Wedding Supplies

Capture the spirit of the season you marry in

Winter time weddings usually breed winter themed weddings, including location, (probably indoors), decorations and possibly your selection of a favor. I went to a December wedding once where the couple gave each female guest two ornate glass Christmas ornaments. I suspect they were pricy because they were in boxes from an upscale department store. I certainly understand the relevancy here, but if the majority of your guests don’t celebrate Christmas, (and you are aware of this fact), then I’d suggest something else; something more appropriate for the general public.

Spring weddings tend to lend themselves to a few more options than winter weddings. Depending on the month, you can have a portion or all of wedding reception outdoors. You’ll have a variety of flowers to choose from. You can find lots of wedding supplies geared towards the spring months, including holidays like St. Patrick’s Day. You may also get a better turn out of out of town guests. People are less averse to traveling if in climate weather isn’t an issue.

Daytime or nighttime weddings are both good choices in the summer. I would suggest lighter colors and lighter weight dresses for the bridesmaids. People will get antsy quickly if they have to spend an hour on formal pictures outside in a black gown in the middle of August! If your reception is going to be outside, make sure the tables are under tents or that there is some form of shade. If it’s going to be indoors, make sure the reception hall has air conditioning.

Fall and harvest type themes speak volumes in the fall months. If you’re into the yellows, oranges and browns, then fall is the right season for you. It should be relatively easy to provide an elegant setting or whatever setting you want with the changing of leaf colors. Corn stalks and scarecrows are great if they’re utilized in the proper setting. If your wedding is early enough in the fall season, you may be able to have cocktail hour outside.

No matter what month you pick to marry in, just try to make sure that you are in sync with the season. You can certainly do what you want to do, but if your hearts’ desire is to have a clambake for the food, I’d stick with the summer months. It might seem a little odd to eat steamers and lobster in many places in January. Of course you could always have a destination wedding to the Caribbean or some other exotic place where it’s pretty much always summer.  Ah, but that’s a whole separate topic!

Cut into your new life with a beautiful cake server set

                I imagine that most women, if not all women, fanaticize about their wedding day.

words of wisdom you can treasure long after your wedding day

From an early age, a teenager or younger, we begin to imagine our Prince Charming and living happily ever after. Of course everything is perfect because when we use our imagination, anything is possible. But in reality, we know that there’s always room for error or mishap. Prince Charming may look slightly different than we’d pictured and our chances for a fairy tale marriage are slim. Still we can reach for the moon while proceeding cautiously.

                When it comes time to actually plan and execute your dream wedding, you have nothing short of high expectations from anyone and everyone involved. If it starts to fall apart, don’t you fall apart. Drama can be imminent during the planning stage, just by virtue of the number of people that might be involved. But you cannot just call off the wedding and write it off as a bad experience. You must combat the drama with a positive and calm can-do attitude. Even if it means taking a step back to reassess something or someone, make your decisions for the right reason and then stand behind them. Even the most well planned wedding receptions can have a minor flaw or two.

                Against all odds for a perfect wedding is the first thing that comes to my mind when I recall a friends’ wedding. She was so excited to be marrying the man of her dreams, (and he was pretty close to Prince Charming all right!) She ironed out all the details early on with the intention of avoiding last minute stress as much as possible. Things were going great, for a while.

One of her bridesmaids lived in another state. Money was an issue for this woman, so my friend offered to pay for her dress and plane ticket to lessen her expenses, thus allowing her to be in the wedding party. A couple of months before the wedding, they got into an argument over something so trivial that my friend didn’t even consider it a true argument. The other woman saw it as something completely different and decided not to be in the wedding. In fact, she decided not even to come to the wedding. But here’s the kicker; she didn’t bother to tell my friend any of this! As time went on and she wasn’t returning phone calls, (no email back then), my friend took the hint. It was much too late to find a replacement bridesmaid, so she resigned to the fact that there would be an uneven wedding party. This was ultimately resolved by having one of the bridesmaids walk down the aisle with two ushers. She wasn’t thrilled about this, but it was better than asking for a stand in at the last minute, (when clearly the woman would know she was not the first round draft pick!)

