Wedding Trend: A No Cell Phone Ceremony

06/13/2013

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In our increasingly Internet-y age, it's harder and harder to find a spot free of cell phones and mobile technology. Look around you and there's likely someone Instagram-ing a photo, updating a Facebook status, or telling the world what they ate for lunch via Twitter. We have too much information about too many things coming from too many people.

Which may be why marrying couples are increasingly calling for guests to check their smart phones and cameras at the door.

What To Wear To A Summer Wedding–For $150 Or Less!

06/05/2013

If you're like us, you'll be heading to quite a few weddings over the next few months. 'Tis the season, which means you'll be tasked with the difficult job of finding the perfect thing to wear in a variety of venues. Maybe your friends are having a beach wedding, or a traditional church ceremony. Or maybe they've got a spooky Gothic theme.(We've been watching a lot of Four Weddings could you tell?) Whatever the wedding, we've got a dress perfect for the occasion. Click through to check out our choices for best summer wedding wear.

 

Such A Deal: Elizabeth Taylor's First Wedding Dress Is For Sale!

06/03/2013

 

Christie's/Wikimedia Commons

You always remember your first -- and in the case of Elizabeth Taylor, we're talking wedding dresses here. Taylor, who was almost as famous for her multiple marriages as she was for her extensive film career, was wed 8 times to 7 men. Her first wedding, though, was to Conrad Hilton -- yes, of those Hiltons -- when she was just 18. The couple were wed in front of 700 of their closest friends.

She married Connie in 1950, but the tumultuous marriage lasted less than a year. Taylor claimed that Hilton was an abusive alcoholic and a gambler, and divorced him after only nine months. But! The wedding dress seems to have majorly outlasted the nuptials. The princess-style dress with a sweetheart neckline is going up on the auction block at Christie's auction house in London at the end of June.

It took 15 people more than three months to create the gown, which is  expected to fetch anywhere between $45,000 and $75,000 at auction.

Would you spend a pretty penny on a celebrity owned gown?

 

Wise & Wonderful Bridal Wisdom From Randy To The Rescue's Randy Fenoli

05/31/2013

Randy To The Rescue, the new series from bridal expert Randy Fenoli, premieres tonight at 9/8 c -- and we can't wait. Randy really is the diamond in the center of the Say Yes To The Dress: Atlanta team. On Randy to the Rescue, he takes his show on the road, helping brides across the country have the wedding of their dreams.

Aside from being spot-on when it comes to picking out gowns, Randy's also pretty witty. After the jump, some of Randy's best and most wellknown quotes.

Would You Buy A Wedding Dress At Target? Because Now You Can

Dresses from Target's collection.

Target -- a one-stop shop where you can manage to spend hours of your life and hundreds of dollars on tons of crap you don't actually need. I love Target, but I am definitely a Target problem shopper (do they pump shopping stimulation fragrances into the air there or something?). And even though I have no plans for a wedding on the horizon, I could potentially see myself -- and possibly many others -- walking out of there with a wedding gown. Just because.

Target's new collection of wedding dresses are part of a new deal with the gown-maker Tevolio and range from $99.99 to $129.99. What would Randy and Lori say? The collection also includes a line of affordable bridesmaids dresses. So far, the collection's only being sold online, but in an era when women are opting to wear not one but, say, three different dresses to their wedding (one for the ceremony, one for the reception, and one for the after-party), well, this certainly could save you a lot of dough.

Teenage Girl Wears Wedding Dress To Prom For Dying Dad

05/30/2013

 

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Madison Dobas's dad Darrell was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer this past March and was given six months to live. Knowing that her father wouldn't likely make it to her graduation day or wedding day, the California, Pennsylvania, teen opted to give her father a heartfelt surprise.

 

Given that he wouldn't be there to attend her actual wedding -- someday off in the future -- Madison donned a white "wedding" gown to show her dad what a beautiful bride she would be.

“This is the only time he’ll get to see me in white,” she said. Madison's mother Brenda Cooper helped her daughter get ready for the dance 

“This is probably the last big event in her life they’ll be able to share together,” she said.

When Madison walked down the stairs in her white gown, her father was stunned. And though the tumor makes it difficult for him to speak, Darrell managed to murmer his blanket approval. "Beautiful, just beautiful," he said. [WTAE]

Whoops! Entire Wedding Party Falls In Lake

05/29/2013

Getting married is often referred to as "taking the plunge." Frank Fearon and Patricia Andrews did that -- literally -- at their recent lakeside wedding. The couple, along with entire bridal party, fell into a lake near Gainesville, Georgia, after the dock they were standing on gave way. There were a whopping 29(!) people in the bridal party, so it's not a huge surprise that the dock couldn't support everyone.

