What Once Was Lost….


Wedding rings are precious, but they’re also small fiddly things it’s surprisingly easy to lose.

The couple shown above are Lena and Ola Pahlsson. One day in 1995, while Lena was in the midst of a marathon baking session for Christmas, she lost her ring.

The couple searched over and over. When they remodeled the kitchen several years later, they even looked under and behind appliances and under the floorboards. No luck.

Sixteen years after the ring disappeared, Lena was in the vegetable garden pulling up some delicious carrots, when one of them proved to have something surprising on it: her long-lost wedding ring!

This is just one of seven amazing stories of lost and found wedding and engagement rings in an article over at Neatorama. Go read them for a combination good laugh and glowy feeling of things coming right in the end. Oh, and to get a couple good ideas of what never to do with your wedding ring!

Marryoke


You learn something new every day if you’re lucky. Today was my first exposure to the concept of ‘marryoke.’ Well, okay, then.

Most of us know about karaoke, that staple entertainment of drunks who can’t sing everywhere. Yes, I have heard a couple people who really were good belting out a great song, but let’s face it, the vast majority of karaoke is sung by people who could barely keep the tune inside the bucket when they were sober… three shots ago.

I must admit the worst karaoke experience I ever heard wasn’t someone who was drunk, but a young boy attempting to sing all parts of Bohemian Rhapsody while in the throes of his voice changing. He didn’t know from one note to the next whether he was going to be a counter tenor or a basso profundo. Yeah, that was kind of the last mental straw for karaoke and me.

Then again, marryoke doesn’t involve anyone actually having to be able to sing. So what is it? I thought you’d never ask!
Continue Reading…

LOVE/HATE: Let Them Eat Their Own Cake


For the past few years, wedding cupcakes have been big business. They’re festive, and everyone can just grab one, obviating the need for someone to stand there cutting cake all night. It’s a practical idea that makes a lot of people smile.

Well, recently another trend has popped up that’s just a little more elaborate, but still does away with that endless cake cutting: the individual wedding cake.

As you can see above, they’re tiny versions of a larger wedding cake. Typically there will be one full tier for the happy couple to cut and serve among the wedding party, while the waiters serve individual small cakes to individual guests.

Even though it reduces the cake cutting fees, this is still more expensive than cupcakes since each cake is more elaborately decorated and a little bit bigger than a cupcake, more often than not.

Is it for everyone? No. I don’t think there’s much of anything that’s for everyone. All the same, I’m coming down on the side of LOVE for this one. They look charming, and there’s something delightfully indulgent about the concept of eating an entire cake by yourself… even a very tiny one.

What about all of you?

Two Celebrity Couples Call It Quits


After seven years of marriage, three children, and yearly reaffirmation ceremonies, Heidi Klum and Seal announced yesterday that they are filing for divorce.

No very specific reason was given for the split, but the couple did release a joint statement, saying they had “grown apart” and that their separation is amicable.

Whatever their reasons, I do have to appreciate the fact that they are refusing to air their dirty linen in public. That, my friends, is how to do it the classy way.

The other split that made the news this week is Aretha Franklin and fiance Willie Wilkerson, who announced the end of their engagement just weeks after announcing its beginning. While the engagement is off, though, there is no word of whether or not they have ended their romance.

Franklin’s statement said that she and Wilkerson had decided they were moving “a little bit too fast” and said there were “a number of things that had not been thought through thoroughly.” The upshot? “There will be no wedding at this time.”

Whatever their issues, it is my fond hope they can be resolved to the satisfaction of all involved. But if they can’t, I do believe it’s better that things end in a broken engagement than a painful divorce down the road.

None of this is happy news, but the heart is a resilient muscle. May all four parties find happiness in the long run, if not at the moment.

Quickie Question: Make a Joyful Noise


This lady? Is the late, great Etta James whose most famous hit, At Last, has become to modern wedding processionals what Pachelbel’s Canon in D was to the same part of the wedding in the seventies and eighties. Miss James, who died last week, lived long enough to see her song become a wedding classic.

