Manolo for the Brides

It’s time once again for Twistie’s Sunday Caption Madness! You all know the rules. I post a picture, you send in your best captions via comments, and next saturday I pick a winner who is showered with…well, my praise, anyway. At any rate, we all get a good laugh or two, and that’s always to the good.

In honor of the last days of summer, I’ve gone with a tropical theme this time:

Ready…set…snark!

In some traditions, a bride wears several outfits over the course of the wedding. In India the bride is expected to wear a different outfit for each of several different parties over the course of multiple days. In China, during the wedding day a bride may change her clothes as many as eight times.

In the west, though, if the bride changed clothes it was usually for the now rarely seen going away outfit, which she would wear to travel on the first leg of her honeymoon.

Over the last few years, though, a new trend has emerged: the reception gown.

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Ack! Too many interesting newsbites has translated into too few pictures of pretty dresses! As you no doubt know by now, I’m a big fan of shopping for bridesmaid garb outside of the bridal salons because you can snag something lovely off Bluefly for not much more than you’ll pay elsewhere.

In fact, I had a look around Bluefly today — I know, hard work, right? — and found a bunch of gowns that would look fab on a bridesmaid or maid/matron-of-honor. From strapless to strapped, slim to poufy, I hope my choices will delight and perhaps inspire those of you who have not yet decided how your female attendants will be clothed on the big day.

From Vera Wang:

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I wanted to play music I liked at my wedding, which meant no Electric Slide, no YMCA, and no call and response numbers. Consequently, The Beard and I opted to laptop DJ our own wedding. We had the equipment we needed, and we had somewhere to plug the whole setup in. After setting up a playlist, all that was left to do was listen to every single song to make sure every single one was family friendly.

You would not believe how many were crossed off the list because of cussin’ or unabashed adult themes. Songs I thought were squeaky clean turned out to be surprisingly raunchy when I listened to them with a critical ear! In the end, I think that ‘pee’ (in Spider Robinson’s Belaboring the Obvious) was the naughtiest word sung over our sound system.

Photo via The Consumerist

But one person’s inappropriate is another person’s A-OK. I was born into a very churchy, upstanding, “say-gosh-not-God” kind of family, meaning that even songs containing certain widely accepted euphemisms for sex or drugs were right off the table. On the other hand, Conor Friedersdorf of Culture11 recently examined how gangsta rap is making musical inroads at wedding receptions.

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No, not a lot of duct tape like that, you pervs. I mean there will probably be a lot of duct tape on the man registry* that will precede what some are calling the newest trend in weddings, the man shower. Googling “man showers” — see what I do for you? — brings up plenty of results, which could indeed point to a growing trend. EXCEPT that almost all of the results lead to a single AP article reprinted in papers across the U.S.

The gift-laden dude you see above is Brian Wigand, whose FFIL Jonathan Morris welcomed him into the family by throwing him a man shower as a warm up to, not a substitute for, the traditional bachelor party.

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The lovely Leah writes:

My friend is getting married in September. She has the lovely and classy wedding dress in ivory and champagne (see link). The length of the dress has been measured for a 2 1/2″ heel. She would love to find a beautiful and classy shoe to wear with this wedding dress. In red. Oh, and no wedges, please. While I find them comfortable, my friend has a dislike for the wedge style which I don’t quite understand but have given up trying to overcome.

Her wedding dress can be seen here. Please ignore the fact that the model is doing her best Kim Cattral ala Mannequin impression, and also disregard the Spanish bolero in the final picture as it won’t be worn in this ceremony. My friend looks devastatingly beautiful in this dress, possibly due to the glow on her face when she wears it. Awwwww….

I have tried to use the resources available to me in the links of the Manolosphere, however my amateur self has been overwhelmed in my red shoe search by the silly, funky, daring, whimsical, exotic, and just plain tacky offerings. I turn to you, the professionals, to help me pull the beautiful and classy from the piles of other. Can you help? I know at the very least you can inspire.

I, like the Manolo, love the shoes, even if I do spend most of the year puttering around the house barefoot. While I don’t spend a lot of time shoe shopping, I do spend a lot of time looking! That’s why, out of all of the problems I figured I might have fulfilling Leah’s request, I never imagined that it would be heel height of all things that tripped me up.

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With the exception of a handful of rogue weddings, the nuptial celebrations I’ve attended as an adult have NOT included the tossing of the bouquet. At one of the aforementioned affairs, I didn’t get anywhere near the thing. I caught it at another — mainly because my aunt winged it right at my head. At yet another, I actually did catch it, but then I tossed it covertly to the woman standing next to me and she was more than happy to have it.

As I’ve gotten older, there have typically been less and less single ladies on the floor when the bride has decided to toss the bouquet. You get the teenage girls, the older widows, the “cougars,” and the small group of single, of-marriageable age women. Sometimes you can see the horror and mortification in these ladies’ eyes as their friends and relatives elbow them onto the parquet when the DJ announces the impending toss.

Of course, some women are into the whole game. Really into it. Some even want to nab that bunch of blooms so badly that they’re willing to commit bodily assault to get it! This how-to from Howcast is meant to be humorous (I hope) but I’ve known a chick or two who would treat this as deadly serious advice.

I’d advise taking an entirely different approach to the bouquet. Step 1: Before the wedding, ascertain whether your group of friends has any interest in the outdated tradition. If not, proceed to Step 2: Approach the bride-to-be to determine whether she’s thinking of tossing the bouquet. If she is, proceed to Step 3: Threaten to take her future husband hostage if she won’t agree to scrap the idea. If she procures another fiancée, proceed to Step 4: Strap yourself to your seat when the MC announces it’s tossing time.

I have a deep love for couples who take the time to really craft weddings that will be meaningful to them in some special way. Whether they stick with time-honored traditions because they love and believe in them or strike out into new territory by rejecting or adapting traditions that don’t suit them, they make the wedding fit them to a tee.

And that’s why I have to sort of love this wedding cake:

According to the article, this couple chose to have a superhero wedding. Why? Because they love comic books and superheroes. The groom wore a green tie and the bride a green sash to signify their mutual love of The Hulk as well as of each other. Standing next to The Hulk atop their wedding cake is Wonder Woman.

Okay, so I wouldn’t have wanted a bright green cake with The Hulk standing on top of it, but it seems to have worked for them.

Speaking of weddings that seem to have worked for the couple involved, here’s an article about a British couple who got married at work…in a grocery store.

As I said, these weddings are not for everyone. The important thing to take away is that there’s plenty of room for imagination and personal expression when you’re planning your wedding. Feel free to choose a theme that’s not exactly standard, an unusual setting, less than traditional vows, or an unexpected form of decoration.

After all, it’s your wedding. You should be clearly visible in it.

Over the last few months, I’ve seen a lot of people here, on other blogs, privately discussing their own weddings in public at a volume where I couldn’t help but hear, insist they aren’t having/didn’t have a reception. They had/will have a party.

That’s when I realize that people don’t completely understand what a reception is, or how it does and doesn’t differ from any other party.

So what makes it a reception?

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