More often than not, wedding photos are shot in staging areas – like a bridal chamber – and in ceremony and reception venues. That might be inside or outside, in a formal location or somewhere more casual, but it’s still usually some place that’s in some way sequestered from the real world. Maybe a church or a function hall, or a public space that’s been rented out for the day.

Sometimes, though, a wedding photographer and his or her clients will take a field trip at some point during the wedding day. Not sure what I mean? Take a look at these snaps from wedding photographer Luca Ragogna:

Full disclosure – this is a model, not an actual bride. But the theory is the same, and I think it would be tons of fun to go to a carnival in a wedding dress and just play games and eat fried whatever all day. IMO, pictures from the little field trips that some couples take turn out awesome, and I think, a lot more fun to look at years later than yet another straight up and down shot in front of a staircase. So I LOVE it.

What do YOU think about the wedding photos that some couples take out-and-about. Did you take a photographic field trip, or are you planning on taking one?

Ah, wedding planning checklists. There are the all-purpose timelines that include everything from ‘break in your wedding shoes’ to ‘head off to your honeymoon‘ included thereon. Then there are item specific checklists, like wedding dress shopping timelines and timelines for hiring a wedding caterer. They’re useful – if you happen to be on the first leg of your wedding planning journey 16 months out (which, coincidentally, is when you ought to be putting together your wedding binder and booking your officiant).

Some of us, though, live dangerously and only take nine months to plan a wedding. Or, like my own mother, a mere six weeks! Obviously, those ginormous wedding timelines are only going to be of so much help. And they might even make wedding planning seem like a herculean task – omigosh, I’ve only got eight months to go until the big day and I haven’t even launched my wedding web site! Eek!

So I’m super curious to know how much of a role wedding planning checklists and timelines are playing in your life right now (or whether you used them at all when planning your once upon a time wedding). Have you found a great one you’re following to the letter? Or have you decided that the traditional checklists don’t really gel with the kind of wedding you’re trying to plan?

Wedding planning is sometimes no fun. You don’t have as much money as you’d like to have in your wedding budget. Your first-choice wedding venue is booked on your set-in-stone wedding date. Your FFIL is demanding a barbecue-centric menu at the wedding reception. And your intended has thus far not lifted a finger to help. I get it. Sometimes being a bride-to-be can suck.

Sometimes in the midst of all that suckitude, it can really start to feel like wedding planning is a World vs. Bride affair. And when you’re mad at the world, it’s only natural to adopt an adversarial attitude when dealing with people. But when it comes to dealing with your wedding vendors, my advice is *don’t*. As in don’t assume that your wedding vendors are adding a ‘wedding tax‘ to the bill. Don’t just assume that you’re going to have to fight your wedding vendors to get what you want. And don’t change your mind a hundred times, just to mess with your vendors’ heads.

Of course, some brides-to-be, when faced with the suckiness of planning a wedding, veer too far in the opposite direction. They’re afraid to tell their wedding vendors what they want because they don’t want to be seen as pushy or, worse, labeled a bridezilla. Instead of making choices that please themselves, they make the choices that they think will make their wedding vendors happy. In some cases, the bride-to-be might not disclose her wedding budget, leaving her vendors free to make choices outside of her price range.

In both cases – whether we’re talking about the “difficult” bride or the “easy” bride – the bride-to-be becomes her own worst enemy. Her unwillingness to trust her wedding vendors or her unwillingness to be straight with her vendors can cost her the wedding she really wanted. Why? In the first case, the bride-to-be finds it impossible to work closely with someone who she thinks it out to get her. In the second, she never tells her wedding vendors how much she really has to spend or what she actually wants.

Planning a wedding should be a collaborative task undertaken by a couple and their wedding vendors, and that means that brides and grooms have to do their parts when dealing with wedding professional. When a bride or groom is up front with a wedding vendor about money matters and color preferences and all the things they do and do not want, that vendor has a good chance of putting together something – whether it’s a wedding cake or a bouquet or a table setting – that is just what that bride or groom had in mind. And that wedding vendor? He or she should be someone that the bride or groom deems trustworthy, so there’s never any need to be adversarial at all.

