these are the kind of wedding photos that memories are made of, not boring posed shots in vestibules.

Oh, and I have to mention that the bride did a choreographed dance to “All The Single Ladies” in lieu of a bouquet toss. I know there’s some debate over whether wedding guests should have to sit through dance numbers, but everyone in this video seems to be enjoying it!

Weddings are usually expensive things. It’s true that you can get married for the price of a marriage license and the fee for the officiant, but most people want to have a party, too. Most of us want to have pretty dresses, flowers, good food, photographs, music, rings, and all the other trappings that go with getting married in modern society.

The thing is, trappings cost money. It can be amazing how much money these trappings cost once you start looking at price tags. You may be lucky enough to have plenty of cash to cover all your dreams. If so, fantastic! Enjoy! On the other hand, you may discover that getting everything you would like will leave you hugely in debt.

So what to do? Look for the most painless ways to cut costs possible.

See, the thing about weddings is that vendors all think their product is the single most important part of the experience, and most of us have so little experience with organizing weddings that we don’t know our priorities going in. We assume that bigger floral arrangements, bigger diamonds, designer labels, and more elaborate transportation will automatically make the day better or that people will think less of us if we don’t have all the trimmings.

The fact is, though, that most of the trimmings are just that: trimmings. They’re optional. They’re possibilities rather than marching orders. If you keep that in mind, it’s easier to figure out what is extraneous in your world.

Here are a few suggestions for things that can be drastically cut or entirely eradicated without dimming the excitement of the day or inconveniencing your guests.
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Oh my dears.

Last week I lobbed this…image at you:
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Brides who are bored with the usual bouquets and boutonnieres and reception table centerpieces should think large and loose with lots of unusual greenery and even berries (as opposed to structured bunches of roses or daises). For inspiration, I looked to the Brooklyn-based full-service floral design studio Saipua. They’re happy to venture outside of the five boroughs for weddings, provided brides and grooms are willing to order packages totaling at least $6,000. Worth it? Maybe, depending on how much you like flowers.

Unfortunately, Saipua doesn’t ship as they prefer to think of themselves as full-service florists. For that price, they better be. Those of us who are already married and those who can’t justify devoting that much of a wedding budget to florals can at least look and drool and find inspiration in their bigger, bushier bouquets. Note: There’s plenty of sweet bridal bouquet porn under the cut!

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Bad luck to show up to a wedding wearing white? Hardly, if you’re a bridesmaid in certain weddings! Are you a true traditionalist? Then you could say that choosing white bridesmaids dresses in keeping with tradition — old tradition, that is, what with the bride’s attendants dressing just like her to confuse all those demons and evil spirits that were always causing trouble way back in the day. In this very pretty picture of a real wedding taken by the talented Agaton Strom, we see four women in white and not one of them is the bride. Based on this pic, I am loving white bridesmaids dresses. They’re fresh and pretty and summery and romantic, and if the bride wants her ‘maids to dress in white, who are we to tell her they shouldn’t?

What say you?

Wedding invitation calligraphy — a trio of words you wouldn’t have found anywhere in my wedding budget. We were doing things on the cheap as it was, so the thought of paying someone to address my fancifully hand address my invitations was not one that even occurred to me. Our wedding invitation (seal-and-send, so utterly lacking in envelopes anyway) featured my off-kilter script and The Beard’s jagged letters, yet found their way to our recipients anyway. Still, I don’t fault brides and grooms for paying for wedding invitation calligraphy since for many, the whole point of a wedding is that everything involved ought to be a cut above normal.

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m not a huge calligraphy fan. I do like, however, Neither Snow’s unique writing style, which veers away from girly and is… I don’t know… messily elegant? It reminds me of the sort of handwriting one sees on very old pieces of correspondence written by people on very good terms with their intended recipients. It’s familiar, not formal, but still fancy enough to satisfy those who want everything at their weddings to be a bit better than good. And you know what else is familiar, fancy, but not fussy? Letterpress invitations, of course! I thought it would be fun to pair some of Neither Snow’s work with invitations from the gorgeous Parrott Design Studio, with its lovely, simple invitations inspired by vintage ephemera, flora, and fauna. So here goes!

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