Manolo for the Brides

Marriage is hot in the media today, as I learned from Kirk this morning. He sent me a heads-up about Slate’s wedding issue, which sent me on a wild chase for more, more, more matrimonial news. Could it be that I’m pining for the days of my own wedding planning adventure? No way, Jose. If anything, reading about the bridezillas of the world reminds me how pleased I am to be happily married. But speaking of that mythical beast known as the bridezilla, the image above shows the newest Bridezilla contestants crossing Broadway in New York’s Times Square on their way to film the first episode of the fourth season of the WE hit.

So where did my adventures in matrimonial media lead me? Here’s an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune that celebrates sister-wives a la HBO’s Big Love…sort of.

We found ourselves confessing that plural marriage didn’t look so terrible, even in a drama filled with suffering and intrigue. It was kind of like the Waltons, what with the big family and the red-state setting. One always had company. There was help with the children. And though the three or more women married to one man didn’t seem so great, it seemed a small point.

Ever heard of Tom Thumb Weddings? Me neither. I should thank the Herald & Review for cluing me into this weird ritual. And here The Beard was thinking I’m weird for joking that I made the cats get married!

Another child, Christopher Butler, who played the minister, asked the bride and groom to place candy rings on each other’s fingers. The groom had to restrain himself after having eaten several of the rings during rehearsal on Saturday.

If you’ve served on the nuptial front lines as a bridesmaid under a domineering bride, you’ll smirk at Prudie’s tips on taming brides from hell.

The bride insisted this bridesmaid leave her glasses at home because “glasses are an inappropriate accessory for women’s formalwear, and the bridal magazines have convinced her that there can be no exceptions to the no-glasses rule.” It makes me hope that as the groom tries to explain this to his friend, he’ll find himself looking deep into her Coke-bottle lenses, suddenly declare, “Why, Miss Keeler, you’re beautiful!” and run away with her.

Read anything both intriguing and wedding-related in the news lately? Share it in the comments!

A reader who asked to be identified as CTR (for good reason) is desperate to know how she should deal with belligerent bridesmaids:

I selected my bridal party nine months ago and the wedding is coming up fast. My best friend will be my MOH and my fiancé’s sister will stand as my only other attendant. At eight months prior to my wedding, I sourced the bridesmaid dresses and told my BF and my future SIL that they could choose any dress made by the company, as long as they ordered something tea length in periwinkle silk. This should have been easy, as all of the dress styles offered can be ordered in that length and fabric. As of a month ago, my BF had not ordered a dress. When I asked why, she told me she didn’t like anything from the company I chose and that she wanted to order from a local seamstress. The rush order deadline from said company is coming up fast, so I told her to do what she had to do. She has since ordered a dress.

My future SIL, however, still has not ordered a dress even though, at this point, there is a good chance a rush order will be impossible. First she said that she wanted to gain some weight. Then she wanted to see what my BF was ordering. I don’t want to kick her out of my already tiny bridal party, but I do want her to dress the part of a bridesmaid. When Mr. CRT tried to stress how important this is to both of us, his sister blew up at him. I can’t understand why she waited this long to order her dress. If she didn’t want to be a bridesmaid, she could have told me that months ago and I would have understood. If she was too busy, I would have understood that, too. Now I’m just plain hurt and very, very angry. Is there anything at all I can do to fix this?

The image of Bridezilla is one that has been burned into the cultural consciousness by TV shows and books about brides-to-be who alienate family, friends, and shopkeepers in the quest for the perfect wedding. We seldom hear about Bridesmaidzillas. They are the sisters, cousins, and girlfriends who just can’t be arsed to get involved…even when all that is asked of them is that they buy a dress and show up.

It happens more than you might think and not only to brides who make outrageous demands, like asking their maids to learn calligraphy so they can address 500 invitations or telling their MOH to organize multiple themed showers. There will, sadly, always be those poor, innocent brides-to-be who try to do their maids a favor and still get burned. To go with CTR’s example, giving your bridesmaids the freedom to pick a dress they like often means dealing with indecisive or overly picky people who take their time.

