It’s time to play a game, my friends. It’s a game about dreams. After all, a little dreaming is a wonderful thing. So I’m going to ask you a few questions about your ultimate wedding desires. There are no right or wrong answers. This is about what you would love if budget, time, and pretty much every other practicality didn’t need to be considered. This is about what you would do if you didn’t have to think about your mother-in-law’s feelings, your MOH’s allergies, how much money you have in the bank, or your DIY disasters past.

Just fill in the blanks with whatever flight of fancy appeals to you.

If I could get married anywhere in the world, I would choose ____
If I could wear anything I want to get married in, I would choose____
If I could have any sort of music I like at my wedding, I would choose____
If I could have any kind of decoration I want at my wedding, I would choose ____
If I could serve any sort of meal I like at my reception, I would choose ____
If I could have/do one special thing on my wedding day, I would choose ____
If I could go anywhere in the world for my honeymoon, I would choose ____

So what would you choose?

Greetings caption lovers!

Last week I lobbed this deathless image at you all:
and you came out swinging with some deeply amusing and imaginative responses.

Alas, there can be but one winner. This week there is no question that the laurel goes to HurricaneDeck for this fabulous – and eco-friendly – bit of DIY advice:

Bridal Survival Guide Tip No. 43,254

When your bridesmaid’s skirts get misplaced at the bridal shop, remember that you can always rent a cotton candy machine in a snap. The spun sugar makes for fantastically fluffy, flirty and fun skirts and come in a vast array of colors. This is also a good idea for the ecologically conscientious bride, as the skirts could be reusable as a food source for the hummingbirds.

Congratulations, HurricaneDeck! And thanks to all who played!

One trend I’m loving in wedding invitations and other things is bright, saturated colors. As we all know, wedding invitations give guests a hint as to the kind of wedding they’ll be attending and can even give them a sneak peek at your wedding colors. When I receive a vividly-hued invite I expect that I’ll be going to a wedding that will be a bit different from one that is heralded by a white wedding invitation with silver lettering.

This beautiful teal wedding invitation suite with its three-tone flower comes from Modern Girl Invitations, which I love for their policy of allowing customers to change the colors on any of their designs for free. They also carry almost all the wedding stationery you could possibly want, from save-the-date cards to place cards to dinner menus to favor tags, and they work with brides and grooms to make every detail perfect. Need help with ordering, proofreading, colors or fonts, wording, or choosing paper? They’ve got you covered.

This colorful wedding invitation suite, also from Modern Girl Invitations, showcases dark purples, oranges, greens, peacock teal, mulberry, and a little gold… which is a lot of colors for one collection of wedding stationery! I don’t think I’ve ever received an invitation (wedding or otherwise) as bold and daring as this, but isn’t it just tremendously evocative of the wedding to follow?

Of course, you don’t necessarily have to choose wedding invitations and stationery that will match your eventual wedding color scheme or even the formality level of your ceremony and reception. But it is nice to give your guests a clue as to how they ought to dress and what kind of affair to expect, and color is one easy way to do it.

Up for discussion this week in LOVE/HATE land are wedding photos taken with a fisheye lens, a wide-angle lens that takes a hemispherical image. They were originally used to take pictures of the whole of the sky overhead, but the bendy, distorted pictures one ends up with when using a fisheye lens have become popular with brides and grooms.

It’s not difficult to see why — fisheye lenses are great for taking wedding photographs that include not only the entirety of the wedding party, but also all of your wedding guests. Things tend to look a little more crowded in fisheye wedding photographs, but that’s part of the charm.

I’ll say I love fisheye wedding photographs, though I’d wager a bride and groom would want one or two photos taken with a fisheye lens rather than lots and lots of them. Imagine the photo above as taken straight on using a regular lens. I doubt it would be as compelling.

The only time I don’t love it is when there is a lot of empty space, bright skies, and water. This fisheye wedding photograph is very pretty, but I can’t shake the feeling that the bride and groom are trapped in a gigantic fishbowl.

What say you?

(Images via Jeff Newsom Photography, Hoffmann Photography, and Danny Ngan)

Some brides- and grooms-to-be, when confronted by the cost of the average wedding, begin to contemplate getting married at home… or at least in the home of a well-to-do relative with a house or property that makes a nice backdrop for wedding photographs. It’s what The Beard and I did, and we were able to save quite a bit of money by getting married on my grandmother’s water-front property in a very upscale area of Florida’s Atlantic coast. It worked for us, and beautifully so, though I’m quick to caution brides and grooms thinking of getting married at home that it’s not always the least expensive or even the less expensive option.

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Please forgive my terrible pun in this post’s title, but the temptation to make it was irresistible. You see, Andrea Parrish and Peter Geyer of Spokane, WA have decided to pay for their upcoming nuptials using naught but the proceeds collected from the recycling of aluminum cans. According to their web site, they’ve collected 25,781 cans thus far, and have inspired others to donate the proceeds from their recycling excursions to the tune of 56,571 cans. Parrish and Geyer have a ways to go, however, before they can finance their relatively inexpensive July wedding. They’re planning a modest affair costing around $4,000, which will require them to collect a total of 318,648 more cans.

While it is a pretty insane idea — though a wonderfully create one — I must say I do like it a lot better than the “pay for my wedding just because I asked you to” schemes or the “pay for my wedding” registries. Parrish and Geyer are putting some real effort into paying for a wedding in an offbeat way. And is having your living room stuffed with bags and bags of aluminum cans all that much worse than having it stuffed with wedding favor boxes, ribbons, silk flowers, and seating chart mock-ups? All right, maybe it’s a little worse, if only because donated cans might not be entirely clean.

Like the idea? If you’re in Spokane, you can drop off your cans for this quirky couple at the Instant Sign Factory or they’ll gladly pick them up from your place (if you have enough to make it worth it, I imagine). For those not in Spokane, Parrish and Geyer recommend that you recycle your own aluminum cans, buy yourself a coffee or beer, and if you’re so inclined, send the leftover cash to them.

(Photo via)

We tend to think of wedding planning in terms of “Dos” here at Manolo for the Brides, mainly because there are so many fun and practical and fascinating dos. Do buy the wedding dress you love, even if it goes against the body type rules. Do have the wedding ceremony you want, even if it means some of your relatives will look at you a little funny. And so on, and so forth. There are so many great wedding planning dos, especially when you’re open to alternative weddings or just weddings that differ somewhat from the norm. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t wedding planning don’ts that cross the boundaries between the traditional wedding and the wedding where the bride and groom are hanging by skin hooks. Here are some of my favorite wedding don’ts — please add yours in the comments!

Blowing Your Wedding Budget
This is the biggest and possibly the most common of all wedding planning oopses, if only because it’s so easy to commit. Between everything we hear about the soaring costs of the “average” wedding and all the beautiful wedding stuff out there, who wouldn’t start to think that $50,000 sounds like a plenty reasonable sum to spend on a party? But let’s get real, shall we? Some brides and grooms have that kind of money to spend, while others don’t. Be honest with yourself when creating a wedding budget, and put together a fabulous wedding that won’t bankrupt you.

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