"The immediate reaction was, 'Is everyone OK?' And then it was, 'This is pretty funny," said the bride's brother, Chase Andrews.

 

Luckily no one was harmed --and the entire hilarious moment was caught on tape. Amazingly, only the bottom of Patricia's dress got wet, though several of her bridesmaids were thoroughly soaked.

This must be good luck, right?

 

Brides-To-Be, Do You Suffer From Pinterest Stress?

05/24/2013

Wedding images on Pinterest

Pinterest: A magical world where every cake looks perfect, every table-setting is gorgeous, and everybody's wedding dresses are immaculate confections. It's a beautiful world, that Pinterest universe, but it's also completely, totally, not realistic.

Still, that hasn't stopped many from comparing themselves--and their weddings--to the perfectly constructed world the site provides. In Pinterest-land, everyone's supposed to know how to shabby-chic a table, make a delicious souffle, and dress in the most gorgeous clothes. But what Pinterest doesn't take into account, of course, is how much time and money all this stuff costs.

It's causing problems for some wedding planners, who say Pinterest and other image-oriented inspriation sites give people unrealistic expecations of their own weddings. "Because everyone can see the same images, they want the same standard without regard to what their financial situation is," Fabienne Laveau, a Washington D.C., wedding planner, told the CSMonitor.

And a lot of people are using it. More than 48 million people--mostly women--now pin for pleasure, and wedding boards are hugely popular on the site.

What's the toll on people psychologically? Well, some Pinterest users say they've begun to feel inadequate in the face of so much perfection. Just like well-curated home and lifestyle blogs, Pinterest creates an alternate, unrealistic reality -- but one that many women unfortunately buy into. And that leaves many brides deeply disappointed when they realize they can't afford, or don't have the time, to create the lantern-lit, lily-centerpieced, lobster-serving wedding of their dreams.

Still, Pinterest can be a useful tool for brides, when it comes to collecting images for inspiration -- as long as they keep in mind that they're just pictures, and the real thing is so much better.

Christina Ricci's Designing Her Own Wedding Dress -- Would You?

05/17/2013

 

Kevork Djansezian/Staff/Getty Images

Christina Ricci is looking forward to marrying fiancee James Heerdegen. The 32-year-old actress wants to get all the details just right -- from the catering to the flowers to the venue. But she's also going one step further than most brides-to-be: She's designing her own wedding dress.

Says Ricci of the designing process, "it's fun! We are still in the initial sketching stages." She hasn't yet revealed which famous designer she's working with, but we're hoping it's somebody great like Valentino or Dior.

 

Several famous brides have had a hand in designing their own dresses -- from Blake Lively, who worked with Marchesa, to Anne Hathaway who donned a custom Valentino gown.

What does her fiance -- whom she met on the set of the tv series Pan Am -- think of it? “[Jimmy] is not really into fashion that much. He’s not even going to help plan the wedding. He’s working. He’s always working.”

So tell us: if you had the chance -- and the means -- would you design your own wedding dress? And if we're gonna have a wedding fantasy here -- who would be your dream designer to work with?

Share with us in the comments!

And don't miss Say Yes To The Dress: Atlanta and I Found the Gown tonight on TLC starting at 8/7 c.

[Hello]

--Julie Gerstein

From Wedding Dress To Throw Pillows? A Company That Will Transform Your Wedding Gown

05/10/2013

San Diego, California, attorney Lindsey Radoff bought a $3,500 Vera Wang wedding gown when she got married in 2010. The dress was gorgeous, but Radoff didn't know what to do with it after the wedding. "I thought, 'We spend so much time picking out a wedding dress or bridesmaid dress and we just let them sit in a closet," she told ABC News.

And that's how her business Old Borrowed New Reborn was born. Radoff, along with her twin sister Jennifer Berman take wedding gowns and bridesmaid dresses and turn them into sweet mementos and keepsakes. They've turned gowns into baby blankets, throw pillows, sachets and more.

"All of us hold onto these dresses; we have one girl who was a bridesmaid 10 years ago and she never parted with it," said Radoff. "We made a really cute throw pillow and picture frames. We've done lingerie from the dress. We've revamped their gown into a cocktail dress." 

The point for Radoff is that something so important should be used again and again.After all, if you spend forever shopping for it, shouldn't you get more than one use from it?

What do you think? Would you have your wedding dress turned into something else?