Manolo for the Brides

We get a lot of press releases here at Manolo for the Brides. I mean A LOT of press releases, which is why my inbox is always getting wicked backed up and I am way tardy in answering some reader e-mails. Some of the press releases I receive are appropriately wedding related, while others are kind of pushing the wedding angle just because, hey, weddings are a cash cow.

For example, I just received a release informing me that Microsoft Office Live offers “free online tools that can help a bride get organized and stay connected to family and friends during the planning process.” These include a wedding web site, a place to upload wedding details to share with vendors and venues, and a repository for ideas. That’s useful enough, I guess, but what interested me was the justification for needing to use Microsoft Office Live versus, say, Blogger or one of the upteenbillion other free site hosting services.

A new trend that’s emerging is brides who are sharing their wedding details with their bridal party via social networking sites. Sharon Naylor, wedding expert and author of 35 wedding books, says this is not only inefficient, but it ruins the surprise element for guests who have read endless status updates about the coral dresses, the catering plans, etc.

Now I don’t know about you, but I was eager to share my wedding deets with anyone willing to humor me for five minutes to two hours. My wedding gown? It’s gold! My reception venue? My gram’s backyard in Merritt Island, FL! I’d spill the beans about anything and everything because I was proud of my choices. By the time the wedding rolled around, the only thing that was even remotely a secret was my dress, and it was only a secret from The Beard. It never even struck me to want to spring my wedding color scheme or my wedding shoes on unsuspecting guests.

Am I alone in this? You tell me!

(img via — check it out for a different kind of wedding surprise!)

Um…

youbuyMYWEDDING offers a unique service where you can invite your wedding guests to help by paying money for your wedding day expenses instead of buying items from a more traditional gift list – which helps you to have a wedding you can afford and also to avoid starting married life in debt.

Ahahaha, this is a joke site, right? With a name like youbuyMYWEDDING, it has to be satire… Or not. Brides and grooms are supposedly getting older and older, which means that everyone you know who’s getting married probably already has a toaster oven and a spatula set. What they might not have is $30,000 to pay for what is now considered a moderately-priced wedding.

Don’t you just love it when entrepreneurs come up with shady solutions to problems that aren’t really problems*? As you can see, brides and grooms in the UK (who are willing to let 4.75% of their gifts go to administrative costs) can ask their loved ones to contribute to their weddings by paying for things like the wedding gown, the bridesmaids’ bouquets, or the very champagne they’ll drink at the wedding reception. It’s just like a honeymoon registry in almost every respect, except that it’ll make everyone on your guest list look at you a bit funny.

On the surface it sounds very practical and modern and even a little progressive in these woeful economic times, but lordy, it’s not at all in keeping with good etiquette. Were I to receive an invitation to a wedding that I was being asked to pay for, I would give the bride and groom the gift of an RSVP card reading “Declines With Regrets.” That’s just as good as ponying up some cash for the cash bar, after all, because the couple then has one less mouth to feed!

*Don’t have a ton of money to spend on your wedding? Budget wedding tips abound here and elsewhere on the Internet!

I have to ask: Have you seen The Plunge? Yet another wedding planning site for grooms has emerged, and this one is pretty flashy compared to its peers. Unlike most wedding sites geared toward dudes, this one has actual written content that goes beyond a hundred incarnations of “Stand back, and shut up.” Then again, a lot of that content reads like this:

There’s a new piece of furniture in your bedroom: a stack of magazines, books, and articles that could double as a side-table. It’s your fiancée’s “wedding porn.” And unlike actual porn, this isn’t harmless. It’s putting ideas in her head. Poisonous ideas. Thoughts about how you, as a groom, should be “behaving.” This is where it gets dangerous.

A few things irk me about this snippet from one of The Plunge’s intro pages. First, I don’t buy into the idea that the WIC can turn regular chicks into screaming harpies. A true bridezilla was probably already kind of a bitch, and no magazine or book is going to turn a regular chick into a bitch. Second, it stands to reason that there are behavioral (and dress and etiquette) guidelines for weddings, the same way there are behavior guidelines for any party. It’s a formal function, jeez. If it’s mantime to complain about wedding planning, can we at least get some fresh and original complaints?

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• As I write this, I’m engaged in helping a friend plan her upcoming wedding. My job, simply put, is to find inspiration — links to wedding gowns for tall girls, pictures of backyard barbecue receptions that are rustic chic, and everything else related to nuptials. In fulfilling my responsibilities, I came across Emmaline Bride, which is more of a portal than an actual shop.
  

  Whether you’re looking for bridal accessories, wedding shoes, stationery, or your “something blue,” there are links to featured Etsy sellers who can provide you with exactly what you want. Well, sometimes. Currently, Emmaline Bride is suffering from a noticeable lack of links in certain categories. I’m hoping that spreading the word will encourage Etsy sellers who cater to brides and their bridesmaids to get on board because it’s such a clever idea.

• It’s no secret that I love answering reader questions — so keep sending them my way whether you want me to post them or not — but I’m not the only one! If you have a question about shopping for wedding gowns or there’s something you’ve always wanted to know about the inner workings of Kleinfeld (featured on TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress

) you can call 888-593-7377 (that’s 888-59-DRESS) to leave your questions for Randy, Kleinfeld’s Fashion Director, and Nicole, Director of Sales.

 They’ll answer your questions via audio responses that will appear on TLC’s web site.

I’ve been a bridesmaid three times. Four, if you count the time I was nabbed at literally a minutes’ notice to attend the bride in a spur-of-the-moment vow reaffirmation in the middle of an historical re-enactment.

Back when I was doing this, the job was pretty easy. Basically, it consisted of: showing up on time to wedding-related functions, paying for and wearing the outfit the bride chose without complaint, smiling on the big day, and reassuring the bride after her return from the honeymoon that the wedding had been lovely whether it was or not. If the bride had any little projects that needed doing, she might or might not ask for help with them, but you were free to say you hadn’t the time or really stank at what she’d asked, but would be willing to help out with another aspect. The MOH had the additional requirements of holding any shower or bachelorette bash (usually one or the other, and usually pretty low-key), and witnessing the marriage license.

These days, one keeps hearing more and more about brides who expect more and more of their bridesmaids. So I decided to use my Google Fu and see what’s expected of a bridesmaid these days.

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When you think of your wedding, chances are you can see a pretty good idea of the clothes you want to wear, whom you want to stand at your side, whether the crowd is large or small…but where do you see it happening?

For some of us, it’s easy to know where to go once we’ve said ‘yes’ because we’ve dreamed of it all our lives. Some couples are members of a particular church or religious community that will serve as the backdrop for their big day. Others have some very specific sort of location in mind. For me it was redwoods. I’m not even that outdoorsy a person, but when I was seven I went to my first non-church wedding. It was held in a redwood grove, and from that day forward I knew that was precisely what I wanted when I got married. A few years before Mr. Twistie and I tied the knot, my brother and his lady found a perfect spot for their wedding, which just happened to be a redwood grove with amenities. I knew it was where I would go when the time came. Others may have the luck that our own NtB had to have a piece of family property that meets their needs and desires, and even comes free.

Most brides and grooms, however, don’t have a convenient place all picked out in advance. They may not belong to a church – or even a religion. They haven’t seen the perfect place when a friend or family member chose it. The only property their families own between them are a double-wide and two small ranch houses on cramped lots that won’t hold the guest list.

So how do you pick a wedding venue when you don’t already have one in mind?

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