Manolo for the Brides

I want to touch on the topic of shaving. Armpits, legs, and…more sensitive areas get a lot of media play in the world inhabited by blushing brides-to-be, for obvious reasons. Necks and cheeks, on the other hand, don’t spend a lot of time in the pre-nuptial spotlight.

It makes sense if you think about it. There are hundreds of resources that gals can turn to as they prep themselves for the big day, while there are very few places that advise grooms-to-be to do anything beyond “get out of her way” and “show up sober” and “don’t lose the ring.” I’ll admit that I don’t devote a lot of posts to groomcentric issues — this is Manolo for the Brides, after all — but sites like the newly revamped Groom Groove tell me that a whole new generation of dudes is preparing to tie the knot.

For example, Kirk wrote to ask:

Is there a better way for grooms to shave on the wedding day? They’re photographed with better cameras than they’re used to, and even a clean-shaven guy can end up looking like Fred Flintstone when the proofs come back… I know I messed this up at my wedding, with some unclever ideas. I was worried about missing a spot shaving, and thought I should let it grow out a few days before so I could see that I got everything. Well I got everything, but still the dreaded “noon-o’clock shadow” was visible! Was there something else I should have done?

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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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Way back in 1989, the NY Times ran an article about no-frills brides who wore suits instead of the usual gowns. Suits, the author asserts, are for women who want to avoid looking demure or overly fem. Then she goes on to call bridal suits sexy — which reads a bit like a contradiction, but really isn’t. There’s no reason a suit has to be frumpy, after all.

”Wearing a bridal suit portrays a woman as being sure of herself, of having a sense of power,” said Louise Maniscalco, a personal shopper at Barneys New York. ”In a suit, she is dressed the way she wants and not the way tradition demands. It’s having your own identity.”

Many — if not most — brides-to-be reject bridal suits out of hand because wedding gowns are such a huge part of the Western cultural consciousness, but in the years surrounding WWII, suits were de rigueur!

The two happy people in the middle are newlyweds…they’re also my maternal grandparents. They were married in Germany sometime in the 50s, and I’m pretty sure the my gram still has that suit hidden away somewhere in her vast closets. I know for a fact that the suit she wore saw plenty of post-nuptial wear because the children of war didn’t waste a thing.

In these shaky economic times — which are shakier for some of us than for others — I’d urge brides-to-be to consider the classic bridal suit. Suits (even very well tailored varieties) can be a great budget option. They bring with it the advantage of being entirely re-wearable because even if you marry in white, natural fibers can be dyed. Paired with gloves, they are as classy as can be!

I’d venture to say that bridal suits are also a wonderful nod to the grandmothers and great-grandmothers who made the most of what they had and who, without gowns, veils, or $30,000 wedding budgets, managed to look chic and gorgeous.

Fish as gift? Yes, when it’s culturally relevent. No, when it involves dumping a slimy, stinky flounder wrapped in newspaper on my previously clean kitchen table. Personally, I’d be delighted to receive Yuinou if I was the mother of a newly engaged lady.

You’re looking at Yuinou, gifts that traditionally mark an agreed upon engagement in Japan. I first saw them at Wedded Bliss, The Marriage of Art and Ceremony, a traveling exhibit currently at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Yuinou is exchanged for the various purposes. First of all, people can confirm that the engagement is concluded. At the same time, they pray for the conclusion of marriage by doing the ceremony. The engagement will be official through Yuinou. Secondly, a bridegroom side does it to express their gratitude to a bride side, because a bride is considered to be a member of bridegroom side after a marriage. The gratitude is against marrying a girl whom their parents have brought up with tender care.

The contents of Yuinou are important in their ceremonial significance — cuttlefish signifies happiness, seaweed signifies fertility, a fan signifies good fortune, and animal art signifying all sorts of nice things — but the appeal in my eyes is the beautiful packaging.

The examples I saw at the PEM were gorgeous, made as they were of vividly hued bamboo, balsa wood, foil, glass, and braided paper cord. The packaging is so artistically rendered that some newlyweds display the Yuinou in their homes after the wedding.

However, the once widespread and varied Yuino ceremony is being toned down by couples who would rather their parents spent the money they might spend on Yuinou on monetary gifts or contributions to the price of the wedding. That makes a lot of sense to me, but I do hope that the practice sticks around. It seems like such a nice way to bring families together and commemorate the blending of two families.

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CONGRATS, JSTAR! Jstar, who suggested that I call my next book iDon’t: the 12,000,000 most common wedding planning mistakes has won a free autographed copy of iDo. Keep your eyes open for future minicontents because I plan to give away at least one copy of the book each month for a year!

I know a goodly number of you are addicted to the WE channel train wrecks like Bridezillas and ::vomit:: Bulging Brides. As disgusted as I usually am by the brides-to-be on these shows, we can certainly agree on one thing. Getting an inside look at the intimate details of other people’s weddings is a guilty good time.

