Manolo for the Brides

If you’re a bride looking for a dress and simply can’t find exactly what you want (or a bride looking for the right attendant’s dresses), check out Dress By Design. In just three easy steps, you can create a dress as unique as you are. There are five main patterns to choose from that can be modified with seven neckline styles and six sleeve styles. They offer a TON of plain and patterned fabrics, and you can even choose between standard sizes and a custom fit!

Okay, so we all know that including pets in weddings is kind of silly. And pets up the potential for nuptial snafus. But sometimes getting hitched with animals in tow can go off…without a hitch. And if pets are going to participate, they ought to look the part, no? Everyone knows that you can buy little tuxedos and wedding gowns for canines, and little veils for felines (though how you’d keep that on your cat’s head, I’ll never know). But a quick search reveals that the range of animal formalwear goes well beyond cats and dogs.

A company called Cuddly Cavies will help your Guinea pigs tie the knot in style. For a mere $13, they will hand sew a tiny tux or wedding gown. I’m sure the people who buy these are not weird at all. No really.

A live ferret is as good as a fur muff, I always say. The well-dressed ferret can be trained to hop down the aisle with a ringbearers’ pillow strapped to its back. But once it gets there, how do you keep it from nipping at the bridesmaids’ exposed toes? Ask Pet Chauffeur, which markets this little tux…to the myriad people who need ferret tuxedos.

Parrots make lousy guests - no doubt you can imagine why. Wedding ceremonies go on long enough without everyone having to hear everything twice. But, if you simply insist on having Polly look on while you say your vows, why not dress her in a gown that will make people sit up and take notice. Metallics are hot right now. *BRAWK!* Metallics are hot right now.

Even the well-dressed hamster can get in on the act! Of course, it’s easier to tape little hats to their heads than to keep them from wriggling out of silk sheath dresses.

Reader Jessica (who is absolutely fabulous, by the way, and has a gorgeous engagement ring) recently posed a question, which I will summarize here. She asked, “What’s up with favors?” What is up, indeed. I have attended weddings where packets of nasty, chalky Jordan almonds were haphazardly strewn on the reception tables. I have come home with commemorative matchbooks emblazoned with the names of the newly married, tacky porcelain baskets filled with faux rose petals, and handfuls of those luscious cherry Hershey’s Kisses.

Though I’ve never attended a wedding expecting to receive a favor (and neither should anyone else, for that matter), wedding favors can be a lovely treat. To clarify, favors are great when they actually are great. To some future brides and grooms, favors are an important part of the wedding. To others, favors are nothing but an afterthought. I’d rather see the latter nix the favors altogether and spend that money on what they do feel is important, like food, music, decor, or location. That is the secret to hosting spectacular weddings, by the way - spending money on the elements important to you and axing the rest.

So, favors. No one knows how the tradition of giving guests a little something to take home started, but the theory is that the practice as we know it today began with ancient European aristocrats who would give bombonieres (i.e. boxes of stuff) made out of gold, silver, precious gems, crystal, or something equally pricey to their party guests. Sugar or sugary snacks were the ’stuff’ of choice. As weddings were seen as particularly lucky occasions, brides and grooms gave their guests bombonieres as a symbolic means of passing some of their luck on to others.

With the evolution of the tradition, favors came to represent not only luck, but also health, wealth, fertility, happiness, and a long life. While many of us think picture frames, candy, matchbooks, and figurines when we think favors, cultures around the world have put their own spin on the practice of giving guests something to take home. In Korea, guests are often presented with pretty painted ducks representing the bride and groom.

Jennifer Baumann, editor of the Wedding Gazette, has compiled a short list of cultural favor traditions.

• In Malaysian culture, the traditional wedding favor is painted, decorated eggs - a symbol of fertility for the couple.
• Orange blossoms are very popular for Spanish weddings. A perfect favor would be stems of orange blossoms in a bud vase for each guest.
• Turn a Greek wedding tradition around on your guests: the couple used to receive glass charms in the shape of an eye on their wedding day - this was to protect them from bad luck.
• Dutch favor tradition includes “Bridal Sugar” - five pieces of Dutch sweet candy wrapped in tulle. Each piece represents the five wedding wishes: love, happiness, loyalty, prosperity, and virility. Very similar to other cultures’ wedding wishes.

If you’re not enthralled by wedding favors, don’t fret. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the cash you would have spent on favors to treat your guests to a great meal or an evening’s worth of well-played dance favorites. After all, good memories make the best mementoes.

Color was queen at the recent Sydney Bridal Expo, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. While attendees could peruse the traditional array of white, cream, and ivory gowns, they could also examine slimmer, sleeker gowns in cool greens, pale pinks, vivid blues, and milky browns.

As brides seek to reflect their personal style, white gowns are being shunned for colourful dresses - an array of which have been adorning the catwalk at the Sydney Bridal Exhibition.

“Brides who are a little older have a better sense of their own style,” Melbourne wedding dress designer Craig Braybrook said.

It is a sentiment echoed by Bride To Be magazine editor Amelia Bloomfield. “You’ll always have your princess brides in white, but more and more brides are now expressing their everyday fashion personality in their wedding dress,” she said.

