Author Archive

Flat and Fabulous

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

One thing is certain when you’re getting married: you’re going to spend a lot of time standing on your feet. Because of that, it’s vital to have comfortable shoes on your big day. After all, sore feet do not improve the post-wedding festivities in any way, shape or form.

Unfortunately, more and more brides seem to be solving this dilemma by wearing fashionable high heels for the ceremony, and then changing at the reception into decidedly non-superfantastic footwear for the party. Sneakers with lace and sequins added are still sneakers, and the less said of flip-flops at formal events in my hearing, the better.

The upside of this practice is, of course, an ability to boogie the night away and still leave the party under your own power. I cannot deny this as a positive thing. Alas, the downsides are myriad. Extra expense, unfortunate glimpses of those monstrous wedding sneakers, and a pool of gown that was hemmed for three-inch heels cascading across the dance floor tripping all in its path really do cancel out the comfort factor for me.

There is, however, another and better way to handle the question: wear low-heeled or flat shoes that you can be comfortable in all day and all night long.

The good news is that flat shoes are very fashionable just now, so there are plenty of pretty, flirty, elegant flats to choose from, like these sigerson morrison beauties.

sigerson morrison flats

available from Barney’s New York for a mere $345.00.

The even better news is that there are more budget-friendly shoes that are both flat and fabulous, such as these gorgeous gold Nine West shoes

Nine West kitten heels

available through Amazon for a whopping $49.99.

When comfort and fashion are both served by making one purchase instead of two, why fight it?

This and That in the Wedding World

Sunday, September 23rd, 2007

Seal has announced that he’s recorded a duet with wife Heidi Klum. The song is one he wrote for their May 2005 wedding. I think that’s sweet…and I sure hope she can sing.

Eddie Murphey and fiancee Tracey Edmunds have announced that they intend to shun Hollywood glitz and have a “small, casual” wedding instead. Edmonds said of planning the wedding: “We keep checking in with each other. Like, ‘What do you think about this?’ So we’re getting a little closer, figuring it all out. It’ll come together really soon.” It’s great to hear that they’re working together to make it happen.

And in the world of deeply strange wedding news, the Lancashire Evening Post reports that Patricia Catterall, a Chorely market stallholder who runs Pat’s Market Cheese Shop was recently hired to make a six-tier all cheese wedding cake.

It weighed thirty pounds and cost two-hundred twenty pounds.

The base layer was made of Brie de Meaux, topped with Lancashire cheese, Cornish cheese, Wensleydale with cranberries, cheddar with shallots and chives, and Cornish blue, finally topped with a traditional wedding couple topper.

A more traditional sweet wedding cake was served at the afternoon reception, with the cheese creation being saved for an evening reception.

Catterall says she’s already been hired to do other cheese cakes.

All I can say is if Mr. Twistie had heard of this before our wedding, he might have tried to get it duplicated. Yeah, I might have gone for it.

To Invite, Or Not To Invite, That Is the Question

Saturday, September 22nd, 2007

Everybody seems to have an opinion on this one. Pretty much everybody seems to think their personal logic on the subject is – or at least ought to be – universal. Way too many people find the opposing view not only incorrect, but offensive as well.

What’s the question? Children as wedding guests.

wedding kids

I’ve wandered around more bridal sites, bridal blogs, and bridal message boards in the last two months than I had in the rest of my life put together, and this is one of the nearly universal sore spots that keeps coming up.

On the one hand, there are those who insist that a wedding is no place for a child and so to allow them to attend will make a mockery of the occasion and all the bride’s hard work will be destroyed by an unruly child. On the other stand those who insist that weddings are about families and families are about children so any marriage that fails to include little Egbert at the wedding is doomed from the outset. I wish I could say this was an exagerration.

Me? I stand squarely in the middle.

I love kids. I love having kids around me. I wouldn’t have missed having the smaller guests at my wedding for anything. One of the best shots in my wedding album is of a group of kids playing ring around a rosie, and clearly having a grand time. An eleven-year-old boy caught my garter with an Air Jordan move that still makes me laugh to this day. I also have fond memories of attending many weddings as a child.

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I Know It’s True, ‘Cause I Saw It On TV

Sunday, September 16th, 2007

As I said yesterday, I’ve spent an entire week watching every wedding-related reality show I could pick up on my cable package. It’s been grueling. I never realized how many shows there are on TV about wedding planning, or how little useful information can be gleaned from most of them.

I did, however, pick up on some interesting social messages these shows are trying to sell us on, many of which I found outright bizarre as well as unhelpful. Here’s what I kept seeing on show after show:

1: Budgets are made to be broken, and anyone who tries to keep one intact is the villian of the piece. Again and again I saw fathers, grooms, and even the occasional bride called cheap or gazed upon more in pity than in anger because they felt it was unreasonable to blow the budget by the equivilant of the Gross National Product of Brazil. I saw wedding planners work with brides and their mothers to ‘hide’ expenses from daddy so he wouldn’t blow his top – expenses like a second multi-thousand dollar reception dress because the multi-thousand wedding gown was too much to boogie in all night long. I heard a bride chastised for thinking since the flowers didn’t mean that much to her she’d rather get them from a grocery store than a professional florist, even if she could get more flowers for a hundred dollars less and was at least as happy with the result.

