Category: Wedding

Scary no?

For a magazine that only comes out six times a year, Bridal Guide is pretty thin. You think they’d be able to put more ads for dresses in there. The model on the cover is always some thin pretty white gal with something in her hair. And flowers. There’s always flowers on the cover. It’s very bridal as it should be.

So looking at the cover, we have dresses…dresses…something about cost-cutting, something about glitches on the big day, hair, makeup, blah blah blah. Even though I’m unemployed and my freelance gigs are basically nonexistent, none of this interests me. You think as a groomzilla there…wait. WAIT. On the top right, do I see CAKES? YESSSSSSSSSSSSSS. This magazine might be worth reading then.

And I open the front cover to see an ad with the China pattern I put on my registry. The ad implies that the bride will be the queen of entertaining but I think that this is the 21st century. I could be the king of entertaining, couldn’t I? Super bowl parties with the fine Chirp china! Chicken wings, baby back ribs, burger, and a mountain of fries all eaten daintily with a fork. Heck yes! This is how us metrosexual muthas roll, boy.

Dress ad, dress ad, bridesmaid dress ad, dress ad, yadda yadda yadda. After a point, they all look the same so I like to play a game when I’m reading a bridal magazine. You can always tell who are the high end bridal brands based on the models they choose and the type of photo shoot. If the gal looks like she either ate a sandwich today or is wearing makeup that your mom would wear, that brand is not very high end. If the photo eerily reminds you of your middle school days and being photographed with those weird backdrops, then the brand is not very high end. However, if the girls are wafer thin, look airbrushed, and are wearing fake tanning products, then those are the brands that assume they’re high end but they’re really not. It’s a fun game.

So once I get past the table of contents (and notice that cakes aren’t until page 223!), I see ads for honeymoons now. Sandals, etc, are every where. It makes me wish I had money for an expensive honeymoon but, well, right now I don’t. Also, the problem with most of these places is that they’re all-inclusive. You basically pay a lot of money with the idea that you can drink a lot. This doesn’t work if you’re like me and you don’t really drink. In fact, this doesn’t work on any level because alcohol, on the wholesale market, is cheap. The trick is to charge you 300% what it cost them and people will pay it because people like to drink. So an all-inclusive place isn’t that great of a deal for me unless the food is really good. If that’s true, then back up the dessert truck because I’m not going outside to enjoy that Caribbean sun and water at all or else I’d be mistaken for a beached whale. MMM.

Top 90 wedding songs on bridalguide.com. I’m going to be like the guide in the ad, thinking most of the songs are lame, aren’t I?

More dress ads, more dress ads, more dress ads. Here’s a tip for you at Eden Bridals. Don’t book a double paged spread and use the same model to be a bride on one side and a bridesmaid on the other. Sure, she’s pretty and I bet you saved money by using her twice. But when the bride pose makes it look like she is drunkenly falling over with a very Long Island Girl look on her face, and the bridesmaid pose makes it look like she’s going to try and sleep with the groom, your model has stopped selling the dresses now, hasn’t she?

And it took to page 58 before we actually got to any real content! At this rate, I’ll be at cake in no time.

I know, I know. I haven’t been updating. It’s weird but now that I’m unemployed, I feel like I’m working all the time. And with my church having an emergency web situation at the moment (which I really should be working on right now rather than writing this), my mind is totally distracted from wedding stuff. I’ll try to force myself to post something, anything, more often but, yeah, I keep saying that so no promises.

Forced Kissing

Manolo for Brides talks about the *clink clink MAKE OUT FOR US NOW! * part of weddings. I really don’t like that part of the wedding ceremony. In fact, I’ve privately considered only serving drinks in dixie cups and food on paper plates with plastic sporks just so this won’t happen. But if someone wants to go *clink clink*, they’ll find a way. I’m sure on the day of the wedding, I won’t mind. I’ll have so many hormones of euphoria running through my brain, I’d want any excuse to kiss my new wife. But later, when I’m thinking about it, it’ll probably wig me out. Which is weird cuz I LIKE pdas. Ah well.

Vintage Chalkboards

This post on bridal buzz about chalkboards actually got my brain working. I like chalkboards and the idea behind them. My fiancee painted an entire wall in her house to be a chalkboard. They’re useful to write notes and spread messages. I wouldn’t mind putting them up at the wedding. They would be a nice decorative touch. However, it’s hard to not also immediately wonder if that turns the reception area into a New York Deli.