I, for one, am glad to hear it. Demand will create an ever-growing variety of gowns in colorful hues. Some of us just do not look good in shades of white and cream.

And here’s a heads up: If you love all things wedding (like me) and happen to be located in Long Island’s Suffolk County (unlike me), don’t miss “Down the Isle: Wedding Traditions on Long Island,” the new exhibit at Stony Brook’s Long Island Museum.

According to columnist Aileen Jacobson, the exhibit reaches “back in Long Island history to 1785 with cascades of tulle, satin and silk (and photos, artifacts and the occasional groom’s get-up)” and “demonstrates that it wasn’t always all about white.”

One only has to do a Google search for ‘fortune cookies’ to see that the simple plastic-wrapped prophetic cookie of days gone by has evolved. Hungry? How about a giant (and I do mean giant - the fortune is a foot long) chocolate and butterscotch drizzled fortune cookie? Or a a dozen dark and white chocolate hand-dipped and decorated fortune cookies, complete with messages of good fortune?

The reason I bring this up is because having fortune cookie favors at your wedding no longer means watching the bemused faces of your guests as they break open their cookies and discover that “Now is the time to make circles with mints” or “The onion you are eating is someone else’s water lily.”

Fancy Fortune Cookies lets you customize your fortune cookie favors. Future brides and grooms can choose flavors like cherry, blueberry, cappuccino, and mint, and then write their own fortunes. The first five custom fortunes, like the one below, are free!

You can say absolutely anything you want - as long as it fits on three lines of thirty characters each. How neat is that?

Here is Boston, it’s pouring again. But, hey, there hasn’t been a deluge in, what, a day? So we’re due, I guess. I hope it’s sunny and beautiful where you are, but if it’s not and you’re stuck inside like me, you may enjoy these links.

Get Axl For Our Wedding reviews the trials and tribulations of a man who wants one thing and one thing only: Axl Rose to perform at his wedding reception. I wonder what his fiancé thinks about it.

MeMe Roth wants yesterday’s brides to slip into their wedding gowns to prove that marriage and weight gain do not necessarily go hand in hand. While I think her wedding gown challenge is intriguing, it does have its detractors.

In India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Gujarat, and other Asian countries, female friends and relatives traditionally paint Mendhi tattoos onto the hands and feet of the bride before her wedding night. I think Mendhi tattoos are so gorgeous.

Not every lady out there feels driven to land a man. There are many happy, fulfilled women who have eschewed marriage in favor of independence. For more info on being permanently single and sassy (by choice!), check out Spinster Spin. Diane Gilleland makes going it alone sound pretty kickass!

I am in a truly hedonistic mood today. I just want pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. Not that kind of pleasure, you perve. Cakey pleasure. On rainy, yucky days like this one, nothing beats a fantastic piece of cake. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a fantastic piece of cake when it’s sunny, either.

Weddings need (yes, need) fantastic cake. Unless you’re not having a cake, which is alright by me. But if you’re going to have a cake, why not have an amazing, gorgeous, deliciously decadent cake that will leave guests talking for months? The service of the cake is part of the latter half of the reception, after all. In the theatre world, there is a saying: You can screw up during the production, but give ‘em a good finale, and they’ll forgive you anything.

A good cake is an integral part of a good nuptial finale. You cannot tell me that guests are not going to ooh and ahh over a cake like the one above from Wildflowers Weddings. Chef Lori Ann Blethen creates edible art in more than twenty-five varieties of cake including almond dacquoise and blueberry grand marnier pound cake. And she can fill those cakes with twenty-seven different varieties of filling from fresh fruit to Madagascar vanilla buttercream to passion fruit curd.

I’m salivating just thinking about it.

If you’re like me, commemorative scrapbooks make the to-do list but usually get relegated to the very bottom. With work, family fun, and social obligations, who has time to learn to write with a calligraphy pen? Or, more importantly, to plan and execute an attractive scrapbook? Not me, that’s who.

Thus, I’m absolutely tickled by veteran bride and bridesmaid (and Let-Me-Tell-You LLC founder) Karin Sella Sloan’s keepsake scrapbook gift sets. Her unique Bride-to-Be and Me & My Honey scrapbook sets streamline the scrapbooking process by letting future brides and married matrons fill in the blanks.

The former “makes it easy for friends and family to complete a personal scrapbook with wedding wishes and advice in a one-of-a-kind gift for a bride.” The latter (pictured below), which commemorates not only weddings, but also honeymoons and anniversaries, helps couples to “record their life’s adventures, from engagement, through first dance, favorite honeymoon meal and every major anniversary and milestone thereafter.” Easy peasy!

I love, love, love that it comes in a suitcase. How cool is that? Especially for people like me who prone to dropping things, losing papers, and generally making a mess of things. I’ll be buying myself one as soon as The Beard gets around to putting a ring on my finger…which I trust will be any day now. No, really.

And here’s another reason to visit the Let-Me-Tell-You web site: It features a page of downloadable games for brides, grooms, and their friends, as well as fun wedding-related top ten lists and wedding planning resources!