A while back – can you tell I’ve been a bit behind with everything? – Dress My Cupcake sent me some of their colorful cupcake wrappers to check out. Before I got the samples, cupcake wrappers were already on my radar – cupcakes are still a pretty popular wedding cake alternative, but those crinkly paper cups don’t have much going for them.

In fact, I checked out some DIY cupcake wrapper templates last year thinking I’d use them for La Paloma’s birthday cupcakes. But it turns out that regular old computer paper makes for a pretty lousy cupcake wrapper.

What’s nice about the cupcake wrappers from Dress My Cupcake is that they’re more substantial that anything I’d made at home on the cheap – and there are textured wrappers, too, which I definitely couldn’t have made myself. At least not without a bunch of glue and buttons and things. There are a ton of colors and themes, so there’s bound to be cupcake wrappers that match your wedding colors.

Cupcake wrappers from Dress My Cupcake cost about $1 per for the basics, and then there are fancier options. Dress My Cupcake also carried a bunch of cupcake accessories, like cupcake favor boxes and cupcake display stands.

Aren’t they pretty?

I’m disappointed to say that while I tried to make photo-worthy cupcakes to wrap in my sample cupcake wrappers, I failed miserably. Sure, my cupcakes were delish, but they were ugly and not worth wrapping. Hence the stock photos.

Back in 2009, I posted a poll asking how much brides can ask bridesmaids to spend on a wedding and the winning answer was “It depends on the financial situation of each bridesmaid.” But that answer didn’t win by much! The next most popular answers were “$100-$250″ and “$250-$500.” Now me, if a friend asked me to spend $500 as one of her wedding attendants, I’d politely decline – which is the right thing to do if you can’t afford all the *stuff* associated with a wedding. Of course, it’s equally polite to not ask friends to break their budgets to be a part of your wedding!

With that in mind, here are nine bridesmaids’ dresses for under $100 – they’re all different, but what they have in common is that none of them are sold as ‘bridesmaids’ dresses’.

(more…)

As some of you may have noticed, I take the bullet of the bridal reality show beat around here. There are shows I actually quite enjoy, and others that make me want to spork my own eyes out watching them. One of the ones I’ve always kind of enjoyed is TLC’s Four Weddings.

What I’ve always enjoyed was the fact that while each bride wants to win the free honeymoon and thinks her wedding must be the best, whichever groom steps out of the car at the end of the show, the other three brides have usually been happy for the winner. The sour grapes have always been at a minimum.

This season, though, I’ve been seeing a lot more nastiness to the competition. In one episode, the other three brides all humphed that they couldn’t believe that the winner won… and not one of them took into consideration that they are the ones who voted for her wedding.

I’m also seeing more cattiness in the comments throughout the show. Last year the brides seemed a lot more willing to accept that other people have different ideas of what makes a good wedding. This season, the negativity starts with the introductions. If one bride says in her opening statement that she hates outdoor weddings, the next bride is sure to be holding her shindig out of doors. If one dislikes buffets, that’s how the next one intends to feed her guests. Neither will be persuaded that the other’s approach isn’t anathema by actually attending the wedding, either.

TLC, one of the things I’ve loved about this show is the fact that people with very different tastes and backgrounds have been generally supportive of one another, and sometimes had their eyes opened to a cool alternative approach they wouldn’t have thought they would like. Now the negativity is starting to get to me. If I want to see Brides Behaving Badly, I’ll subject myself to a marathon of Bridezillas. If I want to buy into the cultural myth that women are biologically incapable of being supportive of one another, I’ll watch The Women on an endless loop.

I want to see varying possibilities of wedding planning. I want to see people appreciating the hard work and imagination of others, even if they aren’t wild about the final effect. I want a kinder, gentler bridal show… you know, like this one used to be.

…the generous Charli, of Two Bad Dogs Quilling. In response to the question I posed, the oh-so-sweet Charli said:

I will give the box to my wonderful MIL who is 84 and will be gone soon. She loves all things chocolate.

While I would surely love to be eating a whole box of delish dipped madeleines myself, I certainly can’t think of someone I’d rather see eating them in my stead. Congrats, Charli! I or someone from Donsuemor will be in touch soon!