Manolo for the Brides

• As I write this, I’m engaged in helping a friend plan her upcoming wedding. My job, simply put, is to find inspiration — links to wedding gowns for tall girls, pictures of backyard barbecue receptions that are rustic chic, and everything else related to nuptials. In fulfilling my responsibilities, I came across Emmaline Bride, which is more of a portal than an actual shop.
  

  Whether you’re looking for bridal accessories, wedding shoes, stationery, or your “something blue,” there are links to featured Etsy sellers who can provide you with exactly what you want. Well, sometimes. Currently, Emmaline Bride is suffering from a noticeable lack of links in certain categories. I’m hoping that spreading the word will encourage Etsy sellers who cater to brides and their bridesmaids to get on board because it’s such a clever idea.

• It’s no secret that I love answering reader questions — so keep sending them my way whether you want me to post them or not — but I’m not the only one! If you have a question about shopping for wedding gowns or there’s something you’ve always wanted to know about the inner workings of Kleinfeld (featured on TLC’s Say Yes to the Dress

) you can call 888-593-7377 (that’s 888-59-DRESS) to leave your questions for Randy, Kleinfeld’s Fashion Director, and Nicole, Director of Sales.

 They’ll answer your questions via audio responses that will appear on TLC’s web site.

The fabulous and talented Toni pointed me toward this very sweet wedding, and I’m glad she did. I’m always psyched to see unusual weddings where the bride and groom have really gone all out when it comes to a theme. While I wouldn’t recommend that all brides and grooms take the route that Michelle Rosen and David Zornitsky took, it is fun to see how they envisioned and executed their candy-themed affair.

The bride wore a borrowed dress made of candy wrappers that was designed for “Project Runway, and the couple said their vows in Dylan’s Candy Bar in New York.

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Swine flu has been big in the news of late. What does this have to do with weddings? I’m sure it’s factored into at least a few couples’ plans…but I know for certain that it’s altered Seal and Heidi Klum’s annual vow renewal ceremony. Each year since they married in 2005, they’ve gone back to the site of their marriage in Mexico to renew their commitment to one another. This year, however, with worries about swine flu, three small children and another on the way, they’ve decided to play it safe and stay home. They will hold their annual ceremony in Los Angeles rather than skip the festivities.

Yearly vow renewals: what do you think? Me? I think I would prefer to save up an idea like that for a major milestone, but if it makes Heidi and Seal happy (which it seems to do), I say more power to them.

Changing plans for a vow renewal, however, is not nearly as traumatic as calling off an entire wedding, as Megan McAllister and Phillip Markoff did two days ago. The reason for the change in plans? Phillip is preparing to stand trial in the infamous Craigslist murder of masseuse Julissa Brisman last month. McAllister maintains her belief in Markoff’s innocence, but her lawyer, Robert Honecker said in a public statement on her behalf that “…she has to take steps to do what she has to do on her life.”

Whatever the truth in the legal case now pending, I wish McAllister well. This is obviously a difficult time for her. She has my sympathy.

On a more practical note, I’m loving a feature of the website Project Wedding. They feature a vendor review section. Simply choose the area closest to you (choose from urban centers throughout the US as well as several major cities in Canada, England, Australia, and the catch-all section ‘other’), pick the service you’re looking for, and read promotional materials and reviews from customers both satisfied and un.

If you’re looking for a vendor, you might want to read up on how different ones in your area do. If you’ve recently used a vendor who is listed, take a moment and let potential customers know how you felt about the services provided.

Well, it’s saturday and time to declare a winner in last week’s Sunday Caption Madness contest.

Last week I presented you all with this haunting image:

and five of you left giggle-to-guffaw-worthy responses. Well done, to all five of you. You set the bar high.

In the end, though, there can be but one winner. This time it has to be daisyj for this gem:

It was cute for the first couple of steps. But when the guests realized that the happy couple was planning to do their “special dance” all the way to the reception, the defections to the bar were swift and decisive.

Congratulations, daisyj, and thanks to everyone who played! You all made me feel much, much better.

I think that there’s still time to send in your wildest and weirdest wedding photos to TMZ’s Wacked Wedding Reception Photo Contest, but I’m not really sure since their contest page doesn’t make it abundantly clear. They’ll post the entries Saturday? This Saturday? Or Saturday next? Who knows! Still, the “Holy Sh*t?@!!?” snapshot you enter doesn’t have to come from your own wedding, and the prize is $250, so why not give it a go?

Though I’m not the world’s biggest wedding cake topper fan, since most of them are kind of cliched, but I have to say that I have a soft spot in my heart for original cake toppers, a la yesterday’s robot wedding cake toppers. So when I came across this DIY wedding cake topper kit from Goose Grease, I was at first smitten. It is, after all, only $8!

But then I started asking myself whether the individual components would be even less expensive and how well the toppers would turn out if the painter was less than painterly.

The seller will whip some up for you for $40, but honestly, I think I could do almost as good a job. YMMV where that is concerned. All in all, I like (not love or hate) the DIY wedding cake topper idea, but I have to wonder about the execution when one is using the above kit.

What say you?

Aren’t these cake toppers from The Builders Studio rad?

There are all kinds of cake toppers in the crafter’s Etsy shop, from elegant robots to secret agent robots to “Sky Captain Airplane Robot and Sexy Bride Bot Queen.” The only thing I did see was gay robot wedding cake toppers, but custom orders are accepted so it’s up to our homosexual brothers and sisters in matrimony to get the trend going!

They say that if you’re going to invite your wedding guests to chuck things at you after you get hitched, it should be birdseed. The old “rice is bad for birds” myth aside, birdseed is nice in theory because it attracts interesting wildlife. Of course, tell that to anyone whose driveway has become a repository for bird droppings or who has had to pick tiny bits of birdseed out of the lace of their wedding gown, and you might get a different opinion.

If you do like the idea of feeding the birds but don’t want to get pelted with seeds, consider another method of birdseed delivery. Nature Favors makes heart shaped birdseed favors that aren’t meant to be tossed at the newlyweds — in fact, they’re not meant to be tossed at all.

Each birdseed heart wedding favor is formed around a 12″ bamboo stick and tied with natural raffia ribbon (and there are birdseed hearts on strings, too) — according to the seller, they should be given to the birds within 30 days of purchase unless you’re planning on freezing them for pre-wedding storage.

Oh, and if you’re wondering how best to discourage guests from tossing anything at you and your new spouse on your wedding day, I’d suggest you do what The Beard and I did, which was not give our guests anything to toss!

We’ve posted about Legos within the context of marriage (sort of) here on the blog, but we’ve never given much space to Legos as they relate to weddings. There are, of course, Lego wedding cake toppers andLego wedding cakes made entirely of actual Legos, but Lego wedding cakes that are actually edible are few and far between. Here are two of the nicest I could find:

Photo by Norma Tub

If the construction theme isn’t for you, but you still want to incorporate Lego into your wedding cake, you could always do a stacked cake of different sizes and colors of Lego blocks or go entirely nuts and create a cake that is two three-foot-tall Lego people!