I’m glad to hear that one of CTR’s attendants ordered a dress and that it will more than likely get there in time for the wedding. But she isn’t out of the woods just yet. The fact that the second attendant is Mr. CRT’s sister makes the situation pretty dang complicated. I don’t know what sort of relationship they have, but it sounds like the sister either doesn’t care much about the wedding in general or just doesn’t want to be a part of it. If CTR is okay with standing at the altar with a shrunken bridal party, she should consider giving the sister an out by letting her know that she can step down if she tells her NOW. She may respond by taking CTR up on her offer…in which case, problem solved.

She may, however, become offended at the suggestion or even offended that CTR feels she’s been slacking. Which, as more than half a year has gone by, she obviously has. But people will react however people want to react to the perfectly valid concerns of others. If the sister does get offended, CTR shouldn’t apologize, as she has done nothing wrong. Heck, seeing that she was so kind as to allow her attendants to choose their own dresses, I’d say she did everything right.

If CTR’s future SIL still does want to be a part of the bridal party, I suggest that she give the slacking sister a very short deadline in which to fulfill her end of the deal, i.e. get a dress. If the sister doesn’t meet the deadline, she’s out. It won’t be pretty, but it will prevent any ugly day-of wedding mishaps.

In conclusion, CTR, don’t let your anger get the best of you, but don’t let anyone walk all over you, either.

How does one procure a $5,000 gown for $500? By being the strongest, the fastest, and the most agile bride on the block. When brides-to-be are training like quarterbacks, it can only mean one thing: Filene’s Basement’s annual “Running of the Brides” sale. On July 14, hopeful future brides in Towson, Maryland are going to push, punch, and kick their way to the gowns of their dreams. The Running of the Brides event will come to Chicago, D.C., and Boston later in the summer.

Frankly, the whole thing scares the hell out of me. According to the Filene’s web site, once the crowd gathered outside the store is let loose, “it takes less than 60 seconds for the racks to be stripped bare. Shoppers grab as many gowns as they can carry, drag them off to a corner, strip down to their underwear, and start trying on dresses.”

Now, I can’t imagine how those gowns stay clean, much less intact, but the Running of the Brides event is quite famous, so Filene’s must be doing something right. A Google search for images reveals hordes of crazed women streaming into Filene’s, ripping gowns of racks, bodily staking their claims on piles of gowns, and being helped into gowns by dazed looking dudes.

To help hopeful brides find that perfect gown, Filene’s has published a guide to the Running of the Brides sale that shares a handful of tips and tricks like:

Pick a team — people whose taste you trust and are willing to get in there and do shopping battle for you. Hold a pre-sale meeting with your team. Come up with a team uniform — matching hats, t-shirts, headbands, carry whistles — anything that would make it easier to find each other in the crowd. Assign jobs to team members — someone to gather, someone to trade, someone to help you in and out of the dresses, someone to guard your inventory from prowlers.

Be nice — with all the excitement, shoppers have been known to get a little territorial and competitive. As our security manager once said to a TV reporter, “you don’t want to be walking down the aisle knowing you had to punch somebody out to get the dress.”

Be decisive — it’s only a one-day sale and gowns are not returnable.

Now, I can understand the desire that compels women to seek out designer duds at rock bottom prices. But aren’t weddings stressful enough without brides-to-be having to resort to berserker tactics to find gowns? Sure, it’s not really as crazy as I’ve made it out to be—but it can still get pretty crazy!

No, it’s not an invasion of vikingette hordes bent on capturing husbands. It’s the second annual Running of the Bridezillas in Time Square! On Monday, a group of twenty brides-to-be donned their wedding finery and took part in a high-stakes, bride-eat-bride footrace in New York City to mark the third season of the WE television show ‘Bridezillas’.

Winner Casey Scheulen and her fiancé Tim McGowen will receive a $25,000 dream wedding. Which is fortuitous, because Ms. Scheulen will no doubt need a new wedding dress now that hers is covered in sweat and whatever that white stuff on her husband-to-be is.

