Manolo for the Brides

According to Wikipedia, rhinestones were originally rock crystals gathered from the river Rhine. In 1775, however, the Alsatian jeweller Georg Friedrich Strass decided to try coating the lower side of cut glass with metal powder, and thus the modern rhinestone was born.

On one hand, there’s a part of my brain that says “rhinestones are crazy tacky gaudy.” On the other hand, as The Beard just said to me while looking at crazy vintage jewelry on Etsy, “the right ones are gaudy in a good way.” I’ll admit to having a few tiaras and largish rhinestone necklaces that I only ever wear around the house (usually on my birthday). I didn’t, however, wear rhinestones on my wedding day because they just seemed like a little too much.

Here are six examples of rhinestone jewelry currently being sold by the following Etsy sellers: kimdep, Lulusplendor, BelleNouvelleDesigns, and PenelliBelle. I think they’re all lovely, though I don’t know that I’d have the chutzpah to wear them to drop off my overdue library books or visit with the OB/GYN. The supermarket, maybe. My friend’s post-NYE brunch? Definitely.

What say you? Faux diamonds and rubies and emeralds and sapphires… totally tacky? All in good fun? Inappropriate for brides? Perfect for weddings? Let’s hear it!

In lieu of the usual Thursday LOVE/HATE (which I will post tomorrow), I wanted to share the results of American Bridal’s 2008 wedding survey. What I’m most curious about is how you, our loyal readers, measure up to the “average bride,” at least insofar as the average bride planning the average wedding saw fit to participate in a survey posted by an online wedding favor shop. Here are the results:

90% are doing the planning themselves, not hiring a professional wedding planner
25% are planning a wedding on a budget of less than $10,000
25% have wedding budgets over $25,001
50% fall somewhere in between, with 38% reporting in the range of $10,001 to $20,000
25% are having the wedding reception at a hotel
10% have opted to host their nuptials at a country club
6% of couples selected a destination wedding
55% reported they are finding another type of venue to rent for the wedding ceremony/reception
48% will have between 5 to 8 bridesmaids and groomsmen
37% of respondents have 9 or more
40% report they will have a wedding guest count of more than 200
14% say their total guest count is under 100
34% are inviting 100 to 150 guests
68% said they’ve lowered their wedding budgets by $1,000 or less
46% of respondents said they would not make changes to their budgets in the areas of music, location, reception style, or the wedding dress

As far as my own 2007 wedding planning experience measured up, I did indeed plan my own ceremony and reception from start to finish. My wedding budget fell somewhere in between $10,001 and $20,000… much closer to the $10 end of the spectrum. The Beard and I found a venue that was not a hotel or country club, though I had only four attendants total (bridesmaids and groomsmen). We invited about 100 guests to the wedding, and I think somewhere around 80 actually showed. Finally, we made plenty of budget-related changes to almost every aspect of the wedding, and this was before news outlets started poo-poo’ing the economy.

How about you? Where do your planning experiences fall?

(The wedding stationery above comes from Cherry Gorgeous, which sells a small range of ‘eco-chic’ invitations, RSVP cards, thank you cards, and more.)

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard brides-to-be say things like “I’d do X if it weren’t for Y.” Usually, the X is something like “wear a wedding dress that shows off my killer tattoos” or “serve a gluten-free vegan reception dinner” or “hire a bouncy castle for my adults-only wedding.” The Y is most often “my family,” though it is occasionally “society’s expectations.”

Every bride-to-be and groom-to-be… okay, almost every bride and groom… pays tribute to the conventions laid out by culture and religion and familial traditions, even if they don’t realize it. Social expectations are like advertising — we’re exposed to them our entire lives, in the conversations we hear and the media we see and the stories we’re told. Unless one lives the extremely examined life, it can be difficult to know where societal conventions end and where one’s own desires begin.

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The Beard sent me this photo from a wedding photo booth, and I absolutely love it.

If I could go back and re-plan my wedding, I’d definitely set up a makeshift photo booth. Sure, I could rent one, but that can get expensive when you factor in delivery and pick-up of the photo booth itself, the insurance, and the fact that some photo booth rental companies put limits on the number of photos wedding guests can take. Limits? The whole point of having a photo booth at the reception is that it gives guests, the wedding party, and the bride and groom a chance to cut loose in front of the camera after everyone is thoroughly boozicated. How loose can you get when you’re worried about running out of photo paper?

