Far From the Pale. Soft, Romatic Weddings

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There is something so romantic about pale, soft colors. ~sigh~

After the last few years of bright, bold, contemporary look in weddings, soft is making a come back.

Pale doesn’t mean colorless. This table decor has cream, yellow, silver, green and blue in a shabby chic look.

champagne table decor{source}

The soft off white lace blends beautifully with the soft peach chiffon bridesmaids dresses.

peach-bridesmaid-dresses

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Not only are the colors soft, but the flowers in this bouquet from The Martha are soft and fluffy.

MSW peach bouquet{source}

Even when the design is over the top, these colors add a certain romance. Don’t you think?
Preston Bailey aisle

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The colors, the flowers chosen and the very restrained use of black as an accent are what this look is all about.

Pale pink & green bouquet{source}

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In Defense of the LBD

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I ran across a post on Blogger Brides today that I just had to address. A bride was describing her wedding: 7PM Catholic ceremony; Black & white with dark red accents. She said that she had always dreamed of having her house party in short black satin dresses. Problem is that now she is getting all kinds of feedback telling her that her ladies must be in floor length gowns. BAH!

First off, DO NOT let the peanut gallery make your decisions. It’s not their wedding, it’s yours! Period. The end.

Beyond that, who doesn’t love the little black dress? The ladies you have gathered around you for this momentous occasion are going to buy whatever you tell them. With the economy in the state it is, why not pick something that they really will wear again? Who won’t re-wear a LBD that they picked out?
The Little Black Dress from Nathan Taylor for 2Be Social
I have seen so many beautiful weddings that had the maids in LBDs with black hose and matching heels. What a beautiful look. Let each of your ladies pick their own LBD. Do some magic with hem length to add a bit of continuity for the formal pictures if you must. Add a matching accessory such as a feather fascinator or a clutch and you are good to go.

You can even have your ladies pick from a single collection.

Friend of the dish, Terri Hilferty at 2Be Bridal has taken her Nathan Taylor Social Collection, had every one of the dresses in it cut to cocktail length and made up in black. WOW At the collection reveal this summer there were 15 manni’s lined up, all in cocktail length, all black in every cut and fabric you can imagine*. She is selling it to the 2Be Salons as the LBD collection. How cool is that.


What’s more, since these are all a part of the same collection, she also had shrugs cut in all the fabrics. Same shrugs, different fabrics to match the fabrics in the collection.  There is your accessory and cover up for church. I am in love!

*Like I said, Terri is a friend of the Dish, so I showed up early and help stage the reveal. As I popped these beauties on the manni’s I was head over heels at how well made these dresses were. Terri has an amaing attention to detail.The Little Black Dress from Nathan Taylor for 2Be Social

Yep, lousy photo, but you get the idea.

Now we know why Christine IS NOT a professional photographer.

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Stamp Out Cookie Cutter Bridesmaids

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*You cannot expect your bridesmaids to conform to one look. The bridesmaids should feel lucky to be part of your big day-not pressured.

I found that quote on Blogger Brides this morning and I couldn’t agree more. One of the great things about the women we choose to surround ourselves with through our life is that they are all different. We love them all for different reasons.
Since you have picked these ladies to celebrate this important life event, why not celebrate those differences.
Hopefully they are there because they love and support you, not to be props for your wedding photos.Bridesmaids in different color dresses

To that end, I have put together some images to inspire you. If you will notice, in the best of these shots there is some continuity, whether it be style or color or length.

And finally, the ultimate tribute to friendship and style, Carrie Bradshaw’s wedding from SATC. Need I say more?Bride&Bridesmaids

The images are all from a thread on Yahoo Ask. Thanks to all the lovely posters. Nothing beat the collective brain power of a group that are all focusing on the same question.

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Mad about Green

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Maybe it’s the season, but I am suddenly mad about green. A pretty place to start to pick the colors for your wedding is to choose a base of one or two related greens, then add cream and an accent color for pop. You can almost not go wrong. This works especially well if you are planning an outdoor wedding.

For more inspiration, go to COLOURlovers and type green into the search box.

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Always A Bridesmaid…

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It’s about time! Everyone knows that a wedding is all about the bride but what about the supporting cast? There is an overload of information for brides on the web but not so much for the lovely ladies that have to deal with her. Bridesmaid Essentials.com launched yesterday to fill the gap in information.

Since it is a brand new site the communities aren’t packed yet but some of the things they are offering look like they might take off. If you think about it the average wedding has 5 bridesmaids and only one bride, right? If you get all of them together you should have a pretty big community with a lot in common (think Frankenbrides and ugly dresses).

I love the idea of their Flip That Dress page. List your used bridesmaids dress or pick up one that you might be able to use. How great would it be if you could get the entire wedding party to list theirs together, you might just save some other group of maids a few $$$ and a bunch of time. I spied a 2 piece Vera Wang maids gown for $60. That’s a bargain.

