CNN’s website recently ran a story on wedding gowns that has many wedding professionals in a bit of a tizzy. The story, entitled Brides Buck Tradition and Ditch the White Dress, written by Stephanie Goldberg, claims that white gowns are on the way out and being replaced by large numbers of women wearing other colors.

In fact, the article includes this quote from a bridal consultant named Susan Rodgers:

“I think they figured out that everyone really didn’t look good in white. … Nobody orders white anymore. It’s kind of a faux pas.”

And the article featured discussion of several individual brides who chose to wear other colors.

Bridal surveys at Bridal Guide, though, would dispute this idea. According to their 2002 survey, 57% of bridal gowns were white, 38% ivory, and the remaining 5% ‘some other color.’ This trend continues much the same in their 2009 survey which found that 58% of bridal gowns were white, 37% ivory, and – you guessed it – 5% in other colors.

The Knot breaks it down a bit further in their 2009 survey. They found that 27% of gowns were stark white, 25% diamond white. That’s 52% white gowns, for those who aren’t quick with their math. They further found that 39% of brides went for ivory, 4% for champagne or rum, and 6% other.

In short, far from being a ‘faux pas’ it would appear that white continues to be the single most popular color for wedding gowns.

Now I’m willing to believe (in fact I do believe) the number of women wearing dresses that are neither white nor ivory is a bit higher than The Knot and Bridal Guide would indicate, since the people who answer their surveys are the sorts of people who would read their more traditional guides to getting married. I’m guessing that there is a certain percentage of brides who would no more dream of wearing a white gown than they would of responding to a survey on The Knot.

So what am I trying to say with all of the statistics and all of the waffling? Just this. It’s not up to the experts or the rebels or the Wedding Industrial Complex or your soon-to-be-mother-in-law what color you wear. It’s up to you.

Whether you feel you look best and most bridal in stark white or lime green, ivory or incandescent orange, choose that color. Don’t let anyone else tell you what you should wear on your wedding day. Be the best, most beautiful you that you can imagine.

Truth: The majority of people a new bride encounters will assume she has changed her name or is planning to do so in the near future. Yes, people are still making this assumption. Whether you decide to change your name after marriage is entirely up to you, and you shouldn’t give in to the pressure to rush down to the nearest Social Security office with marriage license in hand if that’s not who you are. But know that no matter what post-wedding name scheme you settle on, there’s a 100% chance someone out there will think it’s wrong, wrong, wrong.

Here are some examples of the kind of comments you might get based on your choices:

well this is what I see from it a women that is fully satisfied by a man will want to take his last name. Highly intelligent sexual women likes to be “owned” by a dominant man. (source)

I do want to share a common last name with my partner if/when I marry. I feel that it establishes a couple as a family upon introduction. (source)

I’m afraid that women who change their names are blindly promoting women as second-class persons, though I suspect that they themselves don’t think they are doing this. (source)

In some prison cultures, inmates are given numbers and their names are taken from them. One purpose of this practice is to strip away a sense of importance and humanity from the inmates….the tradition of women giving up their names is equally damning. (source)

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Last month, you may have read that Katy Perry enacted a ‘no sex before marriage’ rule with sex addict Russell Brand in the months leading up to her wedding. But holding off on the pre-nuptial nookie isn’t just a celebrity thing! I know at least a few couples who gave it a go, enacting a ‘no sex during the engagement’ rule that was made to be broken.

Keep in mind that I’m not talking about people who are saving themselves for marriage or anyone who decided to go celibate after doing the deed. These are couples who’ve been hitting the sheets up until one of the pair decided to put a ring on it, so it’s not a purity or chastity thing. Nope. It’s an excitement thing. They’ve been doing the deed up until now, but what a deed it’ll be if they haven’t done it for six months or twelve months or sixteen months!

So these are sex bans intended for wedding night enhancement. I can’t say I love the idea, but I don’t hate it, either. Whatever brides and grooms want to do (or not do) in the bedroom is up to them. But I do think it’s a little silly – the no sex before marriage dam has already been breached. If I figured these same people would have occasional sex bans to spice things up, it’d be one thing. But these sex bans are specifically tied to weddings. What do you think?

Manolo says, please allow the Manolo to introduce to you the newest addition to the Manolosphere, Green Manolo.

Edited by our good friend Christa Terry (a.k.a Never teh Bride) of this very blog you are currently reading, Manolo for the Brides, and also the Manolo for the Home, the Green Manolo is the blog all about the super fantastic sustainable lifestyle!

And now, you must go visit the Green Manolo

Maybe that should be spinspiration! Terrible, I know. But aren’t pinwheels fun? And there are so many great ways to use them in weddings that it would be impossible to list them all. Favors of pretty paper pinwheels with your names and wedding date printed on them come to mind. And how about using them in place of flowers in reception table centerpieces? I can even make it simpler – get a punch of pinwheels that coordinate with your wedding color scheme and stick them in the ground! Easy-peasy!

Gorgeous pinwheels for your bridal bouquet by Rule 42

Pinwheel wedding cake seen on Real Etsy Weddings

Bride and groom with pinwheels as seen on The Wedding Chicks

Pinwheels on a dessert buffet created by April Foster Events and pinwheel aisle decorations as seen on Wedding Bee

Pinwheel table numbers from Crossroads Cottage

Few women get more than a few years into adulthood without feeling some outside pressure to get married – especially if they have serious significant others. So what’s a gal who’s feeling the pressure but doesn’t have marriage on her mind? Chen Wei-Yi of Taiwan took a stand against the pressure to get married by staging a most unusual wedding. Who did she marry? She married herself. Her wacky wedding was a response to the government’s recent campaign to encourage marriage and parenthood to boost the island’s very low birthrate.

Maybe it’s not entirely appropriate, but I hope you’ll join me in wishing Chen Wei-Yi hearty congratulations and lots of happiness!

Now I know what you may be thinking… what an odd, fussy topic, right? With all of the other things the poor bride-to-be has to think about while walking around on her wedding day – stand up straight! smile! where’s your train?! is your bodice slipping?! bra sweat!! MINTS!!! – why add one more worry for her to stress over? Hey, you know me, I like stress-free weddings and happy brides, but I also like thoroughness, and some people are concerned with the right way to carry a bridal bouquet (or groom’s bouquet).

After all, a too small bridal bouquet can look dinky and a too large bouquet can look overwhelming (and make your arms feel like they’re going to fall off). Carry a bridal bouquet too high up and the beautiful blue necklace you borrowed from your grandmother might not show up in your ceremony photos. Carry it too low, and your arms may fall asleep and your posture may change for the worse. And that’s just for your standard round hand-held bouquet. Choose one of the many less common types of bridal bouquets, and you run the risk of looking awkward.

I’m sure your know that there are lots of different kinds of bridal bouquets, from the regular (nosegays and cascade bouquets, for example) to the bizarre. How to carry some bouquet types is obvious – the arm sheaf and loose arrangements of calla lilies come to mind. But for other bouquets, a little help comes in handy. Before I lay out the help, though, a note about size:

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