Manolo for the Brides

There’s nothing like looking right into someone else’s wedding. It’s what inspires us to search Flickr for photos tagged with ‘wedding,’ ‘bride and groom,’ and ‘wedding cake.’ It’s what keeps us going back to The Knot, even though said site can be irritatingly cloying. Heck, it’s what prompts me to open my e-mail every morning — whenever one of you sends me a wedding snapshot or a link to your wedding pics, I DEVOUR them.

If you’re a bride-to-be who likes to walk the road less traveled, checking out other chicks’ weddings can also help you come to terms with your own choices. There’s something comforting in knowing you’re not alone in wanting to wear green cowboy boots with your gown or proudly rock your ink.

So my newest addiction? It’s the Weddings We Loved board over at Kvetch@IndieBride. I’ve posted a selection of pics below and ask the hotlinking gods’ forgiveness. All the snaps are from different nuptials, but you can click on them to see more images from all of them.

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A handful of weddings unfold perfectly, but most are marred by the little things that inevitably go wrong. And then there are the weddings that are interrupted by true tragedies…

When an earthquake hit Sichuan, China on May 12th, there were, in addition to all of the people going about their daily business, men and women poised to enter into a lifelong commitment.

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Unless this is your first time reading MftB — in which case, welcome! — you know that I’m a HUGE advocate of exploring alternative wardrobing options. As tempting as it is to head straight to David’s (if you’re on a budget) or a fancypants upscale bridal salon (if you’re not), why limit yourself? There are great wedding-y dresses at tons of shops, online and off!

Ideally, the guys in your life should also take my advice to heart. While I am a big fan of Men’s Wearhouse because their service tends to be uniformly excellent, their tuxes tend to leave me cold. When it came time to help The Beard pick out duds for the dudes, I decided to start my search anywhere but on the mainstream menswear sites. The end result? We found these great striped suits for about a hundred bucks each. Just shy of zoot suits, they added a touch of…something to the wedding lineup.

The lovely Toni recently e-mailed to share some snapshots of a wedding she attended and dish about the menswear. The guys sourced their tuxes from Volcom, of all places. If you don’t already know, Volcom is a clothing company/entertainment site/surf, skate, and board collective whose tagline is “youth against establishment.”

It’s also definitely not the first place I’d look when choosing wedding-y menswear, but after seeing the photos Toni linked to I wouldn’t knock it. You also can’t beat the price — I found the tux pants for $60 and the tux jacket for $77 $110. The fit is modern (i.e., slim and kind of slouchy) so it won’t appeal to everyone, but if your guy is hoping to find NOTHISDADSTUXPLZ it may be just what he’s looking for.

The point is that the alternatives aren’t always what you’d expect or where you’d expect them to be, but they’re out there, nonetheless! Searching for them is particularly worth it when you’re on a budget, you know you definitely want something that’s a little out there, or you’re just not feeling the stuff you saw in the shops. Like I say in iDo: If you can imagine it, chances are good that someone, somewhere is selling it.

(Preamble: I’m happy to announce that as of today, The Beard and I have been married for one whole year! He reads this at work, so here’s me saying, “I love ya, loverboy!”)

In case you’ve ever wondered whether I actually read and play with and make all of the books, stuff, and recipes I’ve reviewed here, let me just say I don’t mess around. Yesterday, in my never-ending quest to acquaint myself with all things bridal, I made soap.

Let me rephrase that…I didn’t start with lye and fat and whatever other nasty things are in soap, but I did melt down blocks of colorless unscented soap, mix up different colored batches, add a fragrance, and pour it into molds. So to address any lingering doubts, when companies are nice enough to send me free swag, I test run it, whatever IT is.

In this case, it was a soap-making kit from Bramble Berry, makers of a ton of DIY soap and candle supplies. The soap kit was presented to me as a potential bridal shower or wedding favor–the catch being that you have to have the patience to work with a medium that needs to sit around and dry for hours before you can unmold it.

The directions call for a microwave…something we don’t have. So I just stuck the whole works into a pan and popped it into the oven at about 275. This worked like a charm after I remembered to cut the soap base into chunks. When I did that, it actually melted!

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I think it’s safe to say that most brides would like to have something unique about their wedding gowns. Whether it’s a matter of the cut, the trim, a touch of color, or the choice of accessories, most of us want to look bridal but not cookie cutter. Some women have gone to great lengths to avoid having the same-old, same-old dress that everyone else is wearing that season.

And then there’s Major Claude Hensinger and his wife Ruth.