I don’t know why, but my brain is all over the place today. Perhaps it’s because this weekend The Beard announced that he actually wants to get married and by get married he means get married to me. This was, of course, not an official proposal. He said that before we make it official he wants to find a ring and decide on some special moment to propose. But that’s not stopping me from considering various wedding bands, dresses, shoes, hair styles, and so forth, and rereading everything that The Manolo and I have posted since this site’s inception at the start of 2005.

So, I thought you might enjoy perusing a selection of links and other things that are sometimes funny, sometimes useful, and always entertaining.

The Mini Bridezilla Voodoo Doll comes with everything an exasperated bridesmaid or future husband needs to not so subtly let the future bride know she’s being a real witch.

If it comes to your area, be sure to check out Bridezilla Strikes Back! - a one-woman show by Cynthia Silver, who was tricked into appearing on a FOX “brides gone bad” type special by producers who told her she’d be appearing in a serious documentary. It’s a comedy that reminds us that all bridezillas aren’t cut from the same cloth.

Favor Ideas’ Bridezilla comic strip captures the essence of the change that some women undergo when they go from being just-your-average-woman to being a future bride.

For those who love undergarments in general or bridal undergarments specifically, the Knickers Blog is holding a contest where new subscribers to their newsletter can win one of three bridal undergarment sets. Subscribe by March 31 and you’re entered automatically! Don’t forget to check out their fab bridal underthings guide!

Bridezilla: True Tales from Etiquette Hell is intended as a reference guide and is chock full of etiquette “don’ts.” Sort of like reality TV for your bedstand.

Finally, newcomer to the bridal blog scene, Bridalwave (brought to you by the good folks at Shoewawa), is making a splash by showing readers what’s hot and what’s not for brides in the UK. I particularly love the site’s commentary on the good gowns and the bad on EBAY.co.uk.

Enjoy!

Manolo says, don’t be the Bridezilla!

Manolo says, so the crazy Georgia bride she just up and ran away before the wedding.

A Georgia bride-to-be who vanished just days before her wedding turned up in New Mexico and fabricated a tale of abduction before admitting Saturday that she got cold feet and “needed some time alone,” police said.

Jennifer Wilbanks, 32, was in police custody more than 1,420 miles from her home on what was supposed to be her wedding day Saturday.

“It turns out that Miss Wilbanks basically felt the pressure of this large wedding and could not handle it,” said Randy Belcher, the police chief in Duluth, Ga., the Atlanta suburb where Wilbanks lives with her fiance. He said there would be no criminal charges.

Far be it from the Manolo to be the person to cast the stone at this poor woman, and her crazy fleeing ways, however, this detail it caught the eye of the Manolo.

The wedding was going to be a huge bash. The couple had mailed 600 invitations, and the ceremony was to feature 14 bridesmaids and 14 groomsmen.

Fourteen maids of the bride! This it is madness!

By the comparison, the Princess Diana she only had five maids of the bride. The Jackie O. when she was the Jackie B. and married the JFK, she had only ten of the maids of the bride.

Manolo says, although the Manolo he is usually in favor of the opulence and the luxury, it is nonetheless the rule of the Manolo that if the girl she feels the need to have more than ten maids of the bride–more than the Jackie O. (nee B.) needed to marry the JFK–she should not be getting married.

Perhaps this rule it sounds too harsh, but it has been the experience of the Manolo that for the girls who demand the most super gigantic of the fairytale weddings, the wedding itself frequently becomes more important than the marriage.

This it is not to say that the big wedding it is in itself bad, but rather it is to say that for the bride who demands the perfect day of the wedding, to the point of either inciting the hatred of those around them, or to the point of wanting to runaway and leave the poor parents thinking she has been murdered, something it is wrong.

The wedding day it is to be the day of joy, and its approach should be greeted with the gladness and the earnest longing for its arrival. If the planning of the wedding has become the ordeal to be endured one must step back and reconsider the necessity of the fourteen maids of the brides.