I was going to post a corpse bride or a zombie groom in honor of Halloween night, but the fabulous Toni found something far more frightening for me to post.
Agh! My eyes! Missy Quinn (16, she of the £100,000 wedding and £16,000 dress) is much scarier than anything I could have dredged up on such short notice.
Happy Halloween!
In last week’s discussion of cold feet, we talked about some of the ways one can cope with pre-wedding jitters and what happens when the wedding is called off. The presumption was that if one calls off a wedding, one does so as gracefully and as tactfully as possible. None of this runaway bride business, in other words.
But I guess that’s just us — we are rational and level-headed people, after all. Some people choose to operate on the other side of the spectrum, like the Japanese man who recently set fire to his wedding venue to avoid having to go through with the ceremony. In Tatsuhiko Kawata’s case, it wasn’t cold feet that wetted his ardour, but rather the fact that he already had a wife!
Kawata, 39, decided to burn down the Risonare resort hotel rather than get hitched in front of 80 guests. He reportedly told police: “I thought if I set a fire I wouldn’t have to go through with the wedding.”
Luckily, no one was hurt…physically, anyway. I’m sure that the bride-to-be and her family experienced some emotional distress upon learning that the groom-to-be would rather risk arson charges than say “I do.” Then there’s the whole ‘other wife’ thing. That probably stung a little, too.
Like I said, there’s a right way and a wrong way to tell your intended and your family that you want to call off the wedding. Kawata definitely chose the latter.
Although the length of the average engagement period hovers around 15 months, most couples spend between seven months to a year planning their weddings. That means that there’s a chance that those brides-to-be who are reading Manolo for the Brides are planning autumn weddings. Now I’d never suggest that someone tailor their wedding colors or wedding theme to the season, the notion does appeal to some people. In my next book, for example, my co-author and I describe a harvest-themed wedding that took place in, you guessed it, the fall.
Obviously, you can have a harvest-themed (or harvest colored) wedding without incorporating a lot of dead leaves and pumpkins — the Martha Stewart tablescape on the bottom left includes neither — but those are both viable options. I love the slightly quirky leaf and crystal bouquet from Creations, and it would make an easy DIY project if you locale supports deciduous trees.
Other ideas: Incorporate Autumn Splendor accessories into your wedding day look, string red and green apples into natural garlands, serve spice cake and apple cider in place of wedding cake and champagne, wear a gold wedding gown instead of the usual white dress, clothe your bridesmaids in a deep chocolate brown, give guests miniature caramel apples in lieu of more traditional favors, or carry a bouquet of flowers traditionally associated with autumn, like mums and helianthus.
If that sounds way too theme-y for you but you wouldn’t mind adding just a touch of fall flair to your wedding decor, pick one idea and treat it like a centerpiece, designing your color scheme around it.
Jeez, I’m all about the hate lately, and today’s edition of LOVE/HATE just adds fuel to the fire. Have you ever heard of “Brideorexia?” I just came across it for the first time. It’s just a made up word for the bad habits some brides-to-be adopt because they think they aren’t good enough, skinny enough, or attractive enough to get married. Ugh!
A study in Appetite found that 70% of engaged women were actively attempting to lose 20 or more pounds before their weddings. More than 20% of those women admitted to using extreme methods, like starvation diets, fasting, liquid diets, smoking, binging and purging, or laxatives (ewwww).
We conducted a descriptive cross-sectional survey to examine wedding-specific body weight ideals and weight management behaviors among women preparing for their wedding. The average bride-to-be was overweight according to clinical body mass index standards and idealized a significantly lower wedding weight.
I’m not anti-fitness or even anti-weightloss, but I’m talking about a movement and an industry built on insecurities. Just look at these titles…there’s The Wedding Workout, Bridal Bootcamp, Buff Brides, Diet and Fitness for Brides, and Body Sculpting for Brides. No, health is good, but what burns me is this idea that you have to be a size two to look hot (or glamorous or elegant or pretty) in your wedding gown. That your new spouse won’t think you’re a beautiful bride if you don’t drop a few before the wedding. That you don’t deserve to wear that dress unless you wear yourself down by dieting and over-exercising before the big day.
If that sounds like you, I just have one question for you. Are you nuts? Look at the solidly average-sized bride in the Stephanie James Couture dress above. You simply cannot tell me she, with all her curves and lady lumps and normal human bodily characteristics, is not hot stuff. I’d wager that if she was two or five or ten sizes bigger, she’d still be hot stuff!
