(Image via Cheezeburger Network)

When sportswriter Pete Iorizzo recently married, several guests generously gave him and his bride checks as gifts. Ca-ching! Great news! While cold, hard cash is not the most romantic gift possible, it’s certainly a useful one.

Unfortunately, there was a catch when the bride headed down to Bank of America to deposit said checks in their joint checking account: the bank refused to accept the checks.
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These are the Salvages, Jeff and Jennifer… and her wedding dress, on their wedding day on Easter Island. The gown is a Maggie Sotero, for those keeping score.

What’s the big deal about her wedding dress? Well, they’ve created a website devoted to it and the many places throughout the world where they’ve had it photographed.

State parks, New Zealand, the Vatican, even a 76ers game:
Jennifer and her wedding dress have travelled the globe. Why? Well, according to the website, One Dress, One Woman, One World:

In a sea of changing places, people, scenery and seasons, the bride eternal and her flowing gown have spanned the globe, bringing out the adventurer, the romantic, the model, the artist, and the dreamer in all of us. Within these pages, you have seen one dress, one woman, one world, and a lifetime of endless possibilities and adventures still to be had.

Okay, I’m down with being happy with your wedding gown. I’m down with traveling the world. I’m down with dreaming of endless possibilities.

I guess I just kind of wonder why she can’t dream in other outfits.

Opinions?

Not too long ago, the gorgeous Twistie posed this compelling question: What if you don’t care? As in, what if you don’t care about wedding cake or finding the perfect wedding dress or reception table centerpieces or having real linens? Of course the answer is that your wedding will not be ruined just because you don’t spend ages hunting for a dress or you have paper napkins at the post-ceremony brunch buffet. My advice is always going to be “If you don’t care about it, don’t do it/don’t stress over it/let someone else handle it.” It’s pretty good advice, if I do say so myself!

The only problem? Every so often a bride comes out on the far side of her wedding and discovers that she does care or ought to have cared about certain details. There are definitely things I thought I didn’t care about while planning a wedding that I can now say I wish I had cared about because they are the things that cause those tiny pangs of regret I sometimes feel when looking at my wedding photo album. And I would love to hear, from those of you already married, what you wish you’d cared MORE about while planning a wedding. Maybe you didn’t put much thought into your bouquet and it stands out as an afterthought in your pics. Or your wedding cake was only so-so but you wish it had been fabulous. Could be you are sorry you didn’t devote more of your budget to your wedding photography or your wedding rings.

In the absence of a time machine, there’s not a lot we married ladies can do about it now… other than to suggest that brides-to-be and grooms-to-be take our stories into consideration when planning their weddings. It sounds and feels a bit silly, but it makes a lot of sense to create a list of things you and your intended don’t care about and then to meditate on it for a bit. Try to imagine your future wedding photos – do the things you think you don’t care about make an appearance after all? You may be surprised to discover that a few things on that ‘don’t care list’ suddenly feel more important! Or you may find that you really don’t care and can safely devote yourself to the things that are actually important to you. Either way, you have just upped your chances of having the wedding you really want.

“You can totally wear it again!”

How many times have bridesmaids been told precisely that as they cringe internally? I was told it about a dusty rose acetate taffeta (with matching polyester lace, no less!) high-necked, long-sleeved, full-skirted, tea length number once.

At least it was cheap. It never saw the light of day again. Then again, nothing in dusty rose ever would from my closet. It’s one of the few colors in the world that I detest and I look as though I’m in the final stages of terminal jaundice in it. I did, however, have better luck with the next two bridesmaids dresses I wore.

This week on Project Runway, Season 8, a group of women who were all told The Lie showed up to have their unfortunate polyester and acetate monstrosities turned into clothes they actually would want to wear again (but wouldn’t be able to after the runway show, because all designs on the show become the property of the show and are auctioned off at the end of the season).
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… in 1993, I woke early, had breakfast, got dressed, headed out to a beautiful redwood grove, and married the love of my life.

Over the last seventeen years we’ve coped with feast and famine – and more famine than feast. We’ve dealt with illness, injury, and death. We’ve made good decisions and bad ones, laughed and cried, agreed and disagreed.

And do you know what? I would absolutely do it all again.

Sometimes happily ever after does sort of happen.

I just thought you might like to know that.

This isn’t something we often talk about here at Manolo for the Brides. After all, the point of this blog is to help blushing (and not so blushing) brides plan their weddings through budget tips, inspiring pics of pretty things, and general ‘woo hoo, weddings!’ cheerleading.

The fact is, however, that divorce is how a heck of a lot of marriages end. The common wisdom is that half of all marriages end in divorce. The good news, according to this article at The Daily Beast, is that the statistic is now closer to a 40% chance of divorce.

The article goes on to note fifteen things that can make a divorce more likely in your relationship. Some are not terribly surprising, such as how often you argue about money or if one of you smokes and the other doesn’t. Some are more surprising, such as whether you have a son or a daughter (parents of boys are less likely to break up, it seems).
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We don’t talk a great deal around here about what comes after the wedding. Heck, we don’t even discuss honeymoons very often! It’s not that we don’t care or don’t think about it. We’re just usually more focused on the actual wedding, what with being a wedding planning blog.

But the fact is that while it’s fun and easy to talk about flowers and dresses and menus and jewelry, there’s an entire marriage after the wedding, and we do think it’s important to consider that marriage.

If you’re old enough to even be thinking about getting married, chances are you’ve learned somewhere along the line that compromise is important. If you haven’t learned it by the time you start planning, chances are you’ll have a better understanding of the concept at the end of the process. No matter what your budget or how mellow all the players involved happen to be, a wedding will entail some compromises in some area.

But what about your happily ever after?

Marriage entails a lot of compromise on a daily basis. What to eat and who cooks it, which movie to see, whether to save first for his big priority or yours, who takes out the garbage vs who scrubs the bathroom…you’re going to wind up making deals about a lot of things.

Some of these choices are easy. I do the cooking, because Mr. Twistie only knows two settings on the burners: high and off. Also, I’m home when it’s time to start cooking far more consistently and I love to cook. I also do the dishes because I actually like that part. Call me freaky, but I do. Mr. Twistie may think that bit was a compromise, but really it was a matter of personal preference as much as self-preservation.

Some are harder. I moved to a new city. I’d lived in my hometown literally as long as I could remember. I’d lived in the same house since I was two years old, and I got married at thirty. Yeah, I tend to stay where I’m put. By contrast, Mr. Twistie had only lived in his hometown since he was nine, and could remember living in two other cities. So why was I the one to move?
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