Junior bridesmaids… even with all the weddings I have attended in my lifetime, I have yet to see this creature in the wild. It is most likely, of course, a semantics issue. The junior bridesmaid may simply not be labeled as such, as many older girls are more than willing to stand up as flower girls, while no tween or younger teen wants be labeled junior anything. But junior bridesmaids are out there, being all ages 9 to 14 and not quite fitting in with the flower girls or the lady bridesmaids. Their responsibility with regard to the wedding is usually to show up, complements of their parents, and stand with bouquet at the ready during the ceremony. Easy peasy, right? Indeed – it’s dressing them that can sometimes be problematic.

Now I’d venture to guess that a goodly number of bridesmaids dresses would be perfectly appropriate on the junior bridesmaid. There are certainly some that are a bit sophisticated for the average 12-year-old, but let’s assume you’re not having a hoochie wedding. No, more often than not, the problem is one of sizing. It may be that your chosen bridesmaids dresses simply don’t come small enough for your beanpole of a junior bridesmaids (don’t tell her I said that, mmmkay?). Or maybe the frocks simply have ample space for bosoms your youngest ‘maid hasn’t got yet (let’s not mention that to her, either). Your three solutions to the fit issue are as follows:

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The fab Dr Nic sent along this stop-motion wedding invitation – about a hundred years ago, but still in 2010 – and I thought I’d run it by the Manolo for the Brides readership because you folks know what’s what.

So, this. Too gimmicky? Awesome? I’ll say right now I love it, but only because it’s the first of its kind that I’ve seen. If every bride- and groom-to-be under the sun started sending out stop-motion wedding invitations on CDs instead of plain old paper invites, I think I’d get sick of having to rewind 50 times to get all the info down. But since I’ve only seen this one? It gets a free pass in my book.

What say you?

Once upon a time, I’d avoid wedding cake if there were other desserts available or poke at it unenthusiastically – I have a sweet tooth, okay? – if it was the only sugary treat on offer. Maybe it was simply the caliber of weddings I attended as a child and teen, but I seem to remember that wedding cake back in the day was almost always a plain sponge cake, maybe half vanilla and half chocolate, with chocolate pudding or strawberry goo inside, blanketed by “buttercream” that was mostly shortening.

It looked pretty, but tasted… meh.

Does anyone else remember those? It would seem you can still buy that sort of thing, if the office birthday cakes I suffered through at employers past, but I’d be very, very surprised to see one at a wedding. An article sent to be by the lovely Omnibus Driver posits that the fancification of wedding cakes has a lot to do with the bajillion cooking-themed and wedding reality shows now on television. That’d be the “It’s on TV so I must really need it” phenomenon.

The wedding cake at one time was something of an afterthought, sliced and set out in little baggies for guests to pick up on their way out at the end of the evening. And not particularly tasty. Then came the bridal industry boom in the ’90s, the magazines and wedding planners, the Knot and the blogs and, most recently — naturally — the reality shows.

And thank goodness for them, say wedding cake designers, whose industry, however sugary its focus, hasn’t come through these tough economic times completely unscathed. “Without those shows, we would not be making it,” says Naomi Levine, pastry chef and proprietor of Tipsycake, a three-year-old bake shop at 1043 N. California.

Bridal industry boom, yes. But really now, reality television? I’d credit bridal bloggers more than anyone else for making me want a wedding cake that went beyond your basic vanilla sponge and silver dragees. Yes, that’s right, shout out to us! And as much as the wedding cake is now hailed as a centerpiece of the wedding, it’s still just food. Very beautiful food that may have cost $3,000, but it’s going to get eaten in the end. I tend to see the whole cake-in-the-spotlight trend as a way to upsell on the cake more than anything else. After all, you can have a beautiful, delicious cake without busting your budget or making it the guest of honor at your wedding reception.

(That beautiful wedding cake up there came from Lovin Sullivan Cakes in NYC)

If you’re looking for wedding stationery that tells your personal story, Beyond Bespoke may be what you’re looking for. I love how comprehensive they are – the pre-design consultation is an in-depth interview where the goal is to get your perspective on the ultimate invites (and programs, menus, maps, place cards, table numbers, etc.). They want to see your fabric swatches, your fave album covers, and anything else that will help them understand who you and your intended are, design wise.

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Spam sucks whether it’s in the comments (where we try to kill it as fast as we can) or in email inboxes, where it makes it less likely we’ll get your awesome missives. Unfortunately that describes Christa Terry aka Never teh Bride’s current inbox to a T, forcing her to make up a whole new email address to ensure that she gets your emails about weddings, wedding etiquette, wedding dresses, and more. So update your address books, please, and never hesitate to send along a tip or a question!

THE DEETS: Christa can now be found at Manolobrides@gmail.com

(Image via, obviously)

Is anyone else sad that there are no great pics of Punk Rock Bride‘s 2010 collection, which had its big reveal on March 4? For those don’t know, Punk Rock Bride is DC’s answer to boring bridal attire. Creatrix Stephanie Ward founded Punk Rock Bride to give brides a non-traditional wedding dress option that was still sewn with attention to detail and made from luxurious fabrics like French chantilly lace and silk chiffon (and in one case, a little cotton jersey). The 2008 and 2009 collections rocked my socks, and since pics of the 2010 dresses are nowhere to be found, I thought it’d be fun to look back in time.

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Greetings, captions fans! It’s time once again to play Twistie’s Sunday Caption Madness.

You all know how this works. I find an image that is simply howling for a good caption, you provide said captions via the comments function, and next week I declare a winner, whereupon we all share a good laugh and a slice of virtual pizza.

This week’s image comes to you from the runways of Hades, and it looks a little like this:
Ready… set… snark!