The one thing I would add is a page on how to remodel bridesmaid’s dresses so you really could rewear them. Once again, if you can get input from this potentially large community you could do some real damage to that corner of our closets filled with past gowns. Ya think??

Pass this site on to all the lovely ladies that are your supporting cast to make their live just a little brighter today.

They will thank you for it.

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The Fun in a Hyper-organized Wedding

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Back in September I posted the first installment in the saga of the Michigan wedding that friend of the Dish Courtney Hammons had the pleasure of participating in as a bridesmaid rather than the highly qualified wedding planner that she is. Well I finally wrangled the rest of the story out of her.

Let’s see if you find bits of this as funny as I do. The commentary at the end is purely my own; sometime an outsider sees thing a little differently. At least there weren’t any bomb scares at the wedding. Read Part I here and Part II here

Wedding Day – Sept 15th

7:30am and my mom is knocking on my hotel room door – I am being told that it is time to go get ready for a 5pm ceremony. Seriously what is wrong with this picture?1 So out I go in my powder blue sweat suit (that matches my mom, sister and all the other bridesmaids!!!)2 Once at the house of the parent’s of the bride the fun begins! I guess when you are doing hair and make-up on 18 people you got to start some time.3 Mom is first so that she can go back to the hotel and take care of my niece. It’s amazing that even when she get’s her hair done it looks just like she did it. Mom is back to the hotel with my sister and I settle in for a day of lounging around. By 1pm everyone is done with hair and make-up and we begin the task of getting everyone dressed. All the dresses are hung alphabetically (did I tell you we had to ship our dresses ahead of time)4 Some dresses are to big and others are to small but in the end everyone is in their dress and ready to help the bride put on her one of a kind bridal gown. She looks gorgeous and is so happy to be marrying my brother. The flowers arrive and I all can say is please consider the size and weight when choosing bouquets! The bride’s bouquet came in at 10lbs can you imagine that for the next 10 hours.5 Pictures went without incident at the house and once everyone was loaded into the 2 limos and the Bentley off to the ceremony. A beautiful ceremony it was but the pictures afterwards took FOREVER! Not only were we a hour late to the reception we somehow managed to miss the sunset shot. Now let me take a moment and explain the reception one room was for dinner and the other room was for the band and dancing. So we have everyone enter the dancing room for announcements, first dance (which the band did not know!!) and the father daughter dance. We than move everyone (250 plus people) to the dinner room and than towards the end of dinner we ask everyone back to the dancing room for the Horah and the mother son dance! Anyone else see some challenges here!6 Well that’s it! After a year of planning, parties and excitement it was all over in a matter of 8 hours! Off to Belize went the bride and groom. And back to Tennessee came my husband and me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  1. Do you have any idea how exhausted everyone is going to be by the end of this day? Sure the bride and groom are off to sleep it off in Belize but the rest of the world has to get back to their real lives.
  2. Please, please tell me they did not have “Bridesmaid” embroidered across the butt. Please.
  3. Ok if you subtract the two mothers and the bride that leaves 15 attendants. What! you asked your entire sorority to be brides maids???
  4. I don’t even know where to start. Hung alphabetically? OK then, that takes being organized to a new level. Add to that the “ship our dresses ahead of time” thing, which was so the mother could install identical bustles and you are bordering on obsessive. Can some one explain to me how long of a train a bridesmaids gown has to have to require that it be bustled?
  5. Piece of cake. You only thought that the reason a bride must spend the year before their wedding lifting weights was to tone their arms, it’s really so they can lug around 10 pounds of flowers in addition to the weight of their dress. Never forget that it’s not just a wedding – it’s a marathon. Train, train ,train!!!
  6. This is the one that cracks me up. I can only picture this crowd of 250 rising as a single unit and shuffling from room to room, sitting in unison and then repeating again and again. Reminds me a very well dressed, multicolored giant amoeba.

I am glad that Courtney survived with her marvelous sense of humor in tact.

I want to hear your tales of wedding excess, leave them in the comment section so we can all share in the joy.

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Virtual Wedding Planner Tool

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By and large I am not a fan of big box stores; I much prefer the hands on customer service at a local salon. Having said that, one of them has done something right.

David’s Bridal has launched a virtual wedding planning tool that I can see as the cause of countless hours spent online. Dress Your Wedding allows you to play around with all the many different aspects of the look of your wedding. You can customize the coloring and physical features of the bride and groom and all the members of the wedding party. Add a bridesmaid, delete a groomsman, shrink one to a ring bearer. Mad at the groom, insert his best friend, is after all a virtual world. What fun.

That is just the beginning of the fun. As you would expect you can play dress up to your hearts content (as long as you want something from David’s). Like the style of the dress but not the color? Change it.

Keep going and you can just move your wedding if you don’t like the location. They offer a variety of different ‘location’ backgrounds from which to choose. Of course you can also manipulate a variety of little things like flower color and such.

I wouldn’t say that this is the planning tool to end all others I’m just saying it is a heck of a lot of fun and even if you aren’t planning on shopping at David’s you can still play with their toys. Hehe

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