Wedding Fairs: Cautionary Advice

Wedding Fairs are wonderful things with lots of exciting ideas for brides and grooms. But, (how did you know that was coming?)

You want to go off to wedding fairs prepared to take notes rather than purchase (unless you already know exactly what you’re looking for!)

These events are filled with lavish excess and that’s a ball to expe­ri­ence. They are not, however, neces­sarily filled with things you need for your wedding. And they’re built to get you to buy. So be careful. Don’t blow the budget!

Enjoy them, sample all the pastries and rub wonderful creams on your hands. And then go home and make some sound deci­sions about what you want at your wedding and what real­is­ti­cally, given that your future happi­ness is still inter­linked with your finan­cial ground­ed­ness, you can afford!

New Years, Weddings and Wedding Priestesses!

Well, Happy New Year, my friends! I seem to have taken a short hiatus (unan­nounced even to myself). I had a wonderful holiday, full of singing and fmialy and friends and food. Sweetpea and I even did some recording which was so much fun!

But it’s January, and time for putting into motion all the plans and dreams from before the holiday madness inter­vened. So, look here for more helpful hints and thoughts about your rela­tion­ship, your wedding and your marriage. You’ll want to check in occa­sion­ally on the writing I do for Examiner.com and Over at Ezine arti­cles (check out the right-​​hand side of the page.) and this week, no really, I promise!, you’ll get a glimpse of my new monthly newsletter (called, what else? The Wedding Priestess!) with all sorts of reflec­tions about gettin’ hitched from me and from some of my most beloved wedding colleagues!

It’s going to be a great year. After all, you’re getting married! Or you’re woroking on a really wonderful rela­tion­ship! Let’s cele­brate together!

Believing in you and in your love,

Ann

Fireworks Champagne Glass

Start to Develop your Holiday Traditions

Here’s a great way to start figuring out what really matters to you in your life. If you do the work for the holi­days, you’ll have a head­start when you start plan­ning your wedding. What? You didn’t know you get to have your wedding be about your values? Now you do!

Before you start making a lot of holiday plans that you might get stuck in forever, why not figure out what makes each of you and both of you happy about the holidays?

  1. What do you like to do? What are your favorite holiday memo­ries? How can you repeat them?
  2. What do you care about? From cookies, to caroling to volun­teering? What do the holi­days say to you?
  3. Who do you want to spend time with? Are holi­days about friends? family? people in need? You get to choose!
  4. What holiday tradi­tions would you like to estab­lish in your own home? When you’re newly engaged or newly married, it can be easily assumed that you’ll go to other people’s houses. That may not be the only way you want to have the holidays.

Tip: Talking about these things and plan­ning ahead will serve you in very good stead in  the years to come. It will also estab­lish a pattern of discerning what really matters to you which will be great for the wedding and for your life. Why not have your­selves a happy little holiday season?

Last thought on Wedding Programs

You don’t need to have a wedding program. They seem to be a fairly recent trend. All through the 80s, when performing weddings in non-​​church locales, people managed to get married without them.

I succumbed, I admit it. But my wedding cere­mony was involved and had respon­sive read­ings. (I am the Wedding Priestess, after all!)

But if your wedding cere­mony is straight­for­ward, you don’t have to have one. Your bridal party will be intro­duced at the recep­tion. And they’re not inex­pen­sive, even if you design them.

Tip: consider whether or not you’re having wedding programs because you need them or because the wedding industry thinks you need them.