I don’t know about you guys, but I’m seriously starting to think about springing plots… er… plans for a vow reaffirmation on Mr. Twistie if I can figure out a way to fit this place into the budget for it.

1. Have a backup plan. Weather is unpredictable. Even in areas where it’s relatively predictable, the unexpected happens. Whether your worry is rain, wind, or lightning, have a way to hold the wedding if the weather doesn’t want to co-operate. The most important thing is that you get married. Getting married where you really want to is the icing on the wedding cake.

2. Protect your guests – and yourself! Just think, it’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining almost as brightly as your smile. Everyone is festively dressed. Your guests are having a wonderful time… until they realize they are slowly turning lobster red. Consider providing a table with sun screen, wide-brimmed hats, fans and maybe a couple of fun parasols to use during the day. A few pairs of dollar store sunglasses would round it out nicely. Ask a bridesmaid to remind you to sun screen up periodically through the day. If your site has no shade, think about a tent or large sun shade, too.

3. Make sure there are adequate bathroom facilities. If there aren’t enough (or any) flush toilets, hire a couple port-o-potties to make sure that when people have gotta go, they have somewhere to do it.

4. Seriously consider the space before you decide on a train for your gown. If your outdoor wedding space is paved in some way and well kept up, a train will be fine, especially if you have an aisle runner. But I will never forget the sight of my sister-in-law’s train and hem filled with dirt, twigs, dead leaves, and other assorted gunk well before the end of the reception. When Mr. Twistie and I chose the same clearing in the woods to marry in, I had my gown made to just hit the tops of my shoes.

5. Double check your food prep facilities before hiring a caterer or setting a DIY menu. If there’s no kitchen on site, whoever is doing the food will need to consider that in their plans. Don’t be afraid to go in the direction of picnic foods or barbeque. After all, you’re outside! Why get fussy with food? Oh, and don’t go for buttercream on the cake if you can’t keep it refrigerated before the reception. It will melt.

6. If you plan to keep partying after dark, make sure the site can provide the light. One downside to most outdoor sites is that there’s limited or non-existent electricity. Fire code regulations may or may not allow candles, tiki torches, or other open flames. Make sure you know what you can and cannot do before you choose to hold a sunset ceremony.

7. Keep your guests hydrated. Sun and even wind can dehydrate your guests surprisingly quickly. That can lead to disaster in a hurry. Make sure you have plenty of non-alcoholic drink options available (liquor hits a lot harder and quicker in a dehydrated body, and it further dehydrates the drinker to boot). Make them attractive. Big glass jugs of lemonade, ice water, or agua fresca are simple and inexpensive to provide and do the job nicely. It’s also a good idea if you expect the weather to be particularly hot to provide some salty nibbles, because you don’t want any guests losing too much sodium, either. A bowl of salted nuts, a few crackers, or a couple appetizers with ham or salty cheese should do the trick nicely.

8. Make sure people have somewhere to sit. Some sites come provided with chairs, others do not. If your site is one of the latter, you’ll have to hire chairs and figure out how best to place them.

9. If the site is grassy, sandy, or paved in an uneven way, consider flats and ask your guests to do the same. Heels – particularly spikey ones – can be horrifically impractical on these surfaces. If you do decide to go with a heel, consider a wedge. Pass the word to guests via word of mouth, your wedding website, or a small notation somewhere in the invitation inserts.

10. Consider live music. A string quartet, a strolling mandolin player, a classical guitarist, or a lively Irish jig band will be right at home outside. A DJ might need extra equipment to make the music happen (see #6 in re: electricity). If you do pick a DJ, make sure (s)he knows what is and isn’t available on site in terms of electrical outlets.

Some of the best weddings I’ve ever been to have been held outdoors. With a little care and consideration of the realities of the situation, yours can be wonderful, too.
via

Full disclosure: I made a wedding website for myself and The Beard, and I wish I could link to it but it’s nowhere to be found. We tossed up a few pics, our non-registry info, directions, and info about hotels, and then we made up a very silly how-we-met story that had people raising their eyebrows. We did not post pictures of ourselves from infancy or give lengthy bios of our wedding party or way too much personal information a la those wacky Christmas letters that let one and all know that Jimmy won his school spelling bee championship!

Would Double X’s Noreen Malone have approved of our wedding website? Doubtful, considering she simply cannot stand the things.

