Manolo for the Brides

I was going to dig into my archives today today to finally feature some of those previously answered reader questions that are waiting for their 15 minutes, but I received a query yesterday afternoon that was too intriguing to put off. The question was simply this:

Have you heard of cellophane parties? Apparently, this is a “new tradition” in bridal showers where guests are asked to wrap their shower gifts in cellophane. Gifts are then displayed on a table for other guests to see, but the bride never unwraps them all, presumably “saving” everyone from a tedious, lengthy gift-unwrapping session. Are these as tacky as they sound?

Color me out of the loop, for I have never, ever heard of a cellophane party. The term itself conjures up images of wild fêtes of yesteryear best forgotten, but brings to mind nothing even remotely resembling an event that typically includes grandmas and great aunts. For the person who posed the query, I did a Google image query with SafeSearch off and still found naught but cellophane and boobies of the usual mammarical variety.

As for cellophane showers, I could not, in all my searches, find a single mention of this supposed new tradition. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of watching people open gifts because it seems so third grade, but that’s pretty much what a shower is all about. Like you said, without the unwrapping, the oohs and ahhs, and the making of the silly hat, it starts to seem like a gift grab. “Here’s a bacon-wrapped scallop and a glass of champagne, now hand over the loot!”

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As a guest, I tend to tune out wedding speeches unless I’m familiar with both the object of the speech (i.e., the bride or groom) and the speech giver. Listening to 45 minutes of daddy waxing on misty-eyed about his little girl’s swimming trophies for 45 minutes a la Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason tends to put me into a fugue state wherein I eat far too much cake and the champagne in my glass keeps disappearing mysteriously.

The bride and groom, however, are typically quite interested in what everyone has to say because they are the ones being talked about! I know that I was particularly looking forward to the best man’s speech at my own wedding because he’s such a tremendously sweet fellow and I was hoping he’d say something nice about me or us. Let it be known that he did not disappoint, and the air was full of Awwws and little sniffs the whole time he had the mic.

Of course, he wasn’t the only one to take a stab at wowing the crowd, but he was indeed a tough act to follow. The Beard’s mother told a story about car thievery, and an uncle of mine saw fit to remind everyone that he’d changed my diapers when I was but a wee lass. I even vaguely remember one of my brothers getting on the mic to tell assembled loved ones that he’d met The Beard in Nam and that we’re both “slick ballers.”

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A good friend recently forwarded a Newsweek article to me about extravagant - excuse me, extreme - wedding trends. Number two on the list was the dreaded Bridesmaid Pre-Nuptual Agreement, or bridesmaid contract.

While the brides interviewed for this part of the article a) refused to give their names and b) were not directly quoted, the article assures us that lots of brides are doing this in order to make sure they have perfect wedding days. After all, if a bridesmaid neglects her skin for a few weeks and winds up with a zit that morning, or she dares to wear her eyebrow ring, we all know the entire wedding will be ruined! Let us not even whisper of the vileness of a bridesmaid who gets pregnant before Myyyyy Daaaayyyyyyy!

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Like pretty much everyone who’s ever weighed in on the subject of flower girls here at Manolo for the Brides, I believe in dressing little girls like little girls. They’ll have almost an entire decade to wear pants with posteriors emblazoned with words like Hottie — I mean, of course, the ten years between “totally inappropriate” and “Oh my gawd, dress your age” — so why parade them around in miniature bridal gowns?

The trend toward mature flower girl garb gets even more disturbing when the tiny models are done up to look like lot lizards and made to give bedroom eyes to the camera. If you don’t think it’s more than a tad creepy, I expect I’ll be seeing your mug on To Catch a Predator some time in the near future.

Here’s the thing: When I was but a tiny tot, I would have killed for a miniaturized grown-up dress and some Tammy Fae makeup, but I had this annoying personage in my life colloquially known as “mom.” Boy did that chick ever cramp my style! There I was, wanting nothing more than to dress like a twenty-five year old, with a legal guardian who kept me in OshKosh B’Gosh. I could have used a few more dresses, but that’s neither here nor there.

So what should a bride and her littlest attendant’s momma do when confronted with all of the oddly tight ‘n’ slinky flower girl dresses out there? They should keep their eyes open for quality alternatives, of course! Here are four gorgeous girl-sized frocks to get you started:

Traveling clockwise from the top right, you see a silk dupioni dress with a square neck bodice and short princess sleeves from Petite Parfait, a luminescent taffeta sleeveless knee-length dress with flowers at neckline and hem from WaWa, an iridescent long dress with sash and flower accents from Winnie Couture, and a tulle and midori silk shantung sleeveless knee-length dress, also from WaWa.

Last I checked, flower girls serve no other purpose than to lend their cute-itude to the nuptial proceedings. Why age them prematurely? It pays to outfit them as beautifully and sweetly and innocently as possible. After all, when they look good, you look good, too.

Unless this is your first time reading MftB — in which case, welcome! — you know that I’m a HUGE advocate of exploring alternative wardrobing options. As tempting as it is to head straight to David’s (if you’re on a budget) or a fancypants upscale bridal salon (if you’re not), why limit yourself? There are great wedding-y dresses at tons of shops, online and off!

Ideally, the guys in your life should also take my advice to heart. While I am a big fan of Men’s Wearhouse because their service tends to be uniformly excellent, their tuxes tend to leave me cold. When it came time to help The Beard pick out duds for the dudes, I decided to start my search anywhere but on the mainstream menswear sites. The end result? We found these great striped suits for about a hundred bucks each. Just shy of zoot suits, they added a touch of…something to the wedding lineup.

