“It’s Good You Should Eat!”

According to legend, that line is the timeless cliche uttered by everyone’s Jewish grandma or aunt or mother no matter how many helpings you’ve already had of the amazing spread on the holiday table.  I’m not sure if my own grandmother (a Goldstein, for those keeping score at home) actually ever said those precise words, but the sentiment was ever present.  And never has this sentence been more appropriate than on the day of your wedding.  Now I’m sounding like one of your parents (something I really try to avoid), but trust me here.  If you don’t fill your stomach you are courting disaster.  I guarantee those pounds you lost through dieting and Pilates in the six months before your wedding day will NOT horrifically reappear because you eat breakfast eight hours before the ceremony.  (Unless of course you chow down on that new Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich from Dunkies.  I felt my arteries clogging just reading about it.)

Probably better than nothing, but don’t make a habit of it.

With all the commotion and anxiety flying around in the 24 hours before a wedding, we know how easy it is to “forget” — or simply feel too busy — to eat. Here’s a helpful hint: You are not too busy to eat. Delegate everything if you have to, but it’s absolutely essential that you get some food in your stomach both before and during the whole shenanigan. In fact, delegate the responsibility to make sure you eat to a trusted attendant (probably not your mother, because you’ve heard it too many times from her over the years when you were trying to slim down to fit into your prom dress).  Each of us has our own “normal” routine when it comes to eating, whether you think breakfast is a nice bowl of oatmeal or last night’s leftover pepperoni pizza (Ding Dongs do NOT count).  But whatever you do, make an effort to eat what you normally consume for breakfast (unless your normal is nothing washed down with coffee).  And if the ceremony isn’t until later in the day, do the same for lunch.  What you are doing is telling your digestive tract that this is just another day like any other, and to please ignore those gallons of adrenaline and excess stomach acid churning through your body.  You need to do this even if your physical state is somewhere south of optimal after whatever you did the night before the wedding day.  In fact, that’s when you need it the most.

Not a breakfast food. In fact, not a food at all.

We’ve seen way too many brides who couldn’t find the time or the serenity to eat something substantial during the last several hours before the ceremony — and we’ve seen those same brides feeling dizzy, nauseous or just plain over-inebriated later on in the day. Nobody wants to spend the theoretical Happiest Day of Her Life trying just to stay vertical.  I’ve seen more than one bride carried off after barely making it through the ceremony.  I’m not making that up.

Here’s the recipe for disaster, and it works every time:

1. Get extremely nervous before the rehearsal dinner because there’s bad weather predicted for tomorrow.  Don’t eat at the dinner, but drink lots of sparkly liquids.
2. Stay up almost all night before the wedding day because you’re reliving a junior high school slumber party with your best friends when you weren’t allowed to stay up all night.  Eat lots of stuff that comes out of plastic/metallic bags in which sugar, sodium, and unpronounceable chemicals are the sole ingredients.  Drink much beer or more sparkly liquids.
3. Feel like you want to vomit in the morning.  Therefore, skip breakfast or anything like it.
4. Become very agitated as it comes time to get ready and into your dress, and therefore skip lunch.  But continue to drink things you don’t normally imbibe during the hours before sundown.
5. Refuse to eat anything else once you are made up and in your dress.  This is actually a smart idea based on what I’ve seen, but if you followed steps 1-4 you’re likely beyond help anyway.
6. Feel worse than you’ve ever felt in your adult lifetime as you prepare for the biggest occasion of said lifetime.

Again, trust us.  You do not want to experience your wedding day in an altered state brought on by nutritional deprivation.  Do whatever is necessary to remember this: write “FOOD” on your hand, assign one of your bridesmaids to be on bridal snack duty, hang bags of trail mix from the ceiling — we don’t care about the method. We just care that you get enough nutrition and energy to make it through the day. Because let’s be real: you’re probably already so nervous you feel like you’re going to pass out. Don’t give your body a good reason to do it.

And how about you?  Did you eat before the wedding?  Any good ideas, or bad experiences?  Were those Mimosas and Bloody Marys a smart choice?

My Pinterest and Facebook always have plenty to chew on!

The Canine Conundrum: Does Your Dog Want To Be In The Wedding?

Uh-oh. Is he really going to…?

