Manolo for the Brides

Don’t like cake and, by extension, wedding cake? There’s always pie or pastries or chocolates or a sundae bar, candy buffet, and milk and cookies station. Cheese is considered a dessert by some, which means you wouldn’t be going out on a limb to offer a literal cheese cake. Or you could even skip dessert altogether with a sushi cake or a, um, pork pie cake.

That’s right, there be pork in them thar cakes.

“We are always looking to extend and improve our [product range] and hit upon the novel idea of a collection of giant-size celebration pork pies,” said Wilsons partner Andrew Green. “The pork pie wedding cakes, hand-crafted in our own in-house bakery, come in squares of ascending sizes of either seven, nine and eleven inches or five, seven and nine inches. They can even be personalised to include names, date and a suitable message.”

If you and your spouse-to-be absolutely cannot get enough piggy in your diet or your wedding, the Wilsons pork pie cake is one way to really load up on swine!

Remember dyeable shoes for bridesmaids? I can recall taking white ballet flats from somewhere like Payless to a shoe shop to have them dyed to match exactly the color of my junior bridesmaid dress, way back when in the 80s. Now that was a look. Today the rules are more lax when it comes to the feet of the bridesmaid. Some brides want their bridesmaids’ shoes to match (not the dresses, just each other) while others are happy if their bridesmaids’ shoes are appropriate to the event, color and style be damned.

Me? I just wanted my bridesmaids to show up with shoes, which shouldn’t seem at all odd when you consider how much trouble I had getting them to buy their dresses. Shoes? Please just wear them and we’ll call it even.

Personally, I like matching bridesmaids’ shoes and mismatched bridesmaids’ shoes. It all depends on the dresses and the whims of the bride. What you don’t want is one bridesmaid wearing chunky black platform heels and another bridesmaid in bright yellow ballet flats, with a third bridesmaid sporting bridesmaid sneakers that have been bedazzled all the hell. You wouldn’t want that last one regardless, I’m sure.

Coordination is good when it comes to mismatched bridesmaids’ shoes, so let your gals know they should all be on the same page if you’ve decided to let them do their own thing where footwear is concerned. Perhaps go one step further and dictate a kind of shoe, like ’strappy sandals’ or ‘peep-toe pumps,’ or a color or color family. To conclude, almost anything goes, but a little coordination goes a long way.

What do you think?

Quite some time ago now, I wrote an open letter to wedding gown designers on the subject of why they refused to ever design sleeves. It was a popular article at the time, and it still gets a comment every now and again. It got one the other day that I have decided to make its own post. Here’s what Jennifer had to say:

I’m so glad I found this article!I was googling because I am thinking of making silk wedding dresses next year,(I have school to do right now)and wanted to know what woman are looking for.Almost all the wedding dresses I have looked at ARE strapless,or have plunging necklines,ect.Vintage dresses are great,but most of them are smaller sizes,so that can be a problem for a lot of women.If anyone would like to email me with ideas or anything theyd like to say about wedding dresses,they can at:jennystreasuresforu@gmail.com.I also make handmade jewelry,spin crochet,and knit,so you can check out my website:www.JennysTreasuresForU.etsy.com,if you’d like.If I were to sell wedding dresses on etsy(where you could return most dress if needed),would a seperate shop be better just for the dresses?Thank you!

So, folks, let’s help out a budding wedding gown designer. Let her know what you think about sleeves, butt bows, mermaid lines, crinolines, Etsy as a source for wedding gowns, prices vs quality…anything you have to say about what you love or hate or find confusing about wedding gowns.

It strikes me that it’s been a good long while since we’ve talked in more than the most general terms about thank you notes here at Manolo for the Brides.

Now stop all that groaning! It’s really not as bad as you might think. Even if you haven’t written a thank you note since your mother forced you to send a formal note of thanks to your grandmother for that nice check she sent for your high school graduation, you still have an idea of the basic form. Besides, chances are you really are grateful to a lot of people. Thank you notes are a great way to let them know that.

Still, there are some techniques to make the thank you writing process smoother, simpler, and more rewarding for everyone involved. Here are a few ways to make sure it doesn’t turn into the burden people tend to assume it will be.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tweeting at the wedding reception is one thing… tweeting from the altar is another. That’s what Dana Hanna (aka TheSoftwareJedi) did at his wedding to Tracy Page.