What it comes down to in my mind is this: If you want to lose some weight in a safe and sane way, wonderful, but in the name of all that’s nuptial, don’t feel you have to lose weight to be a beautiful bride. And if you don’t want to lose any weight because you’re smokin’ hot as you are, that’s wonderful, too.
As always, I’m going to ask “What say you?” though I suspect most of you will agree with me.
Ever wonder why the Second Thoughts board at Indiebride is always jumping? It’s because a huge percentage of brides- and grooms-to-be deal with cold feet at least once before they tie the knot. Few people talk about it — and some won’t even admit to it — but all in all, “what the crap am I doing?!” moments are pretty common. I know that I and many of my friends asked ourselves if we were doing the right thing…and we all ended up married.
It’s important to remember that second thoughts and cold feet don’t necessarily mean that your marriage is doomed. Rather, it’s just a natural reaction to making what is ultimately a big life change. The thing about getting engaged is that it can be a whirlwind of lovey-dovey daydreams, excitement, shopping, and other nice stuff, which doesn’t leave you with much time to sit down and really mull over what getting married means. Cold feet can be the psyche’s way of forcing us to stop thinking about linen colors and start thinking about sharing a life with someone.
Overcoming Cold Feet
It was a brisk 30F this morning in Massachusetts’s north shore, so it was delightful to take another look at Twistie’s post on stuff for springtime weddings. I’m not ready to surrender to the cold just yet, so I thought I’d piggyback on her great post with a warm weather post of my own.
Of all the low-cost decorative items one can incorporate into reception accessories — and I’m talking about free things like autumn leaves or things one can buy at the grocery like in-season pineapples — lemons and limes are my favorite.
Surprisingly, lemons and limes won’t roll all over the place if you give them time to “settle,” making them a fun, summery place care delivery method. The couple who envisioned these citrus place cards had their wedding planner create the final product, but you could easily make this a pre-wedding weekend DIY project.
One thing about wedding planning that can be both fun and frustrating is the fact that when you get started on it, chances are it’s a different season from the one you’ll be marrying in. Mr. Twistie popped the question on a November night and we were eventually married on a June afternoon. There we were heading into the dreaded dark days of winter (well, as dark as they get in my part of California) and I was thinking about spring flowers and light cottons for my bridesmaids’ outfits.
While it can be a nice break from stormy weather to think about warmer times ahead, it’s sometimes difficult to find the specific materials and inspirations you need. And so I decided to warm up October with some stylish thoughts for those of you planning spring weddings.
I’m bringing you this week’s LOVE/HATE a day early because I’m feeling kind of peeved…which should be a big clue into how this edition is going to swing.
I was reading, as I often do in my spare time, articles about weddings and wedding planning when I came across this little gem:
Here is all a man needs to know about an actual wedding:
1. Sit down and shut up.
2. If it’s your own wedding, stand up and say “I do” at the appropriate time.
3. SIT DOWN and SHUT UP.
4. If it’s your daughter’s wedding, sign the checks.
HATE HATE HATE. I’m so sick of hearing that grooms-to-be are too stupid to plan a party and that brides-to-be are too crazed to let their fiancés have any opinions. I’ll be happy when this piece of common “wisdom” finally dies out. It’s happening, albeit slowly — as more and more couples pay for their own weddings, guys are definitely taking an increased interest in where their money is going. Dudes as a group are neither clueless nor “just scenery,” so isn’t it time to stop treating them as such?
Of course, that’s just my take on it. What say you?
As the spookiest day of the year draws closer, there are at least some brides- and grooms-to-be out there who are thinking about their 2010 Halloween weddings. If you’re one of them and you’re not looking to go into full-out witchy pumpkin overkill, you can still incorporate some of the season’s haunted fun into your event. It’s easy, for example, to make Halloween the focus of your favors without going overboard, because when it comes to bombonieres, silly can be good.
It’s All in the Packaging
Plain chocolates, candied almonds, loose tea, bath salts…no matter what you plan to give your guests, it will look more festive and fun in a Halloween-themed package. If you want something that’s easy and inexpensive, opt for tiny trick-or-treat bags. Craftier couples can try their hand at making gift boxes like these, made using supplies from Making Memories.