Since we are well into the season for lovely outdoor weddings, it’s time to discuss an issue that is pretty exclusively limited to ceremonies held in an open space (at least I hope so).  There are many among us to whom our pooch is an almost best friend (I’m jumping to the conclusion that your future spouse is in that spot for now, until he/she inevitably occupies – forgive me – the dog house).  So how you could leave that adorable pal out of the most important event of your young life?  Well, I can think of a few reasons.  As always, I’m not trying to tell you what to do, since the wedding is all about the two of you and should be as close to exactly what you want (perfect?) as possible.

But no matter how much you adore your dog, or how well-behaved he/she is on a regular basis, there’s some potential for catastrophe when you involve a four-legged family member in the actual wedding ceremony.  Sure, it’s an outrageously adorable idea, and yes, I’ve seen it done successfully on many occasions.  And frankly it has the potential to make me happy because if the pictures work, it will look wonderful and people will “awwwwww” over it for years. But, the emphasis is on if.

Don’t get me wrong: Dogs are great. I love dogs! All they want is to be with their best friends and play.  Or lie down.  Or put paw prints on your dress.  Or sleep.  Or chase something.  Or slobber on someone.  I’m just not convinced (as some people seem to be) that dogs are people. Yes, both people and dogs can follow directions, to an extent, depending on both the person and the dog. (There have been several occasions when the behavior of some of the other members of a particularly rowdy wedding party made me wonder if the dog was the best behaved among them, but once again I digress.)  Yes, both are capable of walking in a straight line (until later in the evening). But honestly, one of these options (the dog, we hope) is far more likely to stop for a brief territory-marking session against one of your guest’s chairs — or worse, take an amorous interest in one of said guest’s legs. Granted, a photo of Bruno getting up close and personal with Great-Aunt Gladys’s left thigh would have comedic value, but you have to ask yourself how much you want your ceremony to be a cause for seat squirming giggles (and/or slightly offended family members).  And I’m convinced dogs actually have more of a case of nerves doing something so completely un-doglike (who are all these people and WHY ARE THEY LOOKING AT ME?) that they are far more likely to embarrass themselves and you.

“I can’t believe they made me wear this outfit. When we get home I’m ruining the living room rug.”

And we admit we haven’t discussed it with them at length, but we imagine that dogs, like teenagers, don’t really have much interest in putting on fancy clothes and standing around for several hours. They’d rather be outside frolicking, or inside chewing on your new dancing shoes. If your puppy is such an integral family member that you couldn’t possibly dream of excluding him/her from the whole shenanigan, then maybe just grab a big fancy neck bow and have your baby stand out front as the world’s most adorable greeter/usher. We promise it’ll be just as cute, and less fraught with peril.

When it comes to puppies prancing down the aisle, though (please don’t make the pup the actual ring-bearer), I would ask you to consider the words of a legendary football coach on why he didn’t like pass plays: “Three things can happen, and two of them are bad.”  But as always, it’s your call, and by all means have Snuffy in the wedding if it would break your heart to leave him out.  Most of the time it works just fine…

But go ahead! Prove us wrong! Anyone have a great dog-in-a-wedding story to challenge our doubts?  Or one in which things didn’t go quite according to plan?

My Pinterest and Facebook love dogs in the wedding!

The Agony Of The Feet

Their magic must be very powerful or they wouldn’t hurt so much!

Yes, we know. Those shoes are very cute. They look fabulous when you’re standing absolutely still in front of the mirror. Leaning on a friend for support. And not really breathing too much in case oxygen throws off your center of balance. But once you take a few steps… not so much. It’s not worth breaking an ankle for the sake of footwear that may not even be visible from under your dress (although there’s a dissenting opinion cited later).  Your maid of honor might literally be the only person to see those shoes all day when she helps you into them because you can no longer view anything below your waist.  Now no one is suggesting you should do anything that will make you look less than fabulous, but remember there is a reality in play here.  You will have to move in those shoes.  You will likely need to march down an aisle or something like it (maybe soft turf that swallows heels like a black hole), while already managing a gown that’s not your standard mode of apparel.  Assuming all goes well you will also want to dance the night away.  And there’s all that adrenaline and nervous energy making you just a bit unsteady to begin with.