The lovely Toni recently e-mailed to share some snapshots of a wedding she attended and dish about the menswear. The guys sourced their tuxes from Volcom, of all places. If you don’t already know, Volcom is a clothing company/entertainment site/surf, skate, and board collective whose tagline is “youth against establishment.”

It’s also definitely not the first place I’d look when choosing wedding-y menswear, but after seeing the photos Toni linked to I wouldn’t knock it. You also can’t beat the price — I found the tux pants for $60 and the tux jacket for $77 $110. The fit is modern (i.e., slim and kind of slouchy) so it won’t appeal to everyone, but if your guy is hoping to find NOTHISDADSTUXPLZ it may be just what he’s looking for.

The point is that the alternatives aren’t always what you’d expect or where you’d expect them to be, but they’re out there, nonetheless! Searching for them is particularly worth it when you’re on a budget, you know you definitely want something that’s a little out there, or you’re just not feeling the stuff you saw in the shops. Like I say in iDo: If you can imagine it, chances are good that someone, somewhere is selling it.

No one threw a bachelorette party for me. I know, wah wah wah. My bridal shower ended up being slightly weird because a goodly handful of my friends never received invitations. This was probably due in part to the fact that my MOH was 16 years old. All I know is that I dutifully gave up the names and contact info they asked me to provide and that’s where my responsibility ended.

I heard from numerous girlfriends in the days leading up to the affair, all of whom were sooo sorry they couldn’t attend but they’d only just heard about it and simply couldn’t travel out of state on such short notice. At the time I was too busy working three jobs and planning a wedding to lost much sleep over it, but it was a tad disappointing.

To make a long story even longer, a bachelorette party would have been nice, but the only person who suggested one was my soon-to-be ex-stepmother and her idea of a good bachelorette party is going out for a rowdy evening with the gals the night before the wedding. Get hitched with a hangover? No thanks!

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We’ve talked about weddingish regrets more than a few times here at MftB, and it truly is a bittersweet exercise. On one hand, it’s fun to keep looking at favors and frocks and flowers when one has no reason to buy them. On the other hand, it can make one question decisions already made…choices that can’t be taken back.

Now, when I start thinking “oh I wish I’d done/bought/used such-and-such a thing” I just plan a fabulous house party that incorporates all those products and ideas. Favors aren’t just for kiddie birthdays and weddings. Brides don’t have a monopoly on fresh blooms. And there’s no reason not to dress to the nines if you feel comfortable in a gown…the trick is learning to feel comfortable in a gown when everyone else is wearing slacks. Master that, and you’re golden!

The number one thing I wish I’d known about would have to be Bluefly. I didn’t start seriously thinking of this shop to end all shops as a source for reasonably priced, re-wearable bridesmaids’ garb until after I’d had a pickle of a time badgering my own ‘maids into picking something, anything, because we’re really getting down to the wire, here. Maybe telling them to go to Bluefly would have made everything easier for everyone…then again, probably not.

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I love anything one can buy without having to schlep one’s tush to the store. In fact, while planning my wedding, I looked for any and every opportunity to shop from the confines of my office…then I wrote a book about it! I do understand that there are some folks who get a real kick out of going to the mall or exchanging pleasant banter with shopkeeps, but I’m guessing that for every one of them there’s someone like me who’d rather not spend their Saturdays braving the retail gauntlet.

Some things are just designed for online shopping–faux flowers, dresses, paper goods, and favors come to mind. Other things don’t fare so well when squeezed into a cramped mail truck. Thus far, all of my efforts to find fancy iced wedding and shower appropriate cake were for naught. Sure, you can buy cheesecakes and petit fours and rum cake, but the rigors of shipping heretofore demanded some degree of cakey stability, ruling out varieties commonly associated with nuptials.

Until now, that is…

Fat Daddy Bake Shop takes cupcakes to the next level, packaging them in little canning jars for easy delivery via airmail. At $65 for ten 1/2 pint cupcakes–or should I call them jarcakes–it’s unlikely you’ll be sending your wedding guests home with sweets ensconced in glass. That price point does, however, lend itself to serving them to bridal shower and bachelorette party attendees or giving them to attendants as part of gift baskets.

And, happily, the flavor selection lends itself to NOM NOM NOMing. Were I to choose five, I’d pick the butter cake filled with coconut and layered with cream cheese frosting; banana cake with butterscotch chips and golden butterscotch frosting; brown sugar butter cake blended with toffee bits and topped with chocolate buttercream; vanilla cake with coffee, chocolate chips and layered with vanilla buttercream, and dark chocolate cake filled with chocolate ganache, caramel and walnuts, topped with caramel buttercream and nuts. Then I’d lapse straight into a sugar-induced coma because I have absolutely no willpower to speak of.

If you’re going to spend ages and ages between the ceremony and the reception posing for the camera, why not make it interesting? It’s bad enough that everyone else is off getting their pre-meal drink on at the open bar and chatting about poor Carol, the bridesmaid who just got divorced. Don’t make it worse by slapping on a frozen smile and lazily staring down your photographer. Your wedding album will be much enhanced by your decision to jazz things up a bit when it’s time to say “Cheese,” so try one of these cool poses on for size:

The jump:

From Beth Beljon — and can I just say I LOVE the bridesmaid attire?

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