Here’s what he wrote after saying his I dos: “Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride. #weddingday”

As you can imagine, he caught some flak for calling a time out to text. In response to criticism, Hanna posted a new tweet: “To all the criticizers of my video out there questioning my sanity: You don’t get it. I was having fun at MY wedding! Loosen up, have fun!”

True, and the bride didn’t seem to mind. She even updated her own status when Hanna handed her a second phone after she herself asked for it. So if you’re thinking of updating your Twitter or Facebook accounts in the middle of your wedding ceremony, well, I can’t stop you. Just make sure that your officiant is in on it and that your spouse-to-be is cool with it, lest you find that he or she has changed their Facebook relationship status from ‘Married’ to ‘It’s complicated’.

So before I tell you what I think of this week’s LOVE/HATE, I have a confession to make. I must confess that I’ve never been a huge fan of sweetheart tables at wedding receptions. Especially when they’re raised on a platform, surrounded by an archway of balloons or flowers, or flocked by absolutely huge wicker chairs that are not in keeping with the rest of the reception decor. I would never in a million years suggest that a bride and groom who wanted to sit apart not do it, but I think that sweetheart tables are a little silly. You don’t need a sweetheart table, however, to set the bride and groom apart.

Hmmmm… I’m torn. On one hand, these signs from The Back Porche Shoppe are cute. I like the distressed look, good for a rustic-y country wedding. And even though everyone at that wedding presumably can pick the bride and groom out of the crowd, it’s nice to set the happy couple’s chairs apart from those of the hoi polloi. On the other hand, just what does one *do* with a bride sign and a groom sign months or years after the wedding? Much more useful, I should think, would be Mr. and Mrs. signs (also sold by The Back Porch Shoppe), which could hang in one’s living room before hanging in one’s foyer before hanging over one’s workbench in the garage before being put on a table at a yard sale without selling before eventually being tossed out with the trash or given away on Freecycle.

What say you?

After a lengthy debate, the New York State Senate voted 38-24 against a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. The Marriage Equality Act was finally brought to the floor for an up or down vote today after overcoming legislative roadblocks from opponents. During the emotional debate, one of the bill’s sponsors, State Senator Thomas K. Duane of Manhattan, who is gay, said, “This legislation would merely provide me and tens of thousands of other New Yorkers with equal rights in New York State. It would make me equal in every way to everyone else in this chamber.”

My mom is a New Yorker and she’s been waiting for a really long time to marry her partner, so this just really really really gets my goat.

The eco-friendly wedding dresses of yesteryear were naught more than organic hemp silk sacks, sometimes embellished with a sash of peace silk colored with vegetable dyes. Or at least that’s the way they looked to me, since the companies and designers producing them seldom did much in the way of fitting them to the bridal models they used. Oh, how times have changed.

Check out the Natural Bridal Collection by Morgan Boszilkov on her web site and in her her Etsy store. I know that tight-fitting mini wedding dresses aren’t everyone’s thing — and Lord knows I wouldn’t wear one — but I’m rather fond of Boszilkov’s hemp silk Pixie dress.

All of Boszilkov’s wedding dresses and bridal accessories are handcrafted using luxurious and sustainable fabrics, and 5% of all her profits support environmental charities. I particularly like that some of her wedding dresses are convertible in the sense that the lower part of the skirts are detachable. It’s a great option for the bride who wants a separate reception dress but can’t really afford it, and makes it more likely that she’ll wear her wedding dress again in the future.

I appreciate versatility. I really do. I like when the brains behind wedding dress collections give us both short sleeves and long, body-hugging silhouettes and big poufy gowns, and hemlines that are all over the map. But really, what is up with the wedding fashion house Justin Alexander? How can the same name that gave us this…

…also give us what looks to be a white cocktail mini-dress with chicken feathers randomly glued on?

Did they steal the design from the Ice Capades, or what?

(But seriously, don’t let that horrorshow above stop you from checking out PURE by Justin Alexander. It combines beautiful organic silk and cotton fabrics with natural embellishments like freshwater pearls and wood beads to create a line of eco-friendly — and 99% biodegradable, huh — wedding dresses that are just divine, especially for the destination bride. Note: Neither of the above wedding dresses are from the PURE collection.)