Since you’re an adult (or so we’re assuming. This blog does not in any way condone underage nuptials), you know that the key to successful style is to dress for the occasion. This is just as true for weddings as it is for the opera, theme parties or bowling night. Unlike some nights out, your shoes are not the center of attention here. You are.  And the last thing you want is for all that attention to be focused on you limping through your reception, or wincing as you try to finish your first dance while thinking more about blisters than about your new spouse. Plus, you’re forcing the photographer to work a whole lot harder to make you look happy.  And do you want to spend the first day and night at your exotic honeymoon destination soaking your poor mistreated feet?  Didn’t think so.  (This applies to men as well, believe it or not.  Rule One: NEVER wear brand new shoes at your wedding.  Never.  Don’t ask me how I know this.)

Our blog heartily endorses this solution.

Hey, if you have some killer heels you’re just dying to rock for the formal photos, be our guest (technically, you are in fact your own guest. But let’s not get caught up in semantics). Show off those Louboutins to your heart’s content — and maybe send us a pair if you have some extras lying around? Size six-and-a-half? Anyone? But once the photos are done, why drive yourself crazy hobbling around? And getting drunk enough that you don’t notice how much your feet hurt is not a solution. Leave those antics to the bridesmaids.

We can only endorse wearing uncomfortable shoes in the interest of creating high drama (and some great photo ops).  At one outdoor wedding we witnessed a bride who got sick of her heels getting stuck in the grass on every step, so halfway down the hill to the altar she kicked them off and finished the ceremony barefoot. This is a totally acceptable response to inappropriate footwear. And if you’re one of those ladies who honestly would rather break her ankle than look short (we met one very adamant bridesmaid who told us exactly this), at least do what you can to minimize your risk. And maybe make sure someone at the reception has an ice pack.

Is this what you had in mind when you picked out those dazzling shoes?

My Pinterest and Facebook always wear sensible shoes!

Not Invited? Maybe You Should Thank Them!

That’s a lot of plane tickets. And at least six dresses no one will ever wear again.

We’ve already talked about the angst involved in paring down the invitation list to a manageable number, and whether it’s in your best interest to let people know who aren’t being invited so they can make other plans for that Saturday a few months from now.  That and the cost of your wedding are almost certainly the most intense contributors to your pre-nuptial stress.  Everybody knows that weddings can be an expensive proposition, setting back those paying the bills an average of around $28K in the US.  There’s the dress and the venue and the music and the food and the photography (sorry!) all adding to the price of entry.  And according to The Knot, about a quarter of this year’s weddings will be of the destination type, requiring travel to exotic locales.  But I have to admit I hadn’t given any thought to how expensive it is for those whose only responsibility is to show up and express their love and/or affection for the couple getting married.  Maybe that’s because I get paid to go to almost every wedding I attend, rather than having to shell out a substantial part of my monthly take-home pay in order to enjoy a free dinner and some dancing.  (And it could help explain why getting a plate of food from some caterers is like asking for their first born child; they know I got in for free!)  But thanks to one of my favorite fellow bloggers, I now know it’s no small decision whether to accept an invitation when it means you might be eating ramen for the rest of the month as you pay off your bills.

According to a survey by American Express, 69 million of us will attend a wedding this year and the average guest (there must be a better way to phrase that) will need to part with $539 (up fifty percent over last year!) to say yes to that lovely engraved invitation.  How can that be true, you might ask?  The math is pretty simple, actually.  About a third goes to travel, a third to something new to wear, and another third for the wedding gift.  Now clearly you can cut some corners on this, but it’s still a considerable commitment when you consider that the average (ouch! there it is again) wedding guest is in their mid- to late twenties and not yet at the top of the earning pyramid.  And if you have the (mis?)fortune to be tapped to be in the wedding party, you can rack up even more renting a tux or (in the case of bridesmaids) buying a dress you wouldn’t be caught dead in again at anything but a zombie costume party.  More than two-thirds of bridesmaids say they will either give their dress to a thrift shop or family friend, and the other third probably lied to the person taking the survey.  At least the guys get to take their outfits back so someone else can pay to wear it.

Which brings us to the curious case of Christopher Sledzik.  Yes, THAT Christopher Sledzik (the guy on the right in the picture).  The one who attended twelve weddings last year, three as a member of the bridal party, at a cost of somewhere in the neighborhood of $10,000.  Well you might ask if Chris sold his internet startup for a billion dollars or is the sole heir to a Saudi oil fortune, but no.  He’s a 27-year-old guy with a good job who really wanted to be there for his friends, even if it meant putting that entire $10K on a credit card he’ll be paying off for years.  If there were a poster child for Most Devoted Wedding Guest Ever, he would be found in that photo above.