My roommate and I spent a solid hour on the couch one evening discussing a wedding Web site we’d been sent. The people getting married were strangers, but that didn’t stop me from forwarding it to a friend or two I thought might get a kick out of it. In the months preceding their marriage you can watch the Flash slide show that explains how [Jane and Tim] met while rooting for opposing teams during a Yankees-Red Sox game as many times as you want. But that’s only if you tire of the video showing Jane and Tim lovingly washing their dog, Mr. Snuffles.

Jane and Tim have chosen to color their special story various shades of soft green, with tan accents of faux ribbons, shadowed floral flourishes, and a highly stylized fake script font. The vibe is perhaps meant to be “classy,” but it’s very hard to achieve an understated aesthetic when the message you most want to telegraph is LOOK AT ME. The main page features a black-and-white shot of Tim adoring Jane while she reciprocates with the upturned chin angle that telegraphs true, moony love, taken during the couple’s (extensive) engagement photo shoot. Visitors can choose one of several unrecognizable soft-rock songs while they browse (but no mute button option). There are a grand total of 651 pictures featured—from baby photos to Solo-cup-filled college dorm-room shots to shots of their four—count ‘em—engagement parties.

Instead of being tasteful, utilitarian affairs, these sites inevitably turn into showcases for unbridled narcissism—and open the couple up to a great deal of mockery from friends and strangers alike.

Do you agree? Have you created your own wedding website or paid someone to create it for you? As for my opinion, I think they can be a tad annoying when overdone — autoplay music doesn’t belong anywhere, and I do hope that if I’m attending your wedding I at least have some notion of how you and your intended met — and there are plenty of other ways to find out where a venue is… hello, Google Maps! Still, if your wedding website sucks (which I’m sure none of yours do, natch) then all I have to do is close Firefox and never visit your URL again.

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?

The Plunge seems to feature two kinds of articles — the usual ‘this is what grooms need to do or not to do to help brides plan weddings’ and ‘this is how you can manipulate your fiancee/future in-laws to get what you want.’ Need examples of the latter? Here are three of the pearls of wisdom one can find on The Plunge:

Is getting a lapdance cheating? Let’s look at it from your fiancée’s perspective. A hot, skinny, naked, slutty woman is grinding her crotch against your erection, making you pant with lust, and rubbing her nipples all over your body. If this was some random girl at a bar, she’d have every right to dump you right then and there. The counter-argument: this is not some random girl in a bar. It’s a controlled act in a controlled environment—and the stripper doesn’t want to screw you, she just wants to screw you out of another $100.

[Admit you cheated?] Are you out of your goddamn mind? This is the happiest day of your fiancée’s life, and you want to slaughter it with a Truth Bomb? Never drop the T-Bomb. It’s selfish; it unburdens your guilt and it hurts her forever. Your grim duty is to carry this secret to your grave. Telling her would be like telling a four-year old on Christmas morning that there’s no Santa. Or telling a nun, on her deathbed, that there’s no God. What’s done is done.

Tell her you’ll be happy to [change your last name to hers] as soon as you-the groom-gets pregnant and squirts out the first baby. Look. Gender roles exist. This isn’t your fault and it isn’t her fault. If you adopt her name, not only will you be the laughingstock of all your buddies for the rest of your life, but even her friends will think it’s weird. Have some backbone.”

Ugh. I was pretty psyched to see that a new site for grooms was up and running since they seem to go under so quickly (and one wonders how long The Plunge will last), but yeah, ugh. As for the lapdance thing, whatever. Some people are cool with it. But the decision to change a name reduced to whether or not your buddies will snicker? Lame. Robbing your fiancee of the choice to call off the wedding because you’re a cheater? Super uncool.

I’ll leave it up to you whether you want to send your intended a link to The Plunge. Had it existed in 2007, I would have shown it to The Beard and we would have had a good laugh about it. Heck, I’ll show it to him now and we can have a good laugh about it. Is it a good wedding planning site? Maybe I’ll leave it at “Kind of?” It could go a long way toward teaching nuptial novices about weddings, but it’s awfully mean spirited.

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.

