Manolo for the Brides

That’s the battlecry of my family. If one of us asks another if there might not be a better approach to a task without being asked for advice first, this is what they’re most likely to hear in return. Witness these (semi) real exchanges:

Me: Are you really sure you want this whaling song about a guy leaving his woman for quite possibly ever as your first dance at your wedding reception?

My Brother: Who’s milking the frog? We like it.

Me: And that’s great. Enjoy. (makes mental note not to use same song for own wedding)

or

Me: What would you think of this for the cake?

Mr. Twistie: I don’t really like cake.

Me: What would you like?

Mr. Twistie: No, no, you can have your cake.

Me: But what would you like?

Mr. Twistie: I like fruit tarts.

Me: Wow! That sounds great! Let’s do it!

Mr. Twistie: Don’t you want your cake?

Me: Hey, who’s milking this frog? I can have cake any time I like. You don’t like it, and truth be told I like tarts better, too. Let’s have tarts.

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In a recent article, I talked about how to decide whether to use a professional planner to help create your wedding dreams. It seemed only fair that I also talk about how to decide whether to create most of your wedding from scratch or not.

I’m going to come right out and say that I was a total DIY diva for my wedding. I love to make things by hand, and I hate to spend money on paying someone to do something I’m more than capable of doing for myself. Further, I felt that putting my handwork into the day was part of putting my heart into the event. On top of all that, we had pretty much two shiny nickles to spend on making a day that our friends and families would remember fondly. We just plain didn’t have the bucks to spend on a lot of pros…but even if the budget had been more flexible, I think I would have done the DIY thing pretty much to the level I did. See above in re: putting my heart into the day.

I’ve known brides who have made their own gowns, grown the flowers, deisgned and printed invitations, baked their own cakes, made the wedding feasts in their own kitchens, designed and made all the decorations…I think about the only thing I haven’t seen yet is a bride who cobbled her own wedding shoes. I’m equally sure that somewhere out there is a lady who has done just that.

Still, it’s not for everyone. And that’s why you should ask yourself the following questions when deciding whether or not to DIY and to what extent:

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Few and far between are the lucky individuals who haven’t found themselves simultaneously single and invited to a wedding. If you’re invited as a onesome, the pressure’s off, and you can start worrying about what to wear and how you won’t know anyone at the reception and whether the buffet will include anything you, a vegan with a gluten allergy, can safely eat. It’s when your invitation comes addressed to “you plus one” that the fun begins.

Anon wrote in to ask about this very topic.

I (a straight female) received an invitation this week from a college friend, inviting me-plus-guest to her wedding. My immediate reaction, since I’m not dating anyone and don’t really want to scrape someone up to go to a wedding in another state, was to RSVP for myself alone. Then I remembered that my sister also knew the bride in college, as well as a lot of the other guests I’d assume are being invited. Would it be a no-no to bring my sister as my guest? Will it throw off the girl-boy ratio and ruin the wedding if I bring an extra female, rather than the expected extra male or coming alone? Is it weird to invite someone that the bride was friends with, but who she didn’t invite to the wedding herself? If I don’t have a date-date, should I just save the bride and groom the cost of another plate and go by myself? Am I just overthinking this and making a bigger deal of it than I should?

In the realm of traditional etiquette, it’s a well-established fact that one should never address an invitation to “and guest” or “plus one.” The bride and groom should invite those people they are close to, paying attention to social units and finding out the names of everyone’s significant others. It’s not gauche to invite solo guests — far from it, in fact! A friendly, outgoing single can have a marvelous time at a wedding.

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My friend Chris, who is a librarian by trade, sent me a link to one of the most clever invitations I’ve ever seen.

Diana and Scott, also librarians, obviously went all out when designing and crafting their wedding stationery with an in-your-face library theme. I wouldn’t have thought it so, but book borrowing and nuptials have a lot in common. Due dates, reservations, and forms all come to mind.

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I love anything one can buy without having to schlep one’s tush to the store. In fact, while planning my wedding, I looked for any and every opportunity to shop from the confines of my office…then I wrote a book about it! I do understand that there are some folks who get a real kick out of going to the mall or exchanging pleasant banter with shopkeeps, but I’m guessing that for every one of them there’s someone like me who’d rather not spend their Saturdays braving the retail gauntlet.

Some things are just designed for online shopping–faux flowers, dresses, paper goods, and favors come to mind. Other things don’t fare so well when squeezed into a cramped mail truck. Thus far, all of my efforts to find fancy iced wedding and shower appropriate cake were for naught. Sure, you can buy cheesecakes and petit fours and rum cake, but the rigors of shipping heretofore demanded some degree of cakey stability, ruling out varieties commonly associated with nuptials.

