I really, really, really wish I had a photo to go with this, but the only one I’ve seen is mucho tiny. But I had to share this anyway! According to a report published in Ynetnews, a 41-year-old millionaire from London recently married a 35-year-old dolphin in a traditional wedding ceremony. Um, as traditional as it could get, anyhow. Ynetnews reported:

The groom, a resident of the Eilat dolphin reef, met Tendler 15 years ago, when she first visited the resort. The British rock concert producer took a liking to the dolphin and has made a habit of traveling to Eilat two or three times a year and spending time with her underwater sweetheart.

And so on Wednesday afternoon, the thrilled bride, wearing a white dress, walked down the dock before hundreds of astounded visitors and kneeled down before her groom, who was waiting in the water.

Cindy, escorted by his fellow best-men dolphins, swam over to Tendler and she hugged him, whispered sweet nothings in his ear, and kissed him in front of the cheering crowd.

After the ceremony was sealed with some mackerels, Tendler was tossed into the water by her friends so that she could swim with her new husband.

Alrighty then…

Ah, the winter wedding and the holiday wedding. Pros: It’s much easier to remember your anniversary when your wedding date corresponds with Christmas, the first day of Hanukkah, New Year’s Day, or the onset of winter. Cons: Your loved ones are far more likely to combine your anniversary and its corresponding holiday when giving gifts.

But how to decorate for a holiday wedding without becoming too dependent on holiday decor? How to wear one’s winter wedding dress without freezing to death? How to cope with a holiday wedding while also stressing over gifts?

The first step is to ask yourself why you’re planning a theme wedding in the first place. Do you love snowflakes falling or building snowmen? Do you have fond memories of leaving cookies for Santa as a young child? Does the sparkle of the Hanukkah lights make you teary eyed each year? Consider your treasured memories when choosing wedding reception decor, invitations, favors, and so on. BellaOnline recommends:

Send wedding invitations of winter scenes (snowflakes, snowmen, a snow lodge, sleigh rides, snowy mountains). Decorate your ceremony venue using pine, ice, snow and seasonal flowers…Wedding favors can include a snowflake or icicle ornament, snow globes with winter scenes, personalized tins of hot cocoa or cookies, a personalized bottle of apple cider or egg nog, maybe even tins of your favorite cookie mix or holiday tea or coffee blend….icicle candy, sugar cookies, a gift certificate for a linen store (white sales are abundant in January!), tea lights, and a camera to capture New Year’s Eve memories they spend with you.

As for preventing frostbite on one’s bare arms, consider the oft forgotten wedding cloak. If you want to feel like a princess on your special day, this garment can really do the trick. Plus, it’ll keep you toasty as you dash between the car and the church or the car and the hall or the car or the office of the justice of the peace!

Finally, the holiday season can be stressful enough without dealing with wedding stress on top of it all! American Bridal offers some great winter wedding and holiday wedding tips, including:

Let someone else deck the halls for you. Take advantage of venues already decorated for the holidays. If you’re going for a Christmas decor, you’ll save big on flowers and decorations. Some couples were able to get by with just bouquets for the wedding party. Also look for reception halls with fireplaces and other cozy features.

Take advantage of foods, desserts, decorations and music that come around only at this time of year. Serve festive cocktails like spiced cider, spiked eggnog and hot chocolate with Bailey’s. From turkey and ham with cranberry sauce to roast goose and Yorkshire pudding, go the whole nine yards with your reception feast. Instead of a wedding cake, consider the traditional wedding cake: an iced fruit cake. Ask your musicians to add some romantic holiday songs, such as “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Let It Snow” to their repertoire. For a New Year’s Eve wedding, give guests top hats and tiaras, and pass out flutes of champagne for the big countdown.

All in all, a holiday wedding or winter wedding can be great fun… however, when you’re planning a theme wedding, remember that your guests may be out of town visiting family or simply want to spend the holidays sitting in front of a cozy fire. Not getting ready for yet another huge gifty party.

They say that inside every little girl is a future bride, but how early is too early to start planning a wedding? I found this game while browsing for interesting wedding planning software:

Apparently, My Fantasy Wedding is appropriate for girls ages six to eleven. Little tykes can plan every aspect of their fantasy weddings, from the wedding dress to the ceremony venue location to reception music. They can even design a fantasy groom… which is more than us real-life girls get to do.

But really. Do little girls need to spend their precious youth doing all the things – like tasting endless wedding cakes and auditioning wedding florists – that years later will cause them to develop facial tics? Personally, I think this game is marketed toward children, but is actually intended for lovelorn adults like me who fear they will never get to squeeze into that perfect wedding dress. A guilty pleasure, indeed!

For the bride that really, really, really wants to make a statement at her wedding, and that statement is, “My wedding dress cost more than most of my guests will earn in a lifetime,” Japanese designer Keiji Tagawa has created a dress aptly named “Platinum White.”

This $1.7 million dress is made of 1,250 platinum beads along with more than 3,000 other jewels including pearls, aquamarines, moonstones and crystals. Precious metal and semi-precious stones are woven together to create images of cherry blossom trees and roses.

According to a Yahoo News story about the heavily blinged dress,

The gown, which for now will go on display rather than down the aisle, was designed on behalf of the Tokyo office of Platinum Guild International, a producers group, at a time that platinum is trading at 25-year highs.

Bling bling, indeed.

One of the Internet friends of the Manolo pointed out this picture of a gown that I can only surmise falls under the catagory of showgirl chic. I don’t know who these people are and what would inspire a woman to get married in a get-up that could come apart with one determined tug.

Reader Snopes Fiend found the explanation on Snopes:

the photographs displayed above are genuine and depict an actual Russian wedding. The bride is said to be a professional belly dancer (hence the unusual attire) named Anna Atamanchuk from St. Petersburg.

But, since I always like a truly wacky story to go with my picture, I will, as an aside, a story from the career of New England’s self-proclaimed most popular justice of the peace/clergyman, the Honorable Reverend Dennis James Robinson:

The groom came to the wedding with a 45-motorcycle escort and the bride, who was an exotic dancer, came with a 200-motorcycle escort. She, however, sat in a sidecar with her rather racy wedding dress on. Her veil was sticking up straight in the air pulling up to the chapel. When I asked her if she took this man to be her husband, she immediately pulled on this zip away or pull away dress like she was going to do her act, and she said: “Yes I do baby”. No one was taken aback considering their reputations, but I told her to put the dress back on so I could finish the ceremony. She had planned on it anyway, but wanted a little bit of shock value. All I could do was put my hand over my heart like Fred Sanford used to do having one of his patented heart attacks.

A London knitting group recently organized what I imagine to be the first ever all-knit wedding. They solicited the help of the knitting public, asking knitters everywhere to knit cakes, candlesticks, finger sandwhiches, and the bridal bouquet. Even the groom was decked out in yarny creations, including an ubertall top hat.

Check out the happy couple:

The cake:

And the snacks:

And they say planning the wedding is stressful! This blushing bride apparently needed a snort before she could calm down long enough to pose for photos. After seeing how much pressure many weddings put on the poor bride, I can’t say I blame her.