So I promise I’ll be more understanding the next time a caterer seems a little reluctant to give food to me, one of the chosen few who will be better off financially when the last dance is over.  And I’ll be sure to remember Chris Sledzik.

What do you think?  Have you had to pay too much to attend a wedding?  Is there any way around this, especially for the wedding party?  And are you one of the few bridesmaids who has actually worn the dress another time?  Once again, we’d love to hear.

My Pinterest and Facebook always say yes to invitations!

Don’t Save The Date? Don’t Bother.

I’ve been reading a lot of chat about a trend that seems to be gaining in popularity, that of sending out notes to friends and family to let them know they shouldn’t hold their breath about being invited to a wedding ’cause it ain’t gonna happen.  “Don’t Save The Date” cards (some sensitive and some pretty blunt) are being marketed to couples having a hard time paring down their list to the best of the besties.  Again, you can call me a dinosaur, but this whole thing strikes me as absurd.  Weddings have being going on for hundreds of years without anyone feeling the need to systematically dis-invite those who don’t make the cut, and it seems to me it just adds another layer to what is already a grueling process.

Think about it.  First (assuming you’ve already identified your prospective spouse) you’ve got to decide on your maid/matron of honor.  This can be really dicey.  Maybe your relationship with your only sister isn’t as close as what you have with your college roommate, but how would that choice go over with the family?  Once you clear that hurdle, what about the bridesmaids?  Your kindergarten classmate from the old neighborhood or the woman who shares your cubicle at work?  And what about his sister?  Or sisters?  You already know how excruciating this can be.

Now you move on to the guest list, a hornet’s nest of options.  You’ve got limited space, limited resources, yet a seemingly limitless cornucopia of pals, buddies, cousins, long lost friends, parents of friends, friends of parents (“If we don’t invite them I can never show myself in polite society again!”), business partners, people who invited you to their weddings, violin teachers, swimming coaches, Girl Scout leaders, etc. ad nauseum.  And that doesn’t include the groom’s side.  This is when the idea of eloping starts to look really attractive.

Once you’ve navigated those stormy waters, why would you want to pile on yet another set of painful decisions, especially when they involve delivering disappointing or even insulting news?  Who belongs on the “We like you but not enough to be invited to our wedding” list?  How do you decide who is sufficiently important to have their feelings hurt with a formal notice?  It seems to me this could go on forever, taken to its absurd extreme.  You could have a whole set of lists:

• You’re invited.  Show up or die.
  
• You’re invited.  We really don’t care if you come or not.
• You’re invited.  Please don’t come but do send a gift.
• You’re not invited.  Even though we love you.
• You’re not invited.  You really don’t matter that much to us.
• You’re not invited.  Our parents are the only ones who want you to come.
• You’re not invited.  I haven’t seen you since you moved away when we were in third grade.
• You’re not invited.  We actually don’t like you even though we hung out a lot in college.
• What was your name again?

This inexplicable need to exclude involves all sorts of questionable tactics.  Some brides hand off the dirty work to their wedding planner, making them inform the B-listers.  Some couples share the burden but each blames it on the other.  (There’s a great way to start your life together!  Tell a big pack of white lies and alienate lots of people who might actually have been friends.)  And some just resort to a blast email or a Facebook post (“If you haven’t heard from us yet, forget it!!)

Clearly this has nothing to do with my area of expertise (hasn’t stopped me before), but my goal is always to make you step back from the ledge and relax a little.  So my advice?  Just get back to basics and invite those you have decided to invite.  That’s hard enough, and assuming those you don’t invite are adults (or pretend to be) they should be able to deal with the disappointment.  And if they don’t?  Maybe it’s a good way to find out who your real friends are.

Anyone have any good experiences with “Don’t Save The Date”?

Is this really something you would send to someone you like? Or is it only for soon to be ex-friends?

My Pinterest and Facebook  always make the guest list!

Choosing Your Venue: A Few Choice Words

Does it look like this in real life?