The couple above? They’re Sarah Lucas and Jonathon Kass. I know that he — a policy analyst and legislative aide to a city councilman in Washington — has major issues with indecision. She’s into boats and prefers to jump feet first into life’s choppy waters. And it took Kass eight months to finally decide that kissing Lucas would indeed be a good idea.

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The emerging gay wedding demographic has come up quite a bit here at Manolo for the Brides as of late. With the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling — go Cali! — you can bet that there are scads of couples are sprinting toward the altar.

You can also rightly assume that “gay weddings” (a term I really dislike because it’s not a gayyyyyy wedding, it’s just a wedding) are all over the news. Why, just this morning I was knocking back the first latte of the day and listening to NPR when a story came on about Renellie, maker of what they call the world’s first interracial and interchangeable wedding cake toppers.

I do dispute the claim, because there are plenty of topper shops that let you buy figurines individually, whether you want an Asian bride and an Asian groom or an African American bride and a Native American bride or just one white groom because your fiance is a furry and you’re going to pair it with a statue of an anthropomorphic fox.

And yet, I’ve got to hand it to topper designer Rena Puebla for loudly jumping on the same-sex-wedding-friendly vendor bandwagon because my own mother was pretty well ensconced in the proverbial closet not twenty years ago. We’ve come a long way, baby!

The idea for interracial, interchangeable wedding cake toppers sprang fully formed into Puebla’s mind when she, an African American chick engaged to an Asian dude, was unable to find a topper that looked like her and her intended.

“When two people fall in love and become engaged,” she says, “there is so much going on in their lives that the last thing they should have to worry about is the unfamiliar and awkward representation of themselves on the cake.”

So where do I stand on the toppers themselves? I appreciate that Puebla has good intentions, and $70 per couple isn’t entirely unreasonable for a 7″ handpainted figure. I would imagine — though I cannot say for sure — that it must be refreshing to see a statuette of oneself when one has been “left out in the cold” for some time. And maybe, just maybe, same-sex couples in the US have been barred from officially enjoying the traditionalesque wedding for so long that they crave matrimony with all the trimmings.

But really, when it comes right down to it, these toppers are just not all that attractive. I’d much rather see something kooky like two G.I. Joes or something indicative of the couple’s interests like, say, a surfboard and an astrological symbol*. How about some Matchbox cars or two different busts of Tutankhamen or a couple of those cute birds Ann Wood makes?

Heck, if you want a topper that looks like you, get some mini frames, take some cute snapshots, and stick ‘em in the cake. Problem solved!

* I’m looking at you, mom!

There’s nothing like looking right into someone else’s wedding. It’s what inspires us to search Flickr for photos tagged with ‘wedding,’ ‘bride and groom,’ and ‘wedding cake.’ It’s what keeps us going back to The Knot, even though said site can be irritatingly cloying. Heck, it’s what prompts me to open my e-mail every morning — whenever one of you sends me a wedding snapshot or a link to your wedding pics, I DEVOUR them.

If you’re a bride-to-be who likes to walk the road less traveled, checking out other chicks’ weddings can also help you come to terms with your own choices. There’s something comforting in knowing you’re not alone in wanting to wear green cowboy boots with your gown or proudly rock your ink.

So my newest addiction? It’s the Weddings We Loved board over at Kvetch@IndieBride. I’ve posted a selection of pics below and ask the hotlinking gods’ forgiveness. All the snaps are from different nuptials, but you can click on them to see more images from all of them.

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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.

Photo by the amazingly talented Corinna Hoffman

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.

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FYI: If you, like me, live close to Salem, MA, you may be interested to know that the city is currently hosting 250 cast and crew for the filming of “Bride Wars,” a movie starring Kate Hudson, Anne Hathaway, and Candice Bergen. The cast and crew will apparently venture downtown today to enjoy all of the weirdness this tourist trap town has to offer, so feel free to go and gawk and report back to us! Via the always informative mkb.

What’s more fun than folding laundry and only slightly less fun than attending one’s own wedding? Watching other people’s wedding videos, of course! Thank goodness everyone and their sister now posts their reception vids to YouTube so we can all gawk at all the crazy antics perpetrated by drunken relatives, cranky kiddies, and the even–or should I say especially–the bride and groom.

How else would those of us who went the traditional route and learned to fox trot know that it’s all right to do a Hammer Time first dance duet instead of the boring old seventh-grade shuffle?

Some of the kooky couples who ditched All I Ask of You for something funkier have gotten flack from critics who say a first dance should not be a performance. To that I say an impassioned, “Whateverrrrrrr.” I’m just jealous that I couldn’t convince The Beard to go all out and let me come up with a wicked complex song and dance number!

If you’re keen to take your first dance to the next level, watch the videos below and take notes.

Surprise everyone:

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