Real Life Wedding Planning

With many bridal magazines closing (the last edition of one of my favorites, InStyle Weddings, comes out on Christmas), you wouldn’t expect a new magazine to launch. But one did and I just received a free copy. The magazine is published by GetMarried.com and is filled with ideas for carrying out themes and colors in your wedding, destination weddings, gift registry ideas, and bridal fashions.

If you like any of the items in the magazine you can easily find them online because they give you the address of the websites where you can buy them (many things are at the etMArriedsite). I found items in the magazine that I hadn’t seen elsewhere, like the Love-sicle Scented Popsicle Soaps that can be used as favors (I suggest adding a personalized sticker to it that gives your names and the wedding date).

You can read the magazine online or request a complimentary copy on the GetMarried.com website. It’s definitely worth a look.

Are you planning to wear your mother’s wedding dress at your wedding?  Though it may be a beautiful dress, you may decide to chose one of your own.  But if you still would like to use her dress in the wedding, there are ways of doing it, if you and your mother willing to take the dress apart.

Here are some ideas for using pieces of the dress:

• Make the ringbearer’s pillow
• Create a handkerchief to carry during the ceremony
• If you will be carrying a bible, cover it with fabric from the dress
• If you will be wearing gloves, remove lace or appliques and sew them onto your gloves (celebrity wedding planner David Tutera did this)
• If you are wearing satin pumps, see if a cobbler can attach appliques from the dress to your shoes
• Make a sleeve for your hand-tied bouquet (another idea from David Tutera)
• Sew a piece of the dress inside the lining of your dress. Make it more special by embroidering your parent’s wedding date on it

It is best if you have a skilled seamstress help you cut up the wedding dress.  A seamstress will know how to carefully save appliques and beading and how to work with delicate fabric that may be decades old.

If you want to keep the dress intact, but still use it in your wedding, consider wearing it in engagement photographs or wearing  it to your wedding rehearsal and having a photographer snap photos of you, your groom, and your mother that you can give to her as a keepsake.