If there’s one wedding reality show I find myself really enjoying of late, it’s Four Weddings on TLC. For those unfamiliar, four brides getting married in the same area around the same time attend one anothers’ weddings and score them on the gown, the venue, the food, and the overall experience. The bride whose wedding gets the highest aggregate score wins a fabulous honeymoon to a surprise location, and the other three, well, they get to be on TV and attend three weddings without having to come up with a gift and being utterly free to snark or gush about whatever they please for the nation at large.

The two episodes I watched last night were particularly interesting to me, in that they included some really brilliant and some really, really questionable ideas. Take a look after the cut to see what I’m talking about.
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Earlier this year, I wrote some about the ins and outs of wedding announcements. It’s not a complicated piece of the wedding stationery suite – you can’t invite so-in-so or you eloped so you didn’t invite anyone at all but you want to let them people you’re hitched, so you give them a little taste of wedding after the fact. While modern wedding invitations can be pretty crazy, I still think there’s a lot more leeway to play in the world of wedding announcements.

Here are three fun, customizable wedding announcements from Wedding Paper Divas that I really like. They may be much enhanced by the fact that the model brides and grooms are all frozen in time in beautiful photographs, but my guess is that you’ll look just as amazing on your big day.

The Iconic Vegas postcard is obviously for the couple who said their vows in Nevada, whether or not there were actual guests or the only witness was an Elvis clone.

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What’s shiny, slippery, popular with middle schoolers circa 1985, and now prettifying wedding reception tables and chairs? You guessed it, I’m talking about spandex. Spandex table covers and spandex chair covers at wedding receptions, specifically. There’s no graceful draping here, and no chance that you’ll accidentally pull the tablecloth off (though you might slide out of your chair if you’re not careful). Spandex on a reception table acts just like spandex does on us – you see every curve, every angle, everything jutting this-and-that, and every bulge. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!

But see what I mean about seeing everything? Spandex chair covers look sleek and clean and rather hip from a distance, but up close you start to see all of the details of the chair’s construction that chair covers are meant to hide. Isn’t the whole point of chair covers to make cheap blah chairs look more like upscale chairs?

I guess it looks pretty sleek on the table – I like it more there than I do on the chairs where it seems like they reveal a lot more about what’s underneath. Admittedly, I haven’t seen it in person, so maybe spandex table and chair covers are just awesomeness incarnate and will be appearing at a wedding reception near you in the next year or so. What do you think? Is spandex the next big thing in reception table decor or will spandex table linens and chair covers quickly go the way of the spandex jockeys?

How’s this for a real wedding? Ian was in a very serious car accident in 2006 and wasn’t expected to recover. In fact, he was expected to pass away that very evening. But after years of slow recovery, Ian was finally able to propose to the love of his life, Larissa. And they didn’t just have any wedding – they had an absolutely awesome wedding. A wedding with a whole lot of my favorite things: mismatched patterned bridesmaids’ dresses, cowboy boots on the ladies and jeans on the groomsmen, a typewriter guest book (omg), and more. Their wedding was photographed by the lovely Lydia Jane Photography, and there are plenty of gorgeous pics to check out on her blog. Go have a look!

Every now and again, someone new stops by to tell us what they think about convertible bridesmaids dresses at the Twobirds post. Reactions range from “this dress is terrible” to “they’re going to work for all of us,” “the fabric looks cheap and the sewing is sub par” to “this dress will not wrinkle…perfect destination wedding dress”.

So when I see what is basically the same dress – or the same idea of a dress – in wedding gown form from Isadora Clothing, I have to share it with you.

According to Isadora Clothing, there are nine ways to wear a convertible wedding dress, from strapless and backless to semi-sleeved and plunging.

I wish that we could see the backs of all these convertible styles – because I think the backlessness of the convertible wedding dress is what gets to me the most. In theory, it’s such a fun, easy, awesome idea, but in reality, those of us who rely on rebar bras to keep everything from bouncing out of control or swinging to and fro should probably stay away from this sort of thing. Any chance any of you out there are wearing one of these, or something similar, on your big day?

Um, brrr? It’s gotten pretty chilly here as of late (well, some days, anyway), which means that while I ought to be thinking about the cold-weather wedding dresses brides will be wearing a year from now at their autumn weddings, I’m actually thinking about shorty gowns that might be more appropriate for springtime.

With that in mind, here are six sweet short wedding dresses to help us all remember that warm weather will come again. My fave is the right-hand strapless taffeta sheath in the middle row, which is sold by David’s Bridal of all places. The other dresses come from all over the Internet, from PS Bridal Online to Igigi to Kiyonna to Bella Chic to Plus Size Now.

As you know, I subject myself to a wide range of bridal ‘entertainment’ on television in order to let you know the pitfalls and the few pleasant surprises that show up in the wonderful world of media. Last week I completely forgot to set my DVR for Say Yes to the Dress: Big Bliss. Well, this week I remembered just in time to catch the second of two episodes that aired.

I think part of my failure to plan for this was plain old fear.
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