It’s no wonder that summer is such a popular time of year for weddings – your chances of getting rained on drops sizably, family vacation time is being cashed in, and you can almost guarantee a sunny day of happiness and frolic. The only problem is the potential for some serious warm weather. You don’t want your guests fried and flustered during your nuptials, so plan ahead! Here are some tips for beating the heat during your warm weather wedding:  
Shade it Up When you’re evaluating your wallet for your outdoor wedding, it might be easy to check “No” when you’re asked about optional tenting, but you should think about the shade opportunities of your space. If the weather gets severe enough, and you haven’t provided any shade, dehydrated guests will start dropping in energy, and fast. If you can’t pull off the tent, make sure there are umbrellas or trees or other sources of ample shade for your guests. At a more formal affair, you might even consider distributing individual shady umbrellas to your guests. Use the Programs Venues during the summertime (especially those without central air) tend to get a little warm. Many of the places where you find wedding stationary will likely have program hand fans – programs printed right on to hand-held fans for your guests. You can make them available at the front of your ceremony space or have your ushers distribute them. They’re fun and bright and might just keep everyone cool enough to live through the ceremony.

1. 
   Make some Baskets
   Courtesy baskets are an optional collection of goodies that many couples provide for their guests either in their hotel or during the reception. Though these baskets usually sport mouthwash and safety pins, think about also offering bottles of water and sunscreen (especially for out of town guests who might not have thought about it). Tie the baskets with ribbon that matches your wedding colors to keep everything cohesive and the baskets won’t look out of place at all. Your guests will thank you when an afternoon of sun doesn’t leave them looking a lobster-fied!

Wedding Cupcakes and Wedding Cupcake Accessories

Wedding Cupcakes

The new (and persistent) trend in wedding confection is wedding cupcakes, and it’s no big mystery as to why. Wedding cupcakes offers a cuter and easier option for the couple who aren’t interested in the hassle of a full-size cake, and they are just so darn adorable. The work as dessert, they work as favors, and wedding cupcakes can be styled to fit the look and feel of your wedding for a fraction of the price. Plus, with wedding cupcakes, you don’t have to skip all the fun accessories! Many brides opt for wedding cupcakes simply because they can be made at home (or by an experienced friend). If you chose to use a professional bakery for your wedding cupcakes, you can still save by making them unique to your wedding all on your own. Personalize wedding cupcakes with wrappers (not the birthday party wrappers of old, but posh, clean, stylish wrappers) and display cases such as miniature bell jars. With the right accessories, all wedding cupcakes fit in at every style of modern wedding.   Stack your wedding cupcakes up in a tower or place them gingerly at every place setting – with the right accessories, there’s no way to go wrong with wedding cupcakes.

With the prevalence of social media comes some uncharted etiquette territory. Facebook is a useful but dangerous tool when it comes to the details of your big day – from engagement to honeymoon. Keep the following tips in mind while you navigate your social network in the weeks and months leading up to your nuptials: Keep Your Shirt On!
(Figuratively, that is) The advancement of wedding details (and the initial engagement) could get any girl all flustered, but that doesn’t mean that you should leap to your computer desk and update the world the second it happens (you’ll probably want to tell your family first when you get engaged, yeah?). Your wedding details are important to you and a small group of close friends and family, and your social reach is probably quite a bit broader online. Complications will arise regarding people who aren’t invited, or worse, people who assume they’re invited, when you update your entire social sphere to the goings on of your wedding (especially for 6+ months). Plus, you want guests to be excited and surprised when they finally see the details of your wedding – don’t go spoiling the fun by posting all of your secrets early!   Be Careful with Whom You Chat Again, releasing wedding details to anyone on Facebook might send the wrong impression. Unless you’re planning on inviting everyone on your friends list (unlikely, yeah?), try to keep the wedding talk to a minimum online. If someone does ask about wedding details, it’s important not to give them the wrong impression by gushing and sending them dozens of links to wedding dress designers and neighborhood bakeries.  If they aren’t going to be invited to the big event, keep the details short and sweet, and address any miscommunications as soon as you can (privately!).
When Things go Wrong Every bride will eventually encounter a wall post from a second cousin or long-forgotten sorority sister who will ask about their “lost” or “guaranteed” invitation. It may be as innocuous as a “Hey! I better be invited, girl! ;)” or as serious as “I believe my invite may have gotten lost in the mail, please send a
replacement,” but both should be addressed with poise immediately. Don’t comment on their wall posting, but instead shoot them an email or give them a call. Make sure you explain that you weren’t able to invite everyone you wanted to, and set up a date for coffee after the honeymoon. Don’t let lingering comments lead to an unexpected guest at the event, or animosity within a family – yes, it’s rude to ask about an invitation online, but it’s not worth starting a public row over.

