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!