Brides on Bikes

I don’t like Brides on Bikes and I can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s because of the fixed-gear hipsters that I see all over the place? Am I prejudices against cyclists? That’s possible.

Cake Wrecks

More and more reasons why I’m going to get a boring cake rather than ask a baker to make me something. I don’t trust people I guess.

New NYC Wedding Venue

Williamsburgh Savings Bank wants you to say “I Do” in their lobby.

Floating Chapel??

I love ridiculous wedding chapel ideas. I really want to visit the smallest church in America which is located in Maine. One of my favorite pictures of my fiancee and I is when we we’re standing in front of a little church on a children’s playground. So when my fiancee saw pictures of a wedding that included a floating chapel, I was all excited. And it’s not a small chapel – it’s pretty big. And it looks like every other Florida wedding chapel I’ve seen. I like it. Well, I don’t like it for my wedding – I need a real church with stone and huge arches – but I could see someone else wanting to float on their wedding day.

So yea, I know I haven’t posted in awhile. I’m sorry. If my future SIL can forgive me, I’d be grateful! I’ve just been busy. The financee and I went to visit my family, enjoy the fresh mountain air, and then come back to NYC and realize how bad NYC smells. You get use to it after a day or so but, man oh man, this place smells. But I do breathe easier down in pollution valley rather than in the crisp clear Rocky Mountains. And I hiked in Oxfords. I’m a city boy now.

Kendra Wilkinson

Did you see that Kendra Wilkinson got married? People has six pictures. It was held at the Playboy Mansion. I think Hef’s makeup job was better than the bride’s. You don’t have to cake it on ladies!

Kevin Jonas

So Kevin Jonas got engaged. I like these two as a couple and only for superficial reasons. I think their hair goes together. They both have New Jersey hair and that hair only works in couples who both have Jersey hair. It’s probably what keeps them together.

But besides the hair, we got to see what the engagement ring is. It’s 3 carat cushion cut (good choice) with 210 round brilliant pave stones on the side. I’m down with the cushion cut but the stones on the side? When they get that small, don’t they just look like sequins? Can anyone tell the difference?

Ikea is the funnest place on earth. Or is that Disneyland? Either way, I’m in love with Ikea.

My fiancee and I were spending a lazy Saturday inside this weekend. The weather was pretty bad – cool, rainy, and lots of fog – and we decided that we could subsist on some old chinese leftovers for food. My fiancee then noticed that the Ikea in Brooklyn was celebrating its one year birthday and there were going to be fireworks. The call of swedish meatballs were too much for her so I got off my lazy butt and we headed to Ikea.

Now, heading to Ikea is not easy when a) you live in Astoria and b) you don’t have a car. Subways and shuttle buses end up being your friends and limits the amount of things you can actually carry home. We arrived in the early evening after about 75 minutes on public transit, wandered the showroom, ate some delicious meatballs and Mac-n-Cheese (sharing entrees and drinks is the way to do it) and then hit the self-serve section. My fiancee had decided that she wanted to buy stuff for our wedding and glass jars were her targets.

We found a nice selection, I think. The tall ones in the back are 68 oz, the ones that are diamond shaped are about 61 oz, and those glass bowls will hold a lot of skittles. We spent a good twenty minutes laying out the different glassware, picking and choosing, and then trying to figure how much we could both carry back home. We put some stuff back, added things, and tried to decide what candy could go in what jars. Twizzlers and tootsie rolls were mentioned. Lollipops too. And figuring out where we were going to store 150 lbs of candy was talked about too. And don’t get me started on trying to figure out how to get that to the church. Ugh. I’ll think about that next year.

After the jars were loaded into the cart, we went through the mind numbingly slow process that is called checkout, bought an ice cream cone and a cinnamon bun, and then went outside and waited for fireworks. The fireworks display was quite good despite the low clouds. For fifteen minutes, the piers in Red Hook shook and all the car alarms in the nearby neighborhoods went off. We then jumped on the Water Taxi, walked across lower Manhattan, and trudged home.

Do you know that the 1941 edition of the worship book that the Lutheran Church used doesn’t have the marriage ceremony in it? It also doesn’t have an index or table of contents. I wonder if those two things are related.