Apparently, these days popping the question is a huge deal. No, I haven’t changed subjects to marriage proposals. I’m talking about the bride popping the question to her prospective bridesmaids. There are now entire lines of specialized…doohickies to let your bridesmaids know that being asked is an Important Honor. Once upon a time, the question was enough to make it clear, but now there are special greeting cards; cookies; and even little chocolate headless, armless bridesmaids in tissue ‘gowns’ to help get the point across. I don’t know. The cards and cookies…maybe if the bride runs to being tongue-tied or nervous for some reason or is Madeline Bassett, but those chocolate mannequin ones disturb me.

And now that the job takes so much effort, there are websites designed to teach you what’s expected of you and how to be the bestest ever bridesmaid in the world.

According to Bridesmaid 101, your duties include not just showing up sober and zipping your lip about being stuffed into a lime green strapless sausage casing with dyed-to-match shoes, but also: driving the bride around to potential sites; helping her order decorations and somehow using your special powers to make them arrive on time; herding other, more unruly bridesmaids to be where they belong; and even helping the bride register because after all, most grooms have no interest in that. Oh, and you should also act as an usher, apparently. And sign the marriage license as a witness. My particular favorite piece of advice on what a bridesmaid should be doing during the wedding, though, has to be this one:

Make sure to take lots of pictures at the reception, wedding procession and aftarwards. Many forget to take pictures and the bride and groom will appreciate them!

Because there’s nothing like a procession of six women in matching gowns marching down the aisle snapping cameras as they go to make the event extra klassy.

The site tells us on another page (one of expenses a bridesmaid can expect to incur) that the bridesmaids must divvy up the price of the bride getting her hair done. I have no clue where this is the case, but it’s making me think I could have strongarmed five women into giving me money and then lied about having a pro in to do my locks. I am now kicking my own backside at missing this fundraising opportunity. Then again, knowing the fierce band I had attending me, I probably would have gotten said backside kicked a lot harder by them. One was wearing boots.

Bridesmaids are also (according to this site) responsible for things like airfare to the bachelorette party. Airfare? Whose airfare? Where is this party being held? I can see a rare circumstance where that might be an issue, but it seems like it would hardly be common enough to be mentioned so casually.

Of course, the MOH has all these duties and more. She must: attend all tastings, act as go-between for the bride and groom on the big day before the ceremony, inspect the sites to see all is in order, give a toast, sign the license (along, apparently, with all the other bridesmaids), and hold the money bag after (shudder) the money dance to make sure nobody steals it.

I felt much better after I headed over to BridesmaidAid. They have a sassy FAQ that’s a lot more down to earth in its expectations of a bridesmaid. Here’s their full list of the typical costs a bridesmaid should budget for:

1. Gifts: engagement, shower, wedding.
2. All of your travel expenses.
3. The bridesmaid dress and any alterations.
4. Shoes and having them dyed to match the dress.
5. Stockings, underwear, bras, etc. . . .
6. Having your hair and nails done.

They do tell you it can get mighty pricey, but I don’t see the bride’s hair on that list, and that makes it infinitely better in my not so humble opinion. In general, I found it to be far the superior site. Not only does it have much better, more practical advice much more in keeping with honest to goodness etiquette and real world circumstances (no bridesmaids acting as photographers down the aisle, for instance), it also delivers the advice in a sassy, snarky tone that kept me laughing along the way.

They even have a section for bridesmaid horror stories. If you find yourself feeling put upon or mistreated by your bride, read a few of these. You may find your woes are not as great as those faced by others…or you may find that you can top some of the stories and now have somewhere to share your tale of misery. Oh, and every fifty stories they give the author a free BridesmaidAid kit filled with useful emergency items that come in handy at many a wedding.

In general, though, you don’t really need a book or a website to tell you what to do. Just show up on time to the functions required, buy the outfit the bride wants you to wear (and that includes shutting up and getting something on your own if she tells you she doesn’t want a matching chorus line behind her), make yourself as available as you reasonably can to help out with small tasks like addressing envelopes or acting as a sounding board, and smile a lot at the wedding. Let your friend know you’re happy for her. If you do that, you’re covering your duties not only adequately, but well.

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?

The first place to start is your own vision for the day. Think about things like the time of day, time of year, and the area where you want to get married. If, for instance, you plan to marry in Los Angeles on an April afternoon, that’s going to be very different from marrying in New York on a November night. Outdoor venues are usually not a good idea in winter. Daytime weddings are typically a bit more casual than evening ones. If you see yourself in a gown with a hoopskirt and cathedral train, the beach is simply not the place to wear that. If you intend to wear a knee-length eyelet dress and bare feet, chances are a cathedral wedding is not for you.