Until now, that is…

Fat Daddy Bake Shop takes cupcakes to the next level, packaging them in little canning jars for easy delivery via airmail. At $65 for ten 1/2 pint cupcakes–or should I call them jarcakes–it’s unlikely you’ll be sending your wedding guests home with sweets ensconced in glass. That price point does, however, lend itself to serving them to bridal shower and bachelorette party attendees or giving them to attendants as part of gift baskets.

And, happily, the flavor selection lends itself to NOM NOM NOMing. Were I to choose five, I’d pick the butter cake filled with coconut and layered with cream cheese frosting; banana cake with butterscotch chips and golden butterscotch frosting; brown sugar butter cake blended with toffee bits and topped with chocolate buttercream; vanilla cake with coffee, chocolate chips and layered with vanilla buttercream, and dark chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache, caramel and walnuts, topped with caramel buttercream and nuts. Then I’d lapse straight into a sugar-induced coma because I have absolutely no willpower to speak of.

After checking out my shortlist of ways to put some pep into wedding pics, reader Ky suggested I check out Taaz. Can I just say I love synchronicity? It just so happens that I was planning on posting about Taaz, which describes itself as a “fun, easy-to-use website that gives women the opportunity to ‘try on’ the hottest makeup and hairstyle looks from the convenience of their homes.”

I’m interested in anything I can try on without having to battle my way through throngs of fellow shoppers, so I gave it a go. My original wedding day look is on the left, and my plasticized look is on the right.

But while I love makeovers as much as the next femmey-femme, I had no intentions of discussing how one might use Taaz to try on different makeup colors and hairstyles. Nor was I planning to wax poetic about the site’s product recommendations — circumstances dictate I be a Bare Minerals girl as much as I might want to worship at the altar of Chanel.

No, I want to talk to all frazzled and fried brides-to-be about Taaz’s potential as a stress reliever. Seriously…I just spent a hilarious forty-five minutes uploading snapshots of friends, family, and pets so I could make them look like geishas, freaks, and cross dressers. No one was spared the cruelties of my dastardly broad makeup brush.

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All right, so the decisions isn’t quite as simple as the title of this post implies. The Beard and I spent what money we had on a wedding, with the knowledge that money for a fabulous Costa Rican vacation would appear later. We did not anticipate, however, that the house we planned to stay at would get leased out for two whole years. You could say that our honeymoon plans have been tabled in the long term, in part because we wanted to make sure that my huge family and his little one would be with us when we wed.

I was inspired to think about this after a friend suggested I check out an older post on his blog, Travel Plan Idea:

This is actually a homework assignment for students in my debate class, but regular readers are welcome to play. The topic is eloping and splurging on a honeymoon (this includes destination weddings) vs. spending a bunch of money on a traditional wedding and spending comparatively less money on the honeymoon. For example, I barely remember my wedding reception — it was fine but nothing special compared to my nine week honeymoon in Italy. However, my sister went for the big wedding reception because she wanted to share her wedding day with as many friends and family members as possible.

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As the wife of a musician, I tend to be very aware of music at weddings. As a long-time theater/opera buff with a penchant for listening to lyrics, I tend to be extra-aware of the messages given by music, whether intended or not. For instance, I had to turn a burst of highly inapropriate laughter into a coughing fit when I saw one groom and his attendants approach the altar to the strains of Send In the Clowns played at a dirgelike tempo. It’s a pretty tune, yes, but knowing the title would make me cross it off the list of potential songs to play at a wedding, even if I didn’t know the lyrics and dramatic context.

That same potential fit of hysteria hits me every time I hear someone use Greensleeves as a processional or to denote mutual romantic love. Really, the lyrics are a laundry list of all the money he spent on a woman who isn’t in love with him, along with assurances that the fact she’s treated him like a dog only make him more ardent. Clearly masochism was alive and well in the Sixteenth century.

So yes, Virginia, sometimes the words really do matter.

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I am not worthy, you guys. I hit you with this pic last week:

And you gave me some fabulously deranged captions for it. You all did a brilliant job, but there can be only one winner. This week it’s Emma for this particularly giggleworthy contribution:

“The bridesmaids, while amused by Chloe’s fascination with the cloud that looked like a ‘pretty pretty pony,’ were beginning to think that giving her that much valium before the wedding was a bad idea…”

Congratulations, Emma, and thanks to everyone who played!