My fiancee and I are in a weird spot with our upcoming wedding. We’re at the point where there isn’t a whole lot to do right now. I’m working on the website (which is slow going because there are some changes to the RSVP interface that I need to make). We ordered some postcards to stick in programs. We have 298 days or so till the big day so invitations don’t need to be ordered yet. And I pretty much figured out what I’m going to wear at the wedding (which I should make a post about). Oh. And we’ve started our pre-martial counseling with our church (I should make a post about that too). But, besides that, there isn’t much going on that needs our immediate attention. When you’re not too focused or worried about what type of bottle you need to serve some fancy ice tea, you don’t have a whole heck of a lot to do.

So, at church on Sunday, I flipped open one of the worship books in the pews. It was from 1941 which is 3 editions old at this point. I looked for a table of contents and there were none. I saw prayers and ceremonies for funerals, births, going on extended travels, etc. I didn’t see anything about getting married. I flipped open the 1978 edition and saw their wedding ceremony. It’s short and simple and leaves space for a few readings, some hymns, and even gives us the option to say our own vows (gross). Too bad I didn’t have a 2006 edition because I would have liked to see what the modern day ceremony was going to look like.

And as I looked at the books, I thought about the ceremony. My fiancee and I haven’t really chatted too much about it. My fiancee was thinking of asking her mom to pick some nice hymns to be sung at our wedding (to get her mom involved with the planning if she wants). That got me thinking. When you are getting married in a church that has a structured ceremony, your options for personalization is limited. Now, I personally think that is a GOOD thing theologically and culturally. Being married in a traditional ceremony carries with it the baggage that you are not only creating something new but also you are apart of something that spans history. And the vows to God, if taken seriously, are an added external reinforcement to what marriage is and should be. I like it. But when it comes to reading and hymns, the two parts of the ceremony that my fiancee and I have some options with, which ones should we pick?

So, now, every Sunday, I listen to what the choir director has chosen and see if it’s appropriate for my wedding day. Both my fiancee’s family and my family come from non-Lutheran religious traditions so I figured that we could sing A Mighty Fortress is Our God. You don’t get more Lutheran than that. But do I really want to sing so much about beating Satan on my wedding day? It’s a great tune and the theology behind it is fantastic but it’s my day, not Satan’s day. Why can’t the hymns be about me? :p

Yeah, I know, that’s a ridiculously bad attitude to have when you’re getting married in a church. I don’t believe like the Catholics that marriage is a sacrament but I do approach marriage with an attitude that matches that level of seriousness. Man is not to be alone as God is not alone in the Holy Trinity. So maybe I, or my fiancee, or her mom, can figure out some hymns focused less on defeating Satan and more on God’s relationship to us, Jesus’s love, and maybe His experience with Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Or maybe we’ll just break out in A Mighty Fortress because I know that would make all our Lutheran pals pretty happy. We’ll see.

I might not be the biggest fan of Wedding Bee but I do tend to enjoy their belief in over sharing in every detail of their wedding. Why? Because when they share their wedding budgets with you, they really share it with you.

When my fiancee and I were thinking about our budget, we had a number that we didn’t want to go over. We wanted everything, including honeymoon, rings, ceremony, and reception, to be under $10K. I have no real idea if that will happen or not (but if I don’t get a job soon, there’s a good chance that will definitely happen) but we’re trying to stick to it. Since we had an idea of the max we wanted to spend, we then tried to partion out how much money goes where and…well…we got stuck. There are formulas, of course, and the one at The Knot is the one we ended up doing but I always wondered if those formulas were realistic or not. With our budgets, they claimed that we could only spend $600 on photography. Please. There is no way to hire a professional wedding photographer in New York CIty who is not a friend or a friend of a friend and only pay $600. That barely covers the cost of a wedding album. So if the formulas got the photography wrong, did they get everything else wrong too? How can I come up with an accurate wedding budget when I’ve never had to plan a wedding before? The only way is to get real data from other brides and that’s where Wedding Bee steps in.

Mary Jane paid $10600 for her wedding – $1k on the actual day, 9k for the rings and the honeymoon.

The Penguins spent $42k – $31k on the day, $11k for the rings and honeymoon.

The Flamingos spent $28K – $25k on the day, $3k on the rings and honeymoon.

Here are some cheaper budgets from Bee brides – $12k and $17k.

The Puffs paid 17k.