Enjoy your Honeymoon Apparel for as Long as You Can

Honeymoon Apparel

Honeymoon apparel is all about personalization. After the wedding is over, and you and your new husband or wife are ready to hit the beach and get away from it all, it’s still nice to get a little attention for your grand personal accomplishment. Honeymoon apparel is ready to give you that opportunity. There are always obvious honeymoon apparel options like bikinis and board shorts, but don’t think that your options run out there. Bridal t-shirts may have been fun in the weeks leading up to your big day (and in the salon the morning of), but they’re even more fun when they transition into honeymoon apparel. There’s no shelf life on a piece of great honeymoon apparel – wear it for as long as you want to flaunt your new Facebook relationship status. Honeymoon apparel tells the world exactly why you and your husband or wife just can’t get enough of each other at the dinner table, in the pool, or at the beach. It’s less obvious if you’re wearing honeymoon apparel on the slopes, but there’s always the spare moment in the lodge! Though there’s no cap on how long you can wear your honeymoon apparel, it’s best to start as soon as you can!

Bridal Hair Pins for the Formal and Casual

Bridal Hair Pins

For the bride looking to adorn her do without all the fancy white fluff of a veil or tiara, bridal hair pins might just be you. Usually more casual than their beaded and bedazzled cousins (but not necessarily!), bridal hair pins are an excellent opportunity to accent your stellar look on your big day. Bridal hair pins come in all shapes and sizes, and you’re almost guaranteed to find one that fits your unique look.   So what can you expect from bridal hair pins? Often adorned with feathers, fabric, tulle, and/or flowers, bridal hair pins are a colorful and fun way to wear something in your hair without needing a separate truck for your look. Bridal hair pins are simple and emphatic, and they’ll fit right in in a church, a backyard, a beach, of even at events before and after your wedding. Consider bridal hair pins that fit your style and/or your bridal colors. With sets of bridal hair pins, think about selecting matching pieces for your maids and a more ornate piece for yourself (imagine four white fabric flowers in the hair of your maids and an identical one in your do, plus a peacock feather accent!).  Bridal hair pins are a simple, colorful way to add to your look without subtracting from your budget.

Wedding Shoes: a Pair for Every Reason

Wedding Shoes

  A bride doesn’t just wear one pair of wedding shoes during her big day. After all, the big event is more of a marathon that requires something a little sturdier than a pair of heels to make it through. Wedding shoes for the day of your nuptials will range from a pair of special fuzzy embroidered slippers (because everything should be personal and beautiful on your wedding day), wedding flip flops (don’t ruin that pedicure!), wedding slip-ons (for the dance floor), and a good solid pair of honeymoon sandals. Your wedding shoes will carry you down the aisle and beyond, so be prepared! First, some wedding shoes that will help you make it through the morning will be your slippers. Think about getting a few matching pairs for you and your maids so your “getting ready” pictures will look cute and unified. They’re also a great gift if you get them embroidered! Your next pair of wedding shoes will be your flip flops. These wedding shoes are great for a beach shindig or just the trip from the salon to the car – again, these wedding shoes are also great gifts for your maids. Slip-on wedding shoes can be shared with your wedding party or even your entire female guest list if you’re feeling generous. Slip-on wedding shoes that fit comfortably in a makeup bag will keep your tootsies comfortable all through the night. Don’t forget your favorite pair of wedding shoes: honeymoon sandals! No beach vacation is complete without some bragging rights on your feet!

