Inspired by this thread and BiblioCat’s comment.
I’m getting married next week, so all this is fresh in my mind. I agree with BiblioCat, save the date cards are very stupid. Invitations are just as bad. My groom-to-be and I used a print-your-own card kit. Nice and a fraction of what traditional cards would cost.
I thought wedding cakes were over priced. I finally had to except that they’re expensive and chose a very modest one.
Alterations on wedding dresses!
I paid as much to have my dress altered so it would fit me as I did for the dress. :mad:
It gave me quite the Napoleon complex- it’s another example of how things are rigged against short or average-height people. Wedding dresses are designed for someone who’s 5’9" (5’7" in 2" heels). I’m 5’3", and was wearing lower heels than that.
I figured out later- Mr. Neville is 5’9" (which ISTR is about average height for American men). Clearly, we were going about this all wrong- he was supposed to be wearing the dress, not me.
One more irony about wedding dresses being made for tall people:
Queen Victoria, who popularized the tradition of the big white wedding dress, was 5’0".
Yes! I forgot about that :smack:
My beloved will be wearing a kilt, so we’ll both be in “dresses.” 
When my friend got married, as my wedding gift to her I pearled her veil, and also took fairly plain though nice reticella lace appliques and pearled them as well. Dressed up her fairly plain and inexpensive gown fantastically, and at a serious fraction of what the wedding shop was charging. Their appliques were using the little plastic pearls, I used real seed pearls. I think at the time each 16 inch strand of seed pearls was about $4US from my gem pusher, and I used about $100US of pearls for what would have been several hundred dollars op plastic fake pearls.
Why yes, I also do opus anglorum as well, why do you ask
What’s that?
Nice wedding gift idea, btw.
Wedding photographers. At least where I got married (quebec) they are all part of a guild or something, so it’s all pre-determined packages of what pictures you can get and for a minimum price, etc. TOTAL waste of money.
Don’t get a guy or girl that advertises as a wedding photographer. See if you can hire another photographer, like a portraitist. That’s what we did and paid a fraction of the price for twice the amount of time all the other people quoted us. He was amazing, took nearly 200 pictures, made us a nice cd of them, and all the pictures are fantastic.
I don’t know where to begin to start…
Back in the post-roman and pre 1300s freshwater/river pearls [seed pearls] were very common in the british isles, so any sort of embellishment that included a lot of seed pearls was called ‘english work’ or opus angelorum. It can be as ‘plain’ as just a single solid strand of pearls outlining a veil or outlining an applique, to working seed pearls into the little crevices. Just go to any fabric store that has a small wedding section and look at the appliques with pearls and sequins for craptastic versions=)
One tip we were given when planning our wedding was to, wherever possible, “forget” to mention that the service you are discussing is for a wedding. Service providers will commonly jack up the price of their offering when they know a wedding is involved. Obviously this will not work for a cake, but it might for other services.
For example, we booked a limousine to take us from our reception to the airport. We never said anything about a wedding, only that we needed a ride to the airport, and that we wanted a stretch limousine. We got the standard airport rate. Had we booked the “wedding package” we would have had a white limo and a bottle of “champage,” (probably Cold Duck) for 3x the price.
As it was, when the limo driver saw that this was a wedding, she seemed sorry that she didn’t know. So on the way to the airport, she stoped by a liquor store so we could run in and grab a halfway decent bottle of sparkling wine at non-limo-company rates.
Our reception was a bit unusual, in that we had it outdoors at a friends house as an afternoon barbecue. We had it catered by a local restaurant, but once again said nothing about a wedding. Saved some there, too.
For those little gifts the bride and groom hand to guests:
the ones for the guys, we got them on discount at a factory that was closing. They’re a bottle opener/letter opener. The gents spent hours turning them around and saying: “but it’s a (the other thing) opener as well! LOOK!” And the guys at my table weren’t even drunk.
the ones for the gals, we bought the materials and made ourselves. SIL is from Zaragoza; we bought a Zaragoza-only kind of candy, lace-trimmed white silk hankies, and these strips of cloth “the length of the statue of Our Lady of the Pillar” which are also typical from Zaragoza. The strips of cloth were red (my homeland’s color). We packaged the candy in the hankies, tied them with the strips.
Cost for The Usual Stuff from a wedding stuff store: over $3000. Cost for us: less than $300 and a couple days spent tying candy inside hankies.
Save-The-Date cards? Egads, that’s got to be good for an upcharge of what, a buck each?
Must be a new innovation from the bridal industry as I’ve never seen them, but I’ve also not had a wedding invite in my hands for a couple of years. I guess people were wising up to the uselessness of that slip of vellum tucked into the card, so they needed another porkbarrel item to stuff into the envelope.
Honestly, I don’t quite get wedding cakes. Yes, they’re pretty, but they tend to taste like sugary sawdust, due to sitting around for too long while getting decorated. I’d much rather have normal desserts that taste good.
I think wedding dresses (and other fancy dresses that are meant to be floor length) are made for tall women because it’s much easier to chop off a bunch of skirt if a short woman happens to buy it than to try to add if a tall woman is wearing it. I just kicked off my own Great Wedding Dress Hunt yesterday, and it was weird having walking being a two-person operation - I needed to pick up the (unaltered, overlong) skirts so that I could walk in them, and the saleslady followed behind with the train.
I’ve never heard of the couple giving small gifts to the guests - is that a regional thing, or because nearly all the weddings I’ve ever been to are those of Orthodox Jews who happen not to do that?