There are many, many lovely places to hold your wedding ceremony or reception, from a seaside mansion to your neighbor’s backyard, and you should choose a place that suits your own personal style.   But if you’re considering a venue that specializes in hosting weddings, I want to offer a few thoughts to keep in mind as you narrow down your list.  My responsibility, of course, is to make sure your photos look as beautiful as possible, so forgive the photo-centric nature of this advice.  (OK, all my advice is part of the mission to make you and your location look gorgeous in the pictures, but that doesn’t mean it’s not valid.)

• Don’t buy the venue based on the website or the brochure.

Chances are your venue hosts have selected the very best of the best of photos taken at their facility (or some other magnificent site), or better yet hired a photographer to shoot some just for them, and those images will have been shot in perfect light, on a perfect day, with a perfect sunset, and perfect models.  You can’t blame them; that’s their job.  But if at all possible, see the venue under real world circumstances so you can judge for yourself how it will look.  Most photographers are very creative and clever, but the only magic wand they have is in Photoshop.

• Beware of venues that have an “official photo room.”

I don’t know who came up with this concept, but it doesn’t work.  Sure, it might sound official, but you know what else is official? That corner of the RMV where they take your license photo. “Photo room” is venue code for “some place where we can conveniently shove the wedding party so they don’t try to get creative and stomp all over our lawn.” You paid to have your wedding here, and that lawn is yours for the stomping.  More importantly: these rooms aren’t designed to make you look good.  No self-respecting photographer wants to shoehorn at least a dozen people into a small room with blank walls and low ceilings with awful recessed lighting and force them to smile, while sweating bullets and cursing the venue for not providing a better space.  And no self-respecting group of people want to be photographed while shoved into said room. No matter how talented your photographer, or how photogenic your wedding party, the odds of everyone being pleased with the final result of these uncomfortable forced photos is just north of zero.  Photo rooms may be an efficient idea in theory, but efficiency is for assembly lines and gas mileage statistics, not weddings.  If your venue host tells you the photo room is the only place available for formal photos, I suggest looking elsewhere.

• Think twice before selecting a venue that holds more than one function at a time.

There’s an old superstition about brides seeing each other on their wedding day (they might burst into flames?), but that’s the least of your worries at a multi-event venue.  I’ve seen dueling wedding parties arrive at the same time and use the same entrance because it was pouring rain, and in one of them the bridesmaids’ dresses were identical (not making that up).  One reception had to compete against a bar mitzvah across the hall, and the wedding party was no match for a roving band of out-of-control thirteen-year-olds (that’s redundant, right?).

• Make sure they tell you what their plans are for bad weather.

And if they involve an official photo room, see above.  For a better idea, see below.

Nicer than any photo room I’ve ever seen.

My Pinterest and Facebook are always in the right location!

Not Those Bridesmaids! Yours.

Seriously now, would you really want any of these characters in your wedding?

The selection of your bridesmaids can be without a doubt one of the most nerve-wracking decisions you’ll make when you plan your wedding.  How many is too many?  Can you really leave one former roommate out when the other one is a lock?  And what relatives will have their noses miles out of joint if they don’t get the call (especially if they hail from the groom’s side)?  I know from personal experience (my own wedding) the bruised feelings left over from the Bridesmaid’s Draft can last several seasons.  I sympathize, and (for the first time) don’t claim to have all the answers.  These are gut level decisions about who stays on the BFF roster and who is relegated to “just good friend” status.  As I always recommend, go with what works for you and hope people understand.  The wedding is still about you, and when you’re exchanging vows you should be surrounded by those you love the most.  (SOOOO easy for me to say as a member of the other gender.)

But I can offer some wisdom about how to treat those ladies after you’ve picked the team.  The point is: they ARE the people closest to you on your big day, both physically and emotionally, so don’t torture them!  The goal is for them to look gorgeous as they walk down the aisle and stand with you, basking in your reflected glory.  And in order to look the way they appear in the bride magazines, they have the same dress draped on their perfectly matched figures.  But wait!  That’s the wedding industrial complex speaking, not the voice of reason.

So your NCAA point guard sister is supposed to wear the same dress as your best friend the ballerina? Let us know how that one goes. Yes, that strapless dress (you know the one. It’s the one every bridesmaid has to wear – the one that looks like she got caught in her towel on the way to the shower) looks great in the photo – where some size 2 model is standing still. Once your real-life bridesmaids start moving around, or breathing, or having any kind of discernible bone structure, that dress will not look the same. It gaps in the front, it slips down in the back, and worst of all, it will wreak havoc on your pictures. In nearly every shot, it’s guaranteed that at least one of your lovely bridesmaids will be frowning down her cleavage, elbows chicken-winged out to the sides while she yanks up the seams of that pretty, pretty dress in an effort not to be the wardrobe malfunction that ruins your wedding.