Every decade or two, a new tune becomes the It Tune for wedding processionals. Let’s face it, even Wagner’s famous wedding march had to start off as a newfangled and slightly scandalous choice on someone’s part. Now it’s so traditional that an approximately equal number of couples would never dream of anything else, or would never dream of using it. For the record, I fall into the latter category. I don’t care much for Wagner overall, and I really dislike the idea of using a piece of music from such a disastrous marriage as a way to start off a new one.

And after I’d been to roughly sixty bazillion weddings where the Canon in D was played as the processional, I went right off Pachelbel, too. I still, however, have fond memories of the wedding I attended where the bride was a member of a string quartet who gave her the gift of playing her wedding gratis. They brought in a replacement violinist, and did Pachelbel proud. It was a charming choice between the musicians in question and the intimate backyard setting.

I, however, have never belonged to a string quartet, and the brief period in which I attempted reluctantly – and entirely without a natural talent for it – to learn the violin is an episode best never mentioned again.

So when it came time to plan my own wedding, I needed something different. Oh, also, I was being lead up the aisle by a bagpiper, and frankly, none of the tunes I’d heard other brides use was going to sound right on the pipes other than the theme from Star Wars… which my piper would have flat out refused to play.

In the end, my piper suggested a traditional Scottish tune called Highland Wedding, which was pretty, joyful, and composed with pipes in mind. It was perfect. We recessed to another traditional Scottish tune, Mairie’s Wedding. That one was my suggestion. Those choices still make me delighted. Neither was overdone in my set, but both were written to celebrate weddings and traditional in one of my background cultures. I loved the tunes, the musicians in question knew them well, and the guests seemed to enjoy both selections.

What about you? What would your perfect processional/recessional tunes be? Something traditional or not? Something played on a harp or a kazoo?

Tell me all about it!

Where are Brides Cutting Costs? Splashing Out?


We all know that throwing a nice wedding can run to a lot of money. All the same, the overall national average price tag is on a small downward spiral. According to a new study by The Wedding Report, the average wedding budget fell 3.4% in 2011 compared to 2012. When the numbers are adjusted for inflation, the drop is nearly 6%.

Of course, this is an average of a lot of disparate celebrations, and nobody expects anyone to choose how and where to spend their money according to it. Still, some interesting trends do start to stand out.
Continue Reading…

Kristen-Alexander Dishes on Getting Married


Meet Kristen-Alexander Griffith. He’s an actor. He’s living in New York. He’s engaged. And he’s gay.

Since they got engaged in November, he and his partner, Aaron VanderYacht, have been finding they have a lot of questions about getting married as gay men. Naturally, they turned to the internet.

One frustrating Google search later, they had found a certain number of wedding-related services run by heterosexuals featuring rainbow flags that assured them they were welcome as customers, which was fine… as far as it went. What they couldn’t find was practical advice on how to throw a wedding with two grooms and zero brides.

So what do two guys looking for answers and not finding them do? They create the resource they’re looking for themselves. And so they started The Best Gay Wedding Blog Ever to document their wedding planning over the next year. As Kristen-Alexander says in his inaugural entry, dated January 10:

I thought it was time to hear stories and advice straight from the horse’s mouth, that horse being your’s truly!! So over the next, I dunno, year or so you and I will go on a journey. A journey to the big day: our wedding. I will share with you all the juicy experiences as my lovely groom and I try to figure out how the hell we are going to pull of a fabulous wedding on a budget. I am sure this experience will be full of hilarious stories, tears of joy, tragic tuxedos and terrible wedding cake! But best believe, by the time we are done you and your future Mr. or Mrs. will certainly know one thing: What not to do when planning your wedding!

All I can say is, I look forward to seeing what decisions messers Griffith and VanderYacht make.

Page 1 of 31012345»102030...Last »