When I first discovered the glories of Manolo for the Brides, I well remember reading an entry on corporate-sponsored weddings. The very concept made me laugh and cringe at the same time. What bride would do such a thing? What corporation would…well, that, actually was less of a question. While I hoped some would turn down anyone who asked, in my heart I knew that a great many more corporations and businesses would merrily hand over cold, hard cash and services in exchange for advertising. After all, who wouldn’t consider the corportation a caring, loving family resource after helping a strapped young couple make their dreams come true?

(raises hand)

But apparently the trend is on the rise.

Today there’s a story in the enidnews.com about wedding trends that includes the story of Oklahoma U student bride Brook Breitenkamp and her fiance Chris Carlson who are seeking sponsorship for their Sept. 22 wedding.

According to the article:

The couple intended to have a low-budget ceremony since they were footing the bill themselves. As Breitenkamp talked to friends at Enid’s First Baptist Church, the more she realized she could have a sponsored wedding. She contacted acquaintances and branched out to area businesses in need of a boost.

In exchange for corporate sponsorship, Breitenkamp is offering advertising space on her wedding programs, a list of all sponsors on her wedding website, and an invitation to a representitive of each company to come mingle at her reception to find new customers.

In exchange for all this, as of the end of August, she had raised a whopping $1,000 in goods and services.

I may be old-fashioned, but if I’m going to a dear friends’ wedding, the last thing I want is to have sales pitches lobbed at me while I’m trying to toast the happy couple.

The article went on to say that sponsored weddings are becoming more and more common in larger cities like New York or Los Angeles, though it doesn’t list a source for that statement. I choose to stick my fingers firmly in my ears and sing ‘lalalalalalalala’ until the buzzing stops.

Why is Breitenkamp doing this? I assume other brides taking this route have much the same reason and here it is:

“I tell them I’m trying not to get indebted for this wedding,” Breitenkamp said.

To which I can only reply: then throw a wedding you can afford. If you don’t have thirty thousand dollars to spend on a wedding, don’t do it. I’d much rather go to a backyard wedding and eat homemade picnic foods than have to choke down a sales pitch along with my prime rib in a hotel ballroom.

In the end, what really makes a wedding isn’t the amount of money spent on it, but the happiness of the couple and the love that went into creating whatever is on hand. I’ve felt it in backyards, state parks, tiny chapels, grand churches, and hotel ballrooms. I’ve felt it whether the bride wore a designer gown or a hand me down. It isn’t the budget that makes a wedding, but the spirit of love and hope that should surround everyone in attendance.

And if there’s one thing in the article that gives me hope, it’s this fact: several businesses have politely turned Breitenkamp down.

Greetings all.

Twistie here. You may remember me from when I had the honor to fill in for the amazing and glorious Never teh Bride in May, while she was off making her handle inaccurate. Well, from now on, I have the great good fortune join NtB as the weekend blogger here at Manolo for the Brides. I look forward to sharing with you all I have learned through my lifelong fascination with weddings and marriage and my experiences as a proud DIY bride who created a superfantastic wedding with nearly no funds.

But for now, let’s get down to brass tacks.

I’ve heard many old saws and superstitions about weddings over the years, but only one has held absolutely true at every wedding I’ve attended in more than forty years: something always goes wrong.

It may be large, it may be small, but it will happen.

Rings get lost, the wrong flowers or cake get delivered, someone loses or rips a piece of wedding finery, vendors fail to come through, it rains when the happy couple have no plan b for weather, personal grudges between guests lead to small acts of violence…and the list goes on.

Whatever the disaster that strikes you, there are ways to minimize the damage.

1: Don’t panic. If you lose your head, everyone will remember your panic attack and forget how you solved the problem. Before you scream, cry, throw something, or decide to get drunk, take a deep breath and try to put things in perspective.

2: Have a disaster pack and a couple plans up your sleeve beforehand. Will you need it all? Probably not. But it does no good to only have antacid tablets when what you require is duct tape, and vice versa. Have you invited two people who have been feuding for the last six years? Detail someone to keep an eye on the situation and defuse any potential battles. Put someone you know is good in a crisis on standby to be in charge if something goes wrong with a vendor.

3: Remain flexible. One friend of mine wound up with the wrong cake delivered to her wedding reception. While it didn’t look anything like the cake she’d ordered and she had no idea what flavor it was, she decided to just go with the flow and serve it. It was roughly the same size as the cake she’d ordered, the white and gold frosting worked with her color scheme, and she decided to take it as a positive sign for her marriage that it was originally intended for a fiftieth anniversary party. Nobody noticed a thing wrong. Sometimes a disaster isn’t a disaster as long as nobody knows about it.

On the other hand, I once attended a wedding where the bride managed to leave her throwing bouquet in the church dressing room and the door was locked when she went to get it for the reception. She held up the reception for an hour over the bouquet rather than either throw something else or just get the party started and quietly send someone to get the key. In this case, inflexibility created a much bigger problem than actually existed.

4: Keep your sense of humor handy. So the ring bearer got stage fright and ran screaming back up the aisle to where his mother was sitting. Or perhaps the DJ mixed up the tracks and you find yourself dancing with your new groom to Your Cheating Heart. Or maybe (and this one happened at my wedding!) the groom has failed to familiarize himself with the wedding ceremony as written and breaks in to say ‘I do’ four times before his cue. Laughter is the only possible reasonable response in these cases. The more you laugh, the better time you have, too.

5: Be Zen. Remember in the end the only thing that can truly ruin your wedding is if something manages to prevent it happening. If you get through the ceremony, it’s amazing what you can survive.

6: Whatever goes wrong at your wedding, there’s someone out there with a much, much worse wedding war story to tell. Chances are your story can help another lady out there feel better about her wedding, too.

So what went wrong at a wedding you attended? Took part in? Let’s hear your best war stories!