I was going to post a corpse bride or a zombie groom in honor of Halloween night, but the fabulous Toni found something far more frightening for me to post.
Agh! My eyes! Missy Quinn (16, she of the £100,000 wedding and £16,000 dress) is much scarier than anything I could have dredged up on such short notice.
Happy Halloween!
Bridal showers are subject to all sorts of factors, from friends spread out around the country to delays caused by a complicated postal system to bridesmaids’ budget woes. Can your best friend afford to travel across two states twice — once for the shower and once for the wedding? Your favorite cousin didn’t receive her invite until two days before the event, oops. And air travel is just too much of a pain these days. Long story short, it would seem that tricky logistical problems are not at all uncommon, if the existence of Tutto Liccica is any indication.
Tutto Luccica specializes in remote (or, as they call them, “In spirit“) showers meant to transcend geographical differences. It works like this: Tutto Luccica helps the hostess pick a date and provides invitations, shower favors, and an event web site with information about the guest of honor. They then mail said GoH a centerpiece gift package that she is barred from opening until the specified date. I won’t go into that, but I can safely say it’s something you could easily put together yourself.
Finally, the hostess is given instructions that outline how to make it all work…instructions, I might add, that aren’t explained on Tutto Luccica’s web site. I can only assume that invitees are encouraged to send a gift that will arrive on or around a specified date, at which time they can use their powers of imagination to envision the bride-to-be happily unwrapping her bounty alone, in her jim-jams. Maybe it’s like the time I played Hour of Power with The Beard over IRC when I lived in NYC and he lived in Boston…
Does this seem a little weird to anyone else? In essence, you’re getting invited in spirit to a party that is only taking place in spirit, but you’re being asked to send a real gift. I’d be much more apt to send a gift to the bride-to-be if I were to receive an invitation to an actual bridal shower that circumstance kept me from attending. Am I just a stick in the mud who is not hip and with it enough to recognize the future of bridal showers?
Goodness me, I hope not.
My ultrasound was this morning, which, consequently, is why I’m not posting until after noon. If I had a scanner handy, I’d be impressing all of you with my extremely attractive — though currently rather Halloween-ready — offspring. As it is, our scanner is broken, so I won’t be showing off my fetus until I can drag my tush to the drug store to use the big girl scanner.
Instead, you get another round of alternative wedding flowers…this time from DK Designs in Hawaii.
I love the tight, polished look of this Stephanotis bridal bouquet, crafted from Claycraft by Deco clay and accented with tiny Austrian Swarovski crystals. The whole thing is finished with a double-faced satin Tiffany blue ribbon embellished with a square crystal buckle. And unlike your average bridal bouquet, this one will never wilt or fade or get nasty-crunchy.
DK Designs also makes floral centerpieces and (ta da!) hair accessories like this pretty and delicate gardenia hair clip.
Gardenia perfume can be added to the flower itself just before shipping so it smells just as sweet as the real thing.
Clay wedding flowers aren’t for everyone, of course. Real blossoms and blooms will likely never go out of style. But for the bride-to-be who wants something just a little bit different, they can be a beautiful alternative.
In last week’s discussion of cold feet, we talked about some of the ways one can cope with pre-wedding jitters and what happens when the wedding is called off. The presumption was that if one calls off a wedding, one does so as gracefully and as tactfully as possible. None of this runaway bride business, in other words.
But I guess that’s just us — we are rational and level-headed people, after all. Some people choose to operate on the other side of the spectrum, like the Japanese man who recently set fire to his wedding venue to avoid having to go through with the ceremony. In Tatsuhiko Kawata’s case, it wasn’t cold feet that wetted his ardour, but rather the fact that he already had a wife!
Kawata, 39, decided to burn down the Risonare resort hotel rather than get hitched in front of 80 guests. He reportedly told police: “I thought if I set a fire I wouldn’t have to go through with the wedding.”
Luckily, no one was hurt…physically, anyway. I’m sure that the bride-to-be and her family experienced some emotional distress upon learning that the groom-to-be would rather risk arson charges than say “I do.” Then there’s the whole ‘other wife’ thing. That probably stung a little, too.