Knowing zip about photography in general, I went looking for a makeshift photo booth tutorial and, zowie, did I ever find one. The lovely people at the things we think but do not say have created an amazing DIY photo booth tutorial for weddings that is about a gazillion words long and uses words like “sync cables.” That said, it’s easy to understand and looks doable for the non-photog, provided you can borrow or buy or jury-rig the equipment.

I summarize the instructions under the cut, but I definitely recommend checking out the full tutorial.

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The ongoing trend in flower girl dresses is white, shiny, and sashed. I cannot say that the image of the tiny tot decked out in satin and organza is a tired one, for who can tire of that particular brand of charm? However, with the economy being what it is, some brides and grooms are changing the way they think about… well, just about everything associated with weddings. As Twistie and our wonderful commenters pointed out in Saturday’s post, it’s now de rigueur to think way outside of the wedding box when it comes to buying wedding accessories and wedding garb.

In that vein, have a peek at these little girl dresses from Shabby Apple. Though these adorable dresses not white and furthermore are made from cotton (specifically Amy Butler cotton?), a flower girl in one of these colorful creations would make quite the splash at an otherwise monochromatic springtime or summertime wedding. Each dress costs about $30 (making pinched parents happy) and is durable enough to be worn again and again (making dress-obsessed little ladies happy).

In the past week, I’ve seen a new trend talked up on two different wedding reality shows. On both Rich Bride, Poor Bride and Whose Wedding is it, Anyway? couples have been advised to get and have chosen to hire living tables.

What’s a living (or strolling) table? Well, it’s a person who dresses up in a costume and stands inside a hole in a table on casters decorated to match the costume. The table is then set with a selection of hors d’oeuvres, or desserts that guests can help themselves to as the table wanders through your reception or party.

Here’s what it looks like:

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Yesterday, our own Never teh Bride advised reader Gwen not to accept discounts from wedding vendors in exchange for putting out advertising for said vendors. I’m in absolute agreement with my collegue on that point.

That said, Gwen is still on a painfully tight budget and could probably use some help figuring out how to stretch it wisely. I thought it might be helpful if we all pitch in and offer up our best budget-stretching tips. Here are mine:

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The gorgeous (and thrifty) Gwen wrote:

My fiancé and I are paying for our own wedding, end of story. For various reasons, we’re not getting any help from parents. We don’t have a lot of savings. And we’re not the kind of people you read about in wedding magazines whose idea of budgeting is choosing the California Estate Osetra over the Asetra caviar. I don’t feel comfortable saying how much we have to spend, but we’re looking for creative budget wedding ideas. Anyway, I read an article at Simple Dollar that suggested we put “vendor cards” on the reception tables in exchange for reduced rates. My fiancé thinks it’s a great idea. I’m not so sure.

I can see how at first glance this might seem like a solid money saving idea. I really can. Celebrities strut their stuff for the photogs at parties sponsored by everything from car companies to mouthwash manufacturers. We’re used to hearing that our favorite television special was brought to us by company X and product Y. More often than not nowadays, the coffee sleeves that protect us from the heat of our lattes are splashed with ads… and sometimes even free samples. Advertising is everywhere, and we are all, for the most part, somewhat desensitized to it.

But Gwen, your wedding is not a Nascar race.

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What do you get when a bunch of boisterous boys pop out of your wedding reception with car markers, silly string, and sticky notes? You get this:

According to the blurb written by the anonymous bride or groom, most of the sticky notes survived the drive home and it took more than an hour to remove them all from the getaway car.

Is this funny or cause to be furious? I suppose it depends on how easily sticky note adhesive washes off of a car’s exterior. The Beard and I did not get to experience the “pleasure” of driving back to our hotel post-wedding in a humiliatingly decorated vehicle because the vehicle we were using was my dad’s and he would have given anyone who dared to sticky it up the serious beat down.

Now I’m all for being the center of attention… I love standing in the spotlight, in fact! But the tradition of decorating the wedding day transportation the bride and groom will use to get home, to a hotel, or to the airport has always struck me as a little bit less than thoughtful. If it’s a hired car, the newlyweds may have to pay a cleaning fee when returning it. If it’s their own car, they’ll have to clean it themselves or pay someone else to do it. My guess is that new brides and grooms have better things to do and better things on which to spend their money.

Me? I hate this silly tradition. Still, I know that it’s all in good fun and that many newlyweds (and their wedding attendants) view decorating the getaway car as an integral part of the wedding day. What say you?