Bridal Party Shirts for Any Time

Bridal Party Shirts

Your bridal party will be together on several occasions as one unit before the big day: think bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, and any late nights where you’re frantically calling your maids to help you finish hot gluing ribbons to programs. Everyone will also be together on the morning of the wedding, primping and preening to look their best for your nuptials. A great way to get everyone a fantastic gift (and promote unity and a team-like attitude) is to spring for bridal party shirts! Bridal party shirts are a great gift for any part of the planning process: get them for the girls the day before the wedding so they can wear them during the morning, or hand them out when you first select your wedding party. Bridal party shirts work any time, and “transfers” make it easy to make any shirts bridal party shirts! The great thing about bridal party shirts is that everyone will look like a team in candid photos – during the bachelorette party, the rehearsal dinner, or even under the hair dryer! Bridal party shirts aren’t just for the adults in the group, either. Most flower girls love feeling like they’re an important part of your day, and bridal party shirts will make them feel included. Don’t be surprised if you see your flower girl wearing bridal party shirts to school even after the wedding!

Sometimes a wedding can feel more like a mud marathon, especially with the weeks and months of pre-wedding parties to plan and attend. Sometimes these parties can be a weird etiquette gray-area, so how do you know who plans what? Who decides the guest list for the bridal shower? Who needs to be invited to the bachelorette party? Is it EVER okay to throw yourself an engagement party? If you’re lost, read on!   An Engagement Party
Who Will Host?: Typically, the engagement party is thrown by the parents of the couple, though no one is obligated to throw one. This isn’t one to plan for yourself; you really should wait for someone to volunteer.
Who Will Go?: An engagement party is often just family, though you should always be careful to try and invite only those who will be invited to the big event. The one hosting and funding the event is the one who decides the guest list, but you might want to be conservative in your recommendations if you’re asked.
Etiquette: An engagement party isn’t a very common pre-wedding shindig, so breaking etiquette isn’t a big concern. If you’re being thrown an engagement party before wedding plans have really started, you probably haven’t created a registry, so it’s unlikely that guests will ask for that info. A Bridal Shower
Who Will Host?: It’s possible that several people will volunteer to throw you a bridal shower, but you should try to accept only one or two.
Who Will Go?: Again, this is an event where only people invited to the wedding should be invited. You aren’t obligated to invite every female guest to the shower (cramming 50 women into a kitchen is logistically difficult).
Etiquette: Thank you cards are customary for bridal showers, just be sure that you aren’t having guests fill out their own addresses on envelopes as they watch you open gifts. Take the time to thank each of your guests with a lovely card, as this is an event where gifts will likely be “showered” upon you.   A Bachelorette Party
Who Will Host?: This is usually one for your bridal party, though your Maid of Honor doesn’t have to take the lead. Usually the maids split the bill, but that isn’t a requirement.
Who Will Go?: Bachelorette parties are often much smaller than showers, and many brides like to keep them for quality time with the bridal party before the big day. Again, make sure that everyone invited will also be invited to the wedding!
Etiquette: Try to keep your focus on your own party instead of checking on your fiancé all night via text. This is supposed to be a night for you and your girls – enjoy it! A Rehearsal Dinner
Who Will Host?: You and your fiancé do! The rehearsal dinner is your time to thank your wedding party for their participation in your wedding, and this is one event where the bride and groom usually foot the bill. Sometimes the parents will take the check, but don’t count on it – try to throw your own rehearsal dinner.
Who Will Go?: The people in your wedding party – that means ring bearers, those doing readings and prayers, the families, the bridesmaids – everybody.
Etiquette: No one is asking you to host a dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town; a backyard picnic is more than enough. This is your opportunity to gather everyone involved with your wedding together and thank them collectively. If you’ve prepared gifts (or some members of the wedding party want to give a speech, and there isn’t enough time during the reception), this is the perfect time.

Tell the World with Honeymoon Swimwear

 

Honeymoon Swimwear

Once the stress of planning a wedding is over, many brides can’t wait to kick their heels off and slip into something more comfortable for a week or two. A couple’s honeymoon is often their first chance to relax after the higgledy piggledy of the last few hectic months, and they’ll probably be slipping into their honeymoon swimwear as soon as possible. Of course, not every couple will find honeymoon swimwear appropriate for their vacation needs (snow skiing usually calls for something a little sturdier), but honeymoon swimwear is some fun post-wedding apparel that any beach getaway calls for. So why indulge in some honeymoon swimwear? Well, your wedding is often when you’ll look your best. You’ve probably spent months refining your body to its absolute peak – show it off with honeymoon swimwear! You might also want to show everyone poolside exactly why the two of you are so snug in the hot tub. You only get to be newlyweds on your honeymoon once, so honeymoon swimwear is a great way to show it off. Honeymoon swimwear is often emblazoned with “JUST MARRIED” or “BRIDE,” so you’re always a little more likely to get that Long Island on the house. With so many reasons, what’s keeping you from strutting your stuff in some brand spankin’ new honeymoon swimwear?