Like I said, there’s a right way and a wrong way to tell your intended and your family that you want to call off the wedding. Kawata definitely chose the latter.
Want to see bridal models with good posture, normal stances, and happy faces? You may have to get knocked up first. It’s not that every maternity wedding dress designer uses smiling models — the models at Sarah Houston are scowling at me in their pretty frocks as I type this — but your chances of seeing a grin or two go way up when you’re looking at maternity gowns.
Just look how happy this model is in her Bjorn & Me dresses in (from left to right) chiffon with handsewn beading, satin embellished with Italian lace, and matte satin with French lace. Who knows if she’s actually pregnant…I’m not seeing much evidence of a bump under all that fabric. It’s just so nice to see a model who actually has a smile on her face! And besides that, I just happen to like these wedding gowns.
We’ve spent a good amount of time exploring the virtues of various marriage proposals…public versus private, nerdy versus romantic, and adventurous versus traditional, but we’ve usually agreed that a proposal works when it works for the couple. Here’s one that definitely worked for the couple.
A certain man who goes by the moniker TheRealPfhreak successfully proposed to his girlfriend by hacking Chrono Trigger. He originally wanted to surprise her with a trip to Mount Barker, the site of their first date, but that just didn’t work out. So instead of bringing his now fiancée to the mountain, he brought the mountain to her by creating a secret Chrono Trigger level complete with stargazing, dancing, her favorite song lyrics, and even her cat.
Overall, it was a resounding success. She had no idea that this wasn’t part of the original. She asked, “Hey, are those the Princess Bride lyrics? Do the Japanese really love that movie?” to which I responded, “Yeah! That’s probably it! Either that or a bored translator slipping in an easter egg.”
When her name appeared on screen (blurred in this video), she glanced over to me (on one knee, with the ring out), wondering, “How did they get my name in this game?” When she saw the ring, she reread the proposal, nodded yes, and said, “You are such a huge nerd! I love this!”
Note that the good stuff starts at about one minute into the video.
Congratulations to TheRealPfhreak and his lady!
You all know how this works by now. I post a picture that tickles my funny bone, you post your best captions for it in comments, and next saturday I declare a winner.
So, are you ready? Check this out:
On your mark…get set…snark!
What with Halloween being less than a week away, I thought it was about time we got into the spirit around here and darkened things up just a touch.
While many of us think about it more at Halloween than at other times of the year, the Goth subculture is with us always. And of course where you have a subculture, you have people marrying in it. There are many shades of Goth, so there are nearly as many ways of giving a Goth wedding as there are of giving one that isn’t quite so intentionally dark. Romantics will not be the same as Cyberpunks or Steampunks or Gothic Lolita types. Still, there are similarities as well. And there are some great inspirational photos out there if you dig around, as well as great sources that cater to the dark side.
Although the length of the average engagement period hovers around 15 months, most couples spend between seven months to a year planning their weddings. That means that there’s a chance that those brides-to-be who are reading Manolo for the Brides are planning autumn weddings. Now I’d never suggest that someone tailor their wedding colors or wedding theme to the season, the notion does appeal to some people. In my next book, for example, my co-author and I describe a harvest-themed wedding that took place in, you guessed it, the fall.
Obviously, you can have a harvest-themed (or harvest colored) wedding without incorporating a lot of dead leaves and pumpkins — the Martha Stewart tablescape on the bottom left includes neither — but those are both viable options. I love the slightly quirky leaf and crystal bouquet from Creations, and it would make an easy DIY project if you locale supports deciduous trees.
Other ideas: Incorporate Autumn Splendor accessories into your wedding day look, string red and green apples into natural garlands, serve spice cake and apple cider in place of wedding cake and champagne, wear a gold wedding gown instead of the usual white dress, clothe your bridesmaids in a deep chocolate brown, give guests miniature caramel apples in lieu of more traditional favors, or carry a bouquet of flowers traditionally associated with autumn, like mums and helianthus.
If that sounds way too theme-y for you but you wouldn’t mind adding just a touch of fall flair to your wedding decor, pick one idea and treat it like a centerpiece, designing your color scheme around it.