These ladies are your friends, so don’t put that kind of pressure on them. Just let them be excited for you, drink a few too many glasses of champagne and make out with one of the groomsmen. And for the love of chiffon, give them the sartorial freedom to do it.  I’ve seen some very mellow wedding parties where the bridesmaids were given a color and a choice of a few styles, and then picked out their own dresses.  That way Jessica Simpson doesn’t have to try to look like Anne Hathaway, and vice versa.  The dresses fit, they look fabulous, and all your besties have the time of their lives.  And you can have a secret selfish motive, because when you get invited to be in one of their weddings, she’ll remember how well this worked at yours.  Even if she does look like Melissa McCarthy.

My Pinterest and Facebook are always a good fit!

Wedding Wars

If You Can’t Say Something Nice, Come Sit Next To Me At The Wedding!

Ideally one would think that a wedding is a celebration of the love between two happy people and the commitment to spend their lives together, come what may.  And it is, at least for those two people.  For others, it’s another chance to dredge up old grievances (or manufacture news ones!) and allow them to erupt into scene-stealing battles that threaten to make the day REALLY memorable for those on the sidelines.  Weddings are unlike any other cultural ritual in that it’s often a requirement to fill a room with a selection of people who can’t stand the sight of each other, no matter how well dressed they are.  Then you limber them up with bubbly liquids or amber fluids that give them a case of Irish Alzheimer’s: “forget everything but the grudge” (I’m sorry if that’s ethnically insensitive, but I heard it first from an Irish friend).  And presto!  You’ve got Wedding Wars!

Wedding Wars can take many forms, everything from the wedding equivalent of the Hundred Years War to the lightning attack on Pearl Harbor.  Most people don’t tell me where family land mines are lurking, so I have to figure out for myself which people not to invite to stand next to each other in a formal photo.  But occasionally they do clue me in and I have to do an elaborate dance around the palpable tension that can explode at any time.  A few examples:

1. The parents of the groom who refused to participate in anything to do with the wedding after inventing some slight from the bride, until announcing they expected to attend the ceremony, along with fifty of their closest friends.  After the invitations had gone out.
2. The bride who told me never to get a picture of her with her sister because she hated her guts and hadn’t seen her in ten years.  (They ended up in each other’s arms, blubbering away, about halfway through the reception.)
3. A mixed religious wedding in which one family was totally supportive and the other family wished they were anywhere else on the planet as long as it was at least a thousand miles away from the first family.
   
4. The Mom From Hell who committed the ultimate sin (telling her daughter she looked fat in her dress) leading to a screaming fight just a few minutes before the ceremony.
5. And the Dad From Hell who commanded me to take his family photos before the other family showed up because he refused to speak to them.

And on and on.  You get the idea.  I’ve never seen anyone engage in actual physical combat, mostly because psychological warfare is generally much more painful. But I guess it does happen, not only in the movies but in allegedly real life.

Sometimes it’s not even the family bringing the trouble. Bridesmaids can be the source of another kind of conflict. One is chosen to be the maid of honor and all the rest are jealous. It’s like high school all over again. Maid of Honor = Popular Girl, therefore all the others hate her and want to inflict pain. Or the Maid of Honor can’t take the pressure and goes nuts-o:

In the end it all comes back to those two people and what they want, and everyone who can’t get on board should stay home, get drunk, and watch WWF.  No need to dress up for that.

My Pinterest and Facebook have more wedding insanity!

Groomzilla?

I AM GROOM, HEAR ME ROAR!

I mean no disrespect to my own gender, but most of us recognize that almost the entire wedding extravaganza is about the lovely lady in the white dress.  Grooms are of course essential to the event, but one of them summed up his role to me in five succinct words: “Show up, and shut up.”  He was kidding of course, but that’s within a few “I Do’s” of the truth.

But every so often I’ve witnessed an almost complete role reversal: a bride who smiles sweetly and says “Whatever you would like,” and a groom who takes charge of the whole affair.