2: Wedding planners are wonderful even when they don’t do their jobs well. Some of the planners I watched did a really fabulous job. A couple even attempted to keep the budget from completely skyrocketing completely out of control. One amazing one even got a couple pretty much everything they wanted for two thousand dollars less than their stated budget, and said budget was well under $20,000 to begin with. On the other hand, there was no negative commentary on the wedding planner who allowed an $8,000 backyard wedding to bloat into a $30,000 backyard wedding even with the bride managing to borrow a lot of plants and decorations. This is also the planner who envisioned a dramatic, billowy fabric curtain to define the wedding/reception areas of the yard and allow the bride a dramatic entrance…only to discover the night before the wedding that she needed another fifty yards of fabric to make it happen.

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Why Do They Do It?

Saturday, September 15th, 2007

Never let it be said that I will not take a bullet for the readers of this fine blog.

What bullet might that be, you may ask?

A solid week of watching reality shows about weddings, that’s the answer. I’ll have some observations about the lessons I learned from these shows tomorrow. For now I just have one question:

Why do women sign up to be featured on Bridezillas?

I know they get something, because as my brain screamed at the end of every episode I saw I knew it was drowning out the sound of the announcer telling us what resort or hotel the couple got to stay at for three days in return for having their reputations trashed on national television over the course of two episodes. But is that really all they get? Is it really worth it? Some shows I can understand being willing to be on them for the sake of a couple nights at a nice hotel, but this one?

Also I had to wonder at some of the choices of brides. While most of the women I saw profiled on the show were definitely doing everything in their power to live down to the Bridezilla label, there was at least one who I felt was not only not Bridezilla, but was more of a pathetic sad sack who couldn’t get anyone to help her with anything. She had no organizational skills and her friends and family spent most of their time ignoring her or laughing at her for wanting a nice wedding. Okay, her waterworks got to be a bit much, but I would have cried, too, if I’d been stuck cleaning up my own reception in my wedding gown with only one or two people half-heartedly helping out – none of whom even seemed to be the groom. By what stretch of the imagination is this Bridezilla behavior?

Could it be that there weren’t enough actual Bridezillas out there volunteering for the show?

But my question remains: why would anyone go out of their way to don the mantle of Bridezilla?

I just don’t get it.

Bridezilla

I Hope Their First Anniversary Isn’t This Exciting

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

Actress Keira Knightly announced recently that she has no plans to marry anytime soon. Okay. I’ll just assume someone asked her because it’s the sort of thing pretty actresses get asked a lot. What amused me was her reason:

“I don’t want to get married in the foreseeable future. I’ve been married five times in films, had three children and countless proposals. So I think that’s about enough really,” The Sun quoted her, as saying.

“Also I don’t know how I’d top the wedding I had in Love Actually because it was pretty impressive.” she added.

Well, I saw an article today that may top that wedding for sheer excitement factor.

David Harms and Heather Randazzo of Granite City, Ill had planned to marry soon. On thursday, they were in a car accident. Harms was uninjured, but Randazzo wound up in the hospital. She was 37 weeks pregnant. The baby was delivered by emergency C-section on Thursday.

Yesterday, Harms and Randazzo were married in a simple hospital ceremony. The bride wore a white robe. Both families attended. The hospital staff provided balloons, streamers, and a cake for the happy occasion.

Best of luck to you, David and Heather! And also to your baby, whose sex, general health and name were not revealed in the article I read.

Advice From the Peanut Gallery

Saturday, September 8th, 2007

If there’s one thing the average bride doesn’t lack, it’s advice. Books, websites, computer programs, parents, soon-to-be-in-laws, friends, neighbors, co-workers; sometimes it seems as though everyone in the world knows precisely how your big day should go and no two agree.

Have a huge bash! Run away and elope! You have to have your sister as a bridesmaid even if you haven’t spoken voluntarily in three years! Don’t even consider asking family to be in the wedding party because sibling rivalry will get out of hand! You have to get married in church no matter what you personally believe! Getting married in a church is old-fashioned and yours isn’t pretty enough! If you don’t have your two-year-old nephew as ring bearer, he’ll be traumatized! If you ask that poor child to be ring bearer he’ll be traumatized! Even if your wedding is very informal you must serve a three-course meal! I’ve got a cousin who can give you a deal on catering, and hey, who doesn’t love Sloppy Joes at a formal wedding reception?

Sometimes it’s enough to make your head spin a la The Exorcist.

How to deal with all the musts and absolutes and must nots and other assorted offers of advice? I thought you’d never ask.

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