Brides-to-be battling cancer have enough to do without having to deal with wrangling vendors on top of everything else, right? Blush Photo & Films here in my home state of Massachusetts thinks so and has started a program where they offer free wedding photography to women who are undergoing cancer treatment.

One less expense can go a long way for women in cancer treatment who are planning a wedding. For people experiencing cancer treatments, their money and time should be spent on healing. Women who are in cancer treatment are eligible for up to 6 hours of free photography services. So if you are one of the many thousands battling this disease, please contact Blush to find out how we can create a photo package that’s right for you.

Awesome! It’d be super sweet if other wedding vendors across the country would take a page from Blush Photo’s book because dealing with cancer really sucks.

Brides-to-be have yet another tool in their wedding planning arsenal these days, provided that they have an iPhone or an iPod Touch. That’s right, I’m talking apps, and serious ones at that.

Wedding planning apps for the iPhone can do everything from inspire you as you shop to help you create your reception seating plan to keep track of your favorite wedding gowns. Here are some of my favorites:

Wedding Envi
For a mere $1.99, Wedding Envi catalogs images of wedding gowns, tuxedos for the groom, bouquets, wedding rings, invitations, and more. Just choose a category and it will play a slideshow of pics. Use it for creative wedding planning inspiration or, f you like what you see, you can click to be taken to a page with retail info.

iBridal Gown
For $3.99, iBridal Gown gives you a convenient place to jot down notes about the wedding dresses you see while shopping for your perfect gown. Info about favorite wedding dresses is stored in an easy-to-navigate list that includes details, pictures, and the bridal salon where you saw them.

iWedding
Thhe heavy hitter among the wedding planning apps, iWedding keeps track of just about everything on a bride’s to-do list. Input your guest list, your vendors, your RSVPs, seating arrangements, timetable, budget, money spent, inspiration, wedding registry info, etc. as you go and this app will make sure you don’t forget a single detail or responsibility. It costs $7.99, which is reasonable when you think about how much those fancy wedding planning binders go for. Note: For $2.99, you can get Wedding List, the less functional version.

My Wedding
Is $3.99 too much to spend on what amounts to a basic checklist? My Wedding is a checklist for brides on the go. It includes a could-be-fun feature known as the “wedding decider,” which makes your wedding planning decisions for you in a pinch.

Wedding Budget, Etc.
A mere $.99 will get you Wedding Budget, an app that does exactly what you think it ought to do. There’s also Wedding Tips, which again should be self-explanatory. Then there’s Wedding Registor, an app that helps brides and grooms set up a wedding registry.

There are a ton of other wedding planning iPhone apps out there, though the usefulness of most of them is dubious at best. Some are just for fun, like iRomantic and Wedding Dash. Just don’t go so app crazy that you find yourself inspired to order an iPhone wedding cake (unless you truly want one) or *quelle horreur* propose to that special someone with iPropose.

The other day my esteemed colleague wrote about some quite fetching veils she’d found and fallen head over heels for. The thing, though, that really caught my eye about the article was a comment by our own Kai Jones on an aspect I must admit I had never considered terribly carefully:

When I was looking for decorative options (while planning both my first wedding and my second) I would have really appreciated being able to see models with glasses wearing the veils, hats, etc. Glasses make a visual statement that affects the rest of the picture. Some frames would look ridiculous under some veils, and others would look great, but I have trouble visualizing how glasses at all on the face would affect the face veils.

That’s a great point, Kai Jones.

And so I set out to research the question of bespectacled brides. The disappointing part is that many of the boards, advice columns, etc. I found at first gave the same single piece of advice: don’t wear glasses on your wedding day.

Well phooey on that.
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I want to talk about something serious here for a moment, if I may. And I may because, hey, it’s on topic and I think it’s important and on the weekends I can write what I like here.

Two days ago, I read a news story that disturbed me greatly. It was about a Justice of the Peace in Louisiana who had taken it upon himself to decide not to perform marriage ceremonies between couples of differing races.
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You guys are fabulous. You know that, don’t you?

I screwed up and posted a nonexistent pic on sunday. You let me know that in the kindest way possible (hey, I didn’t get any bricks through my window or bags of flaming dog poo on my porch, and I consider that both thoughtful and polite of you as a group), and then you played even when I posted a new pic on monday.

Here is that picture:

You then proceeded to offer up five hilarious captions to sum it up.

In the end, though, there can be but one winner. This time it was Parsing Nonsense for this elegantly appropriate comment:

This is what happens when you get married on the same day as your graduation from Clown College.

Congratulations, Parsing Nonsense! And thanks to everyone who played.

You all probably know I’m not a huge bridal veil or headpiece fan, since I’m all for big bridal hairstyles that serve as their own showpieces. But for real, I cannot deny that I am madly in love with Sara Gabriel Veiling & Headpieces. I want to get married all over again so I can pair one of these veils with a plain sheath wedding dress and big sparkly jewels.

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When it comes to portraits of moi, I’m a huge fan of post-production image processing, and I’m not just talking about zapping a few blemishes or erasing eyelid crinkles. In the past, I’ve tinted myself pink and green, dabbled in bad porno lighting styles, and made it so colors just about scream at you. Did I mention that I have almost zero Photoshop skills? So think of what a pro could do with your wedding photos. A professional wedding photographer with post-production image processing chops could, for example, do this:

Photo by katialo

Photo by Jason Lavengood Photography

Photo by Cristobal Perez of Azul Photography

Photo by Christopher Chan

The question is, do you like those wedding photos that are retouched to within an inch of their lives? My answer is some yes, some no. I’m not a fan of the bridal portraits that look like they were taken through a Vaseline smeared lens or of the wedding portraits that are all in black and white except the bridal bouquet, which has suddenly morphed into some alien color. But I love the dramatic sepia and the extreme hues seen in the photos above, and the washed out black and white photo is also none-to-shabby.

What say you? Would you rather your wedding photos be true to life or a little more artistic than not?