And here are some more budgets too.

What’s good about seeing all this data upfront is that it helps you gauge where you can save, what costs a lot, and also shows you that when you’re planning your budget, you really need to focus on what’s important to you and splurge there while cutting back elsewhere. The #1 way to keep costs low, I’ve found, is to keep your guests lists small. Also, get your friends to do photography, cake baking, etc etc. That’s also an effective way to save money. That’s probably #2 tip that I don’t hear about enough – it’s mostly assumed and written in a one sentence throwaway statement. But I don’t thing wedding bloggers or writers really understand how crucial it is to have friends who are willing to help – not everyone has that.

I have decided if I’ll break out my budget for you after my big day or not. I probably will. It’ll hopefully help destroy the myth that you can’t have a fun wedding in New York City for less than a bazillon dollars.

Maple Syrup

I just like the idea of having gallons of maple syrup at a wedding. You know those ugly chocolate fountains? Fill them with syrup, have mini waffles on a stick and fruit to dip into the syrup. Oh man. If I did this, I’d probably start eating before the ceremony and miss the ceremony because I’d be eating all the waffles for my guests. I better get a tux with an elastic waistband.

Pop Up Wedding Chapels

A new trend in the wedding industry is to have small chapels popping up in public spaces. One in Brooklyn is sponsored by Martha Stewart. You get space for 20 guests, some cake, a minister, and the works for only $500. I like the idea. Rather than head off to Vegas, stay in NYC and at least get some cake. Have you noticed how no Vegas wedding seems to include cake? You never see pictures of cake or Elvis singing near a cake. There’s never a cake. That’s always bugged me.

12 tips for a frugal wedding

And most of the ideas evolve down to having your friends do stuff for you for free. That’s actually what most frugal wedding websites and ideas are about. You get your friends to take pictures for free. You get them to bake a cake. You get them to arrange your flowers. It’s all about using connections and hoping your friends are crafty. But what if you don’t have crafty friends? What if all your friends can only hook you up with new pop culture gossip? Then a lot of these ideas won’t work for you.

youbuymywedding

Jack and Jill parties have now hit the internet and it saves you the time and effort of actually throwing a party for your friends. I’ve never liked the idea of a Jack and Jill party (and it must be a regional thing because I never heard of it before I got to the North East) mostly because I’m against begging my guests for money to come to my wedding. But there are plenty of people who do it and if you need money, you need money. Sites like youbuymywedding exist to not really help anyone – they’re there to make a quick buck on weddings which are fairly recession proof right now. If you want a wedding you can’t afford, you should do the traditional thing which is charge it and hope your guests give you items you can return for cash. It’s the American way.

Who thought of Crocs as a good wedding favor idea? Oh. One of the biggest entertainment producer in Mexico’s little girl thought that. Great.

A WHOLE BASKET?!!

To be fair, the bride didn’t actually wear them but she did offer them to her wedding party. She wore sandals while everyone else wore hideous shoes. How perfectly passive aggressive of her. You can already hear how that conversation to her bridesmaids went. “Oh, your feet will be sore from standing in your very high heeled shoes that I made you buy. Here. Wear some crocs during the reception!” And since it is her special day, all the bridesmaids did exactly that. Such an epic fail. Don’t do this.

Bridesmaids out there, if you’re going to wear high heeled shoes that you know will kill your feet after awhile, have your date bring a pair of ballet flats and hold them for you during the ceremony. Or sneak some in your purse and have him/her/them hold your purse for you. You already have to wear the ugly dresses – don’t settle for ugly shoes. Stand up for yourselves! You’re a lovely person too.

And if you forget shoes, go barefoot. I’d rather see cracked cuticles than white crocs. Ugh ugh ugh.

This one is for all your NYC brides out there who still need a dress.

Housing Works, the expensive thrift store on 23rd Street between 3rd and 2nd, is having a huge bridal sale. A lot of expensive designer wedding gowns are going to be on sale with huge discounts. Some dresses are 75% off. I walked by the place yesterday and the windows were filled with dresses. The sale officially starts tonight at 7. The first 50 brides in the door get a gift bag. There will be food, etc. It will be crazy. If you don’t mind waiting, stop by the place tomorrow. The sale will be happening then too. And there’s no cover to show up nor any need to make an appointment.

And they’ll have shoes too.

[via racked]