That’s right, the groom. Not the bride or a monster mother, but the groom.

I remember one couple who had set aside an unusually long period of time before the wedding for formal photos.  They were already in bridal gown, makeup, and tuxedo a full three hours before the scheduled start of the ceremony, and they had made sure the wedding party and almost everyone else was ready as well. The reason for this uber-punctuality?  The groom wanted a picture of himself with everyone at the wedding. And I mean everyone. He wanted a picture with his second cousin, then his second cousin’s daughter and then his second cousin’s daughter’s niece. And these weren’t group photos, but individual shots only with himself.

He wanted a shot with each individual bridesmaid. Each one. His bride’s best friends.  Never seen anything like it.

Now these photos weren’t the candid type when I happen to catch him speaking to the second cousin’s daughter’s niece.  No, these were posed pictures. We were like a photo studio doing prom pictures with the wedding as an afterthought.

This process took up every single minute of the three hours before the wedding, and we were still at it when someone’s mother (I’ll give you two guesses which mother) called a halt to the proceedings because the ceremony was about to start.

I guess in these days of alleged gender equality it’s fine to be an overzealous groom, believing you are the temporary center of the universe. After all, brides do it. But if you want to have every minute captured on camera, it’s better to roll out a red carpet and hire a team of paparazzi to follow you around just like Will and Kate.

My Pinterest has more wedding tips!

FLOWERS! Lovely To Look At, But…

A-choo.

You’ve paid a florist a small fortune to cover your wedding with flowers. Garlands line the aisles, petals float along the walkway, and centerpieces are crammed full of lilies. Their sublime fragrance effectively masks the aroma of over-Axed groomsmen and the mothballed suit your favorite uncle pulled out of the closet just for the occasion.

The scene is exactly as you had imagined it: perfect. Surrounded by ginormous arrangements, the wedding party is smiling, you’re beaming and the groom is tearing up. But what’s this?  Your man never cries, not even when his team blows a 21-point lead in the fourth quarter of a playoff game.  At first you are so touched by his display of emotion you start to lose your own composure.  But then the source of those tears becomes clear.  The more he sniffs, the more he sniffles.  As his eyes turn red and watery, the sneezing fit starts and the sweet emotion drains just like his sinuses as you realize those aren’t tears of joy but a reaction to the cloud of allergens clogging the air.

I wish I were making this one up, but I’ve seen it happen.  I was more than a little surprised that after a year of planning, the crucial detail of the groom’s allergy got ignored in the drive for The Perfect Wedding.  The poor guy had a lily attached to his lapel like an inhaler designed to incapacitate him before he got to the “I Do” stage.  They had to ditch all the boutonnieres and go flowerless for the ceremony.

Now don’t get me wrong.  As a photographer I LOVE flowers, and what would a wedding be without them?  What could a bride do with her hands as she comes down the aisle if not for the bouquet (balloons? pinwheels? squirt guns?)  They can be used not only to mask the aforementioned odors, but also to disguise unsightly items (holes in the carpet?  tangles of wires?) that might otherwise interfere with the image you have in mind.  And of course they look great in the pictures.

Flowers, Flowers Everywhere!

But as with so many other components of a wedding, it’s important to keep some perspective.  If it turns out your maid of honor is allergic, wouldn’t it be better to minimize the flowers in order to keep her from looking like the world’s biggest drama queen, stealing the spotlight from you as she sniffles, gags, and wheezes through your ceremony?  And do you want her sneezing all over you when you’re getting into your dress?  We’re assuming she’s your BFF and you want to keep it that way.   And bear in mind that everyone will think the flowers are gorgeous even if the shade of magenta in the napkins doesn’t quite match the pink in your bouquet.  I’ve seen brides weep over details like that, forgetting in their bridal haze that flowers are beautiful no matter what.  I’ve stood by as one heroic mother of the bride got the florist to come back and remove some small items from the bouquets after her daughter threw a screaming fit about HATING!!! a particular color (green? who hates green?), a mission critical detail that hadn’t been conveyed to the harried florist.

There’s probably no reason to see if any of your guests has a sensitivity (please check this box for beef, chicken, or allergy?), but it’s not a bad idea to make sure no one in the wedding party is going to be blubbering through your ceremony for all the wrong reasons.  And most of all you want your groom to be able to enjoy that champagne toast without a Benadryl chaser.

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