Once you know what the weather is most likely to be like, how formal an affair you’re throwing, and the approximate size of the guest list and wedding party, you can start narrowing it down further by asking friends who have married in the last few years what their venues were like to deal with.

You may think that charming winery up the road is the perfect place to have your wedding, but if your cousin found that every time she turned around another fee was tacked onto the price she had originally agreed to, you might want to rethink using it. If another pretty site comes complete with a wedding day coordinator from the bowels of Hell who delights in bullying brides, you’d want to avoid that. If a slightly less than perfect place is praised to the skies by your three best buddies as having treated them wonderfully at a budget price, you might want to at least consider whether it can fit your needs, after all.

If you don’t get glowing (or at least reasonably positive) reviews for anyplace you like, it’s time to hit the pavement…or the Yellow Pages. Do a Google search for wedding venues in your chosen area. Ask on bridal boards whether anyone has suggestions. Don’t be afraid to be creative, too. Some places may not advertise themselves as wedding venues, per se, but will hold functions. If the place is just what you’re looking for, it can’t hurt to ask if a wedding is okay with them.

Once you have a place in mind and know it can accomodate weddings you’re all set, right?

Wrong.

Before you sign on the dotted line, there are questions you need to ask. Make sure you can live with the answers to these questions:

What restrictions are there on decorations? Many outdoor or historic venues don’t allow open flames. If you’ve been dreaming of a candlelight ceremony, this could seriously cramp your style. Other things that may be verboten in many sites include certain methods of hanging decorations, real flower petals that may stain carpets or cause slip and fall accidents…really, there are a lot of things that may not be allowed depending on the insurance liability, cost of replacement, and personal quirks of the site.

Are there any vendors I am required to work with through this site? Some places have their own in-house catering. Others work exclusively with a particular florist or bakery. Make sure you know who this person is and whether or not you like his/her work before you sign the contract for the site. After all, if you and most of your wedding party are vegan, you don’t want to be stuck working with a caterer who specializes in huge slabs o’ meat…and if your entire famiy consists of carnivores, you won’t be able to satisfy them with the best vegetarian chef in the world. If the site is gorgeous, can you live with flowers that are nothing like you’d always dreamed of? If the on site wedding coordinator has a personality that grates on you, is that something you really want to deal with on your wedding day?

What services/amenities are included in the basic price? The price sounds like a basement bargain…but does it include anything beyond the rental of the bare space? If chairs, tablecloths, china and silverware, etc. are all extra, you’d better add that up before you decide whether to sign on the dotted line. If these things aren’t included, are you required to get them from the site? Or can you search for your own bargains elsewhere?

How accessible is the site? If anyone on your guest list is disabled or too frail to deal with a lot of stairs, you need to consider whether they’ll be able to attend a wedding at this venue. If your grandmother can’t navigate her way to the ceremony, you might want to rethink where you hold it.

What sort of ameities are available to the wedding party and guests? Are there enough bathroom facilities on site? Are they well-maintained? Is there a place where the bridal party can prepare for the ceremony? Is there adequate parking?

How much time can we have for set up? Tear down? Wedding decorations don’t just magically appear. They have to be set up. At the end of the day, they have to be removed and cleaned up. You need to know if the time allowed will be adequate to your needs.

In case of any dispute, how do we resolve it? Any reputable site should have a process in place for resolving any possible disputes over missing services on their side, damage to the site on yours, etc. Make sure you know what that process is. Chances are that neither side will need to use it, but it’s good to know what the next step is in case you need it.

How much is the initial deposit? What is the payment schedule? What is the cancellation policy? If you don’t know when the money is due, you can’t plan for payment. Some places will want the full fee up front, others will have scheduled payment plans, still others want a deposit up front and the balance sometime in the week or so before the wedding. Don’t assume before you check. Different places also have different policies about how to handle cancellations. Cancellation is probably the last thing on your mind right now, but there are a dozen reasons having nothing to do with your relationship with your fiance that could result in the wedding being postponed or moved. Be sure you know how much of your deposit you’ll get back if that happens.

The right place is a big part of making a great celebration. Make sure your wedding venue reflects your style and your priorities. But make very sure you’ve got the important questions answered before you say ‘I do’ to the place.