Claude was flying his B-29 on a bombing raid over Yowata, Japan in August 1944 when the engine of the plane caught fire. He and his crew bailed out with their nylon parachutes. During the night while they waited rescue, Claude used his trusty parachute as a blanket and a pillow. After he and his men were rescued, he kept the parachute. When he proposed to Ruth in 1947, he handed her the parachute and suggested she make her wedding gown out of it. She did. Here are the results.

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Two days ago the California Supreme Court ruled that people have a ‘fundamental right to marry’ and that gender restrictions violate the equal protection guarantee in the state constitution.

While the war for marriage equality has been going on for some time, this particular battle began in 2004 when Mayor Gavin Newsome announced that gay marriage would be legal in San Francisco, regardless of the law in the rest of the state. Gay and lesbian couples flocked to the city, got married, and were then told their marriages were invalid because of a law passed in 2000 declaring “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in California.” After that law was passed by voters, California developed one of the strongest domestic partnership laws in the country…but that still isn’t the same as marriage.

When I heard the news of this ruling, what struck me was how the wording sounded familiar to me in content. I heard a distant echo of Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka which struck down racially segregated public schools in 1954. The argument then was that ’separate but equal’ as a policy may always be separate, but was almost never equal.

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It’s a good thing I’m not in Sydney, Australia right now. I mean, seriously, what is it with the absolutely fantastic dresses that come out of that country? First there was Culture Shock, and now I find Gallery Serpentine via my fabulous friend Kristina.

Most brides don’t dream of walking down the aisle in jeweled green…what is that, PVC?…but I know there are at least a few of you out there.

I still cry a little inside when I think about all the amazing colored gowns I found AFTER I tied the knot. Oh, I looked at dresses in reds and greens and blues, but all of the ones I found looked chinzy or promish or too solidly 80s to be retro cool.

That said, aren’t these gowns GORGEOUS? My want-O-meter is in the red zone!

Huh, it looks like LOVE/HATE is turning into a regular Thursday feature. The question is whether I’ll be able to keep up with it, as details like that have a way of slipping my mind. I’ll do my best to remember, because if there was a “LOVE/HATE: The love/hate edition” I’d be in love, love, love. Seriously, reading your thoughts on the fashion at hand always makes my day.

But enough about you…let’s talk about pants. I’ve posted about pants a mere two times, but they’ve come up in the convo often. Just recently, one of y’all posted a link to a picture of an utterly fantastic pantsuit.

Unfortunately, I lost that link, so I’ll show you something else instead.

Whaddya think? Wow or bow wow? While Ashley Rowe of Miss Rowe did not intend for her designs to be worn as wedding wear, they certainly satisfy two important requirements. One, they’re pricey…the bustier alone costs $795. And two, the models have twisted themselves into unnatural positions and are scowling at the camera.

As to whether I like them, I’ll say this:

I like the idea. I like the look on ultra-skinny models. I like the fact that a forward thinking bride could list this among her day-of outfit options. I like the concept of a bustier with tails.

What I don’t like is what I see in my brain when I try to imagine myself in blazingly white skinny pants, and I’m not exactly what you’d call heavy. That said, I’m gonna guess that this isn’t exactly a realistic look for most people.

Tiny cakes continue to be a hot nuptial commodity based on the preponderance of cupcake stands and cupcake wrappers out there. As grand as traditional tiered cakes can be–and wow, are they ever fabulous when they’re done right–couples are still gravitating toward cake in personal portions.

I’ve seen cupcakes doled out during cake cuttings and cupcakes stacked as centerpieces all reception long, which meant that some guests were noshing on cake before dinner was even served! What role haven’t I seen cupcakes take on? Well, I’ve never seen cupcakes given away as a wedding favor. This is probably because cake is smushy-mushy and must be boxed well lest it be rendered inedible during travel.

So how do you render little cakes fit for transport? If you’re the lovely and talented Bakerella, you make them EVEN LITTLER! And, sometimes, but not always, you put them on sticks:

Bakerella’s tiny cupcake tutorial makes it look so easy, which usually means that the project at hand will be really difficult. Not this time, however. As long as you’re patient enough to wait for melted chocolate to dry (just eat some while you wait) and mold a bunch of cakeballs into cupcakes, you’ll do just fine. The best thing about these…besides the fact that they’re so dang simple to make…is that there is icing mixed right into the cake. Yum!

If you’re looking for a fun DIY favor, think about whether you fancy spending a bit of time in the kitchen baking, rolling, and icing one or more mini-mini cupcakes per guest. Should it happen that the answer is yes, go thank Bakerella for posting such a well written and easy-to-follow tutorial. I’ll be doing just that when I whip these up for my impending book release party!

EDIT — Here’s an alternate, even easier tutorial!