Manolo for the Brides

If you’ve been looking for a way to avoid those boring plastic bride and groom cake toppers, you may have noticed that a lot of the topping options out there just plain suck. Lenox china Swans? Sure, these birds mate for life, but it’s been done. Little gazebos? Snore.

Jazzing up your wedding cake is as easy as one, two, three when you grab yourself a single initial, double letters, or a trio of glam toppers from Toppers With Glitz.

You choose your design (from monograms to cut-out images), your font style and size, your crystal colors, and accessories, and Toppers With Glitz will create your custom topper in as little as six weeks. Don’t expect these toppers to come cheap, however. A five inch high letter with both sides embellished featuring three different crystal colors will cost you almost $200.

Now here’s a recommendation for all those who are more interested in cake toppers than the average bride or groom. Check out Vintage Wedding Cake Toppers by Penny Henderson. It’s 182 pages of everything you ever wanted to know about antique cake toppers and more, written in an engaging and personable style. While it is geared toward collectors of vintage wedding items, there is no reason non-collectors can’t take pleasure in the beautiful images of cake toppers nestled in its pages.

A scant four months after getting married, not once, but four times in four different locales, Pam Anderson and Kid Rock are calling it quits. I imagine that both parties are pleased that four weddings do not mean four divorce contracts. We can only hope that they were casual about mixing assets or, conversely, had an iron-clad pre-nup.

Us Online reports that

Both Anderson and Rock filed divorce papers, each citing “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for the split, although Anderson’s papers list the date of separation as November 21, while Rock’s papers claim it was November 26. The former Baywatch actress has hired famed celebrity divorce lawyer Neal Hersh, whose clients include Kim Basinger, Halle Berry, Drew Barrymore and Denise Richards.

In her blog, Pam wrote

Truth is Bob is great in many ways - we just don’t belong together…we mutually agree. I love my children, he loves his son…we both have wonderful family and friends as support going thru this time.

I’m bummed for poor Pammy. Not that she hasn’t done plenty of wacky stuff in her life, but she’s always struck me as a genuinely good (though misguided) individual. According to the Us article, she suffered a miscarriage earlier this month and a tragedy like that can put so much stress a new marriage.

Chin up, girl!

In this day and age, it’s not unusual to have friends and family spread out across the country or even the planet. So when you’re getting married and know that people hailing from remote locations will be attending, it’s polite to include a map with your invitation. While most people are capable of using services like MapQuest or Google Maps, there will always be those who can’t (like great grandma) or won’t (like stubborn Uncle Bill). Putting a map in with your invites is also a great way to ensure that loved ones won’t miss the ceremony because they confused Route 62 with State Highway 26.

Lovely, soon-to-be married reader Jess recently sent me this endorsement:

When I decided we need maps made up for our wedding, I searched online and found Studio West Designs. They had the best price *and* the cutest icons to put on your map! Working with Jesse, the owner, was easy. He had to change things for us about a hundred times but he did so without complaint because he really wanted to make sure our maps were perfect. The best part is, Jesse doesn’t print anything for you - he just e-mails you the adobe files and you can print them or take them to a local printer, choose your paper, etc. The whole map-making process, from initial e-mail to final payment (only $85!) took about two weeks, but Jesse knew we weren’t in a rush.

Never one to let a recommendation go unexamined, I checked out Studio West Designs. They will design a customized map that includes addresses, driving directions, points of interest, parking information, and other important details, as well as an array (as in more than 100,000) of cute icons.

The bride is the best embellishment this simple Marisa gown could ask for. For those who want a slimmer A-line look, this gown offers a silk satin-faced organza skirt decorated with a wide satin hem paired with a low set empire waistline. In back, buttons run down the whole of the train. The best part about a plain gown? You never have to feel bad about pairing it with wickedly sassy jewelry!

I do, however, feel bad that the model in this image looks like she is being backed into a wall by some sort of swarthy swamp monster.

Note: I must apologize to any readers who made comments recently, only to find them gone upon returning to the site. For some reason, unbeknownst to me, a number of non-spam comments were mysteriously deleted. Sorry gals and guys!

If your eBay feedback is thousands of entries long, you can probably handle buying your own wedding schwag via auction. But if you only occasionally use the site to shop, you may want some help.

How to Buy Everything for Your Wedding on eBay . . . and Save a Fortune! delivers what it promises. First it tells you how to get some supreme bridal bargains on the auction site. Then it shows you how to recoup some of your wedding costs by selling future brides your used gear.

Buying & Selling Your Way to a Fabulous Wedding with eBay basically contains the same info, but costs three dollars more than “How to Buy.” Author Leah Ingram is author of nine books on wedding planning and gift giving, including The Complete Guide for the Anxious Bride and Plan Your Wedding In No Time.

Tie one on for me, will ya? Gobble gobble!

Here’s a spot for loveliness from Vera Wang to get you through the rest of the week. This crepe satin wrap-gown features an organza ruffled train. Nice, no?

Want more Wang? And, really, who doesn’t? Check out Vera Wang On Weddings. Seriously, it’s freaking awesome.

Am I the only one stressed out by all the holiday prep? I’m not cooking anything for Turkey day (I’m a vegetarian, anyway), but I still have plenty to do. When things get out of hand, I relax by imagining I’m a billionaire who can pay someone to take care of ALL THIS STUFF. If you, too, want to be a mental billionaire, have a gander at Forbes’ article on billionaire weddings.

Here we see Donald Trump Jr. and his (surprise) model wife. They, like the Trump chump himself, tied the knot at the palatial Mar-a-Lago estate, which boasts a $45 million grand ballroom.

Forbes asks:

What kind of wedding would you have if money were no object? How about one with 10,000 flowers, 45 chefs, a 200-pound Grand Marnier Cake and live performances by Billy Joel and Tony Bennett.

Personally? I think I’d still have a modest wedding…but I’d have that modest wedding somewhere utterly gorgeous and I’d pay for all of my guests’ travel expenses. How about you?

Calla lilies are kind of overdone where weddings are concerned, in my humble opinion, but I love them anyway. In art and some religious traditions, they symbolize purity of heart and of you-know-what, as well as virtue. Of course, if you go back a few thousand years, you find that calla lilies were also associated with lustfulness. Legend has it that when the goddess Venus saw the beauty of the lily, she caused the thick yellow stamen (wink) to grow up from its center (wink, wink), marring its perfection.

In the present, calla lilies represent a popular nuptial “theme” flower. Personally, I believe that themes are best applied to wedding decor in moderation, i.e. sparingly. There is only so far a theme will take you before your reception hall will start to look like a grade school classroom.

But, if you do for some odd reason, feel compelled to max out on a theme and your theme just happens to be calla lilies, you will find no shortage of wedding schwag to see you through.

Give your guests a botanical heads up with DIY white calla lilies invitation and note cards.

Then tell ‘em where to sit with calla lily place cards!

If you’re planning to hand out a wedding program–how else are guests supposed to know who the major players in your wedding are?–why not print it on creamy calla lily paper?

Don’t forget the calla lily unity candle! Wouldn’t want anyone to miss your theme, here!

And then finish off your floral look with a calla lily cake topper, like this porcelain design featuring a keepsake bottom.