Wonderful Wedding Programs

Wedding Programs Wedding programs are an important part of the wedding ceremony lineup, and how you decide to craft and distribute them can be just as important. Many brides choose to make their own wedding programs, and kits for wedding programs are always a safe and fun way to take the DIY route. So how should you make sure that your wedding programs are available to all of your guests? Are there any fun, unique ways to make and distribute wedding programs? The short answer is “Yes.” Wedding programs in fan form are the most popular design for the quirky bride who wants to assure her guests’ comfort. These wedding programs often come in kits and are easy to assemble in use. Arrange a get-together evening with your maids a few nights before the wedding for a quick and easy assembly line that will have your wedding programs put together in no time. Any wedding programs that come in “kit” form are bound to be less expensive than a trip to the printers, and they’re often much more fun to assemble. Now, in order to make sure all of your guests receive wedding programs, there are two sure-fire strategies: you can either have an usher hand them out at the entrance to your ceremony, or you can have them placed individually on guests’ chairs. For an outdoor ceremony, it might be wise to have something that weighs the wedding programs down to keep them from flying away, such as river rocks. If you don’t like that style but aren’t employing the use of ushers at your ceremony, you can always display your wedding programs in a decorative basket at the front. Make sure they’re nice and noticeable!

Many brides wonder about the necessity of “save-the-dates” as they compile the charges that pile up during the wedding planning process, but they do have their purpose within the framework of your nuptials. Why should you bother - and how should you go about creating and distributing your preemptive wedding stationary? Read on for some quick tips for your save-the-dates: Guests from Out of Town:
Save-the-Dates are important for your out-of-town guests. A (timely) wedding invitation won’t make it to their front door in time for travel plans and timely accommodations (especially if your nuptials fall during a high-travel season) – they need to know well ahead of time that they should be planning to travel for your wedding. There is such a thing as “too early” for save-the-dates, however. Ten to six months ahead of time should be plenty warning for your far-away friends and relatives.   The Wedding Website:
Your save-the-date is a great place to debut the address of your wedding website. It doesn’t have to be perfectly finished yet, but allowing your guests to check out a few pertinent details can’t hurt, specifically locations of hotels with blocks of reserved rooms or registry information for pre-wedding parties. Save-the-Date Etiquette:
Save-the-dates come with their own set of etiquette rules, so don’t wield them without thought. Save-the-dates are not like wedding announcements – everyone who receives a save-the-date must then receive an invitation to your big day. The same goes for the opposite – make sure, if you plan to send out save-the-dates, that everyone invited to your wedding receives one. If not, the people who don’t get one will feel like they weren’t originally intended as guests.   Some Creative Save-the-Date Ideas:
Save-the-dates are fun because you can be so creative with them. Many brides opt for magnets, postcards, or even stop-motion YouTube videos to stand as their save-the-dates. Just make sure that if you are going to DIY your save-the-dates, try to keep it simple. 200 balloon printed save-the-dates sound wonderful until you’re staying up until 3am with a hot glue gun and your last nerve. Have fun!

The Right Alternative Wedding Bouquet

Alternative Wedding Bouquet

Florists are a big part of wedding day expenditures, which is why many brides are eschewing big-budget bouquets in favor of an alternative wedding bouquet that better speaks to their style needs. An alternative wedding bouquet does not equal plastic flowers stapled together last minute, it's actually quite the contrary. A lovingly-made alternative bouquet might be just what you need to make your big day as special as it can be.   So what, exactly, is an alternative wedding bouquet composed of? The short answer is - whatever you want! If you want an alternative wedding bouquet fashioned from seashells, ribbons, silk, crystals, or anything else you can think of, you're in luck - am alternative wedding bouquet is already assembled and waiting for you. This type of bouquet is wonderful for beach brides who believe that azaleas have no place at a bonfire, or just the sensitive bride whose nose just can't stomach a perfumed aisle on her wedding day. An alternative wedding bouquet is an exciting alternative that will turn heads as you walk down the aisle!   An alternative wedding bouquet is also much easier to preserve than its fresh cousin - keep the memories alive forever without the expensive preservation process!