                Okay, minor glitch, no big deal, right? Then comes the bachelorette party. Everyone’s having a great time until one of the bridesmaids goes MIA! She was with the group dancing one minute and gone the next. Everyone was drunk and went back to the hired van to pass out. This left only the bride to sober up and find her missing friend. She had a police officer helping her and the chauffeur of the van waited patiently for 2 hours. Finally, my friend gave up her search after retracing all their steps and decided to get everyone else home before anything else bad happened. Needless to say, she was upset and frightened for  the safety of her friend. She ended up paying the overage for the van and the additional tip out of her own pocket. She called the woman’s house a few hours later to find that she’d made it home safely. Somehow she felt it necessary to blame the bride for her disappearing act and proceeded to treat her very poorly for the remainder of the engagement. The bride had to track her down at work two days before the wedding because she had no idea where she was supposed to be and when. She was just plain mean to my friend on the phone. She showed up late for the rehearsal and at dinner she dismissed the bride’s attempt to resolve and rectify the misunderstanding by saying “now’s not the time. You should focus on your wedding and we’ll discuss this later.”  The next day, she showed up late to get her hair done and barely spoke to anyone. She may as well have not even been there. During the reception she got into a fight with her boyfriend and guess who consoled her while she cried in the lady’s room? Yup, the bride! My friend thought at least that would break the ice to get their friendship back on track. But as the star of the show, she couldn’t spend all night in the bathroom, so she rejoined the party with the idea they would make up later that night. But at some point after dinner, the woman left the reception without so much as a goodbye to anyone; including the bride and groom! They’ve never spoken since.

                While the bride-to-be was dealing with all this drama, she tried to focus on the positive. The day the bridesmaids dresses came in, my friend rushed down there only to find that the maid of honor’s dress was a completely different color…the wrong color! They bridal shop said they would send it back but could not guarantee that the replacement would make it with only three weeks until the wedding. She thought she better not risk it, so she kept the dress. Fortunately, it was a color that did not clash with the chosen color. Since it was the maid of honor, she figured she could play it like it was intentionally different. The dress also had to be taken it because from the time the dresses were ordered, the maid of honor had lost a significant amount of weight. The dress was literally about five sizes too big!

                Great, another tragedy averted she thought. It should’ve been smooth sailing from there, but of course it wasn’t! She soon found out that her grandfather could not attend her wedding because he was very ill with cancer. He was too weak to make the trip. This made her very sad, but of course he was there with her in spirit! In addition to this and to her bridesmaid that was completing ignoring and avoiding her, she had another wrench thrown into the works. Her otherwise very healthy Prince Charming came down with pneumonia a couple of weeks before the wedding! He was sick as a dog and was just barely recovered by the big day! Oh, and did I mention that his mother basically abandoned her family a couple of years earlier and he didn’t even want to invite her to the wedding? Well the bride, being “politically correct”, said she had to be invited and that he needed to put his feelings for his mother aside for the sake of a peaceful wedding. She came, they danced, and she too left the reception at some point without saying goodbye! What a kick in the pants!

                The good news is that my friend managed to still be a happy bride and everything else fell into its respective place. She’s down two so-called friends, but happily married for 14 years. Have you figured out yet that my friend is actually me? True story!

 Though it’s really a small part of the overall reception and quite often an overlooked detail, your wedding cake server set serves a very important function.  As you cut that first piece of wedding cake together, not only is the entire reception tuned in to this event, but the photographer will get many of your special photos during this exchange as well.  “Why not just get a knife?” you ask.  Proper etiquette suggests that the cake be served with a cake server.  The server is also a helpful tool for the traditional feeding of the cake to each other.

Knife and server sets are available in a variety of styles and most are engraveable!  When making your selection keep in mind that this wedding cake server set is something you will not only use but treasure through the years.  You can have an ornate set with pearl, beads, or crystal handles.  You can dress up a simple set with satin bows that match your color scheme.  You can find handles designed with specific themes in mind.  Some couples may even choose to use a set passed down from their family.  Although it doesn’t seem like a very important detail right now, just remember that this timeless accessory is something you can use for future special occasions like cutting your anniversary cake or your child’s birthday cake.  Who knows, you may even pass it down to your own children for their wedding day.