Four Ways to Show Your Creativity at Your Wedding

Long gone are the days of cookie-cutter weddings with white roses, tulle-tied chairs and assorted mints and nuts. Today’s brides are getting creative. And with more options than ever, it's easy to kick your creativity up a notch and inject a bit of fun flavor into your wedding day.

Not sure where to start?

I’ll help.

Here are four ways you can be creative with your wedding.

1. Accessories
I went to a high-school sweetheart wedding once where all of the bride’s attendants pranced down the aisle wearing a candy ring pop on their left hand. It was fun and youthful and reflected the couple’s jovial nature.

At another wedding, the bride wore an elegant floor-length white dress, but when she knelt for the marital blessing, bright red shoes peeked out from beneath her hem. It was a fun surprise for the guests and it showed the bride’s fun side.

Keeping with the shoe theme, choose a variety of rainbow shades and ask your attendants to each wear a different color sandal. Keep in mind, this only works if your wedding colors are basic and if the girls are wearing a simple solid dress, such as black or brown.

Not into mix-match shoes? Then how about having your toes painted in a bright blue hue to accommodate your something blue. Take it a step further and have your attendants paint their nails, as well.

2. Attendants
We’ve listed ways you can be creative when popping the question to your wedding attendants … but here is one more idea.


I was recently invited to be in the “wedding posse” for one of my closest friends. She created cards for each of us, glued our faces onto the most tragic bridesmaid dresses she could find and tied them together with ribbon and accessories. They were a wonderful souvenir for each of us and they showcased the bride’s creative talents. If you want to see how she made them, read up on it here.

3. Stationery
In keeping with the creative stationery theme, let’s quickly brainstorm all of the paper materials you need for your Big Day.

- Save the Dates
- Invitations
- Reply Cards
- Thank You Cards
- Programs
- Menu Cards
- Table Cards
- Escort Cards
- Place Cards

Now … surely with all of those stationery items we can get creative.

First of all, look through magazines and websites for some of your favorite ideas and think of ways you can reproduce those yourself. You can print cards such as place cards, escort cards, menu cards or programs at home then add theme-appropriate embellishments. This will be a fun project for you and your friends and your guests will think you spent a fortune.

4. Extras
I always say the success is in the details, so think of other ways you can do something new-something your guests haven’t seen before. In each element of my wedding, I asked myself what I could do that would be different.


One of the best things I created was a personalized wedding day activity book for the kiddos. I placed one at each child’s seat, along with a napkin full of colored pencils and an Italian chocolate “Surprise” egg. The kids loved them-in fact, several parents were caught playing along, as well.

What are some of the most creative things you’ve seen at weddings? What do you hope to do to make your wedding more unique?

Photos courtesy of Andrea Unplugged and wedding pictures from CMoore at My Bella Vita

An At-Home Wedding

For some couples there is no place like home when it comes to the perfect wedding celebration. Just remember that everything that is normally taken care of at a rented wedding venue - like a hotel, function hall or even specialty location - is now your responsibility.

Here are some tips if to help you along if you're having an at-home wedding...

Figure out your maximum guest count. Determine if that number will fit comfortably in your home or yard. If you are holding the reception outdoors and have the room for it, call in a tent professional to determine how the wedding could flow from indoors to an outdoor "room" such as a tent. See what your options are for adding this structure. Most tent companies will provide a complimentary consultation - and it will give you a good idea of how many people you can actually invite.

Check your power. Make sure that you will have enough power for live music or extra lighting. Don't blow a fuse at the wedding -- have a professional electrician check it out first and let you know where you stand.

Check with your city regarding live music, assembly, garbage disposal, tent erection and other ordinances. Call your local departments and make sure you are in compliance with all laws and regulations. Know what time noise becomes a nuisance. You don't want a police raid just as you are about to throw the bouquet.

Ensure that there is enough parking! Check with the neighbors to see if your guests may use their driveways or consider a valet service. The valet can keep track of the cars, and where they are parked, and be able to bring them for the guests when they are ready to leave. At one at-home wedding I attended, the couple had arranged with a small van service to shuttle guests back and forth between a public parking lot two blocks away and the home.

Another good point here is that if you have neighbors who might be annoyed about your wedding celebration, invite them to the wedding. This way they are part of the event and won't be bothered. Even if they don't attend, you've made the gesture and created goodwill so that you can relax and celebrate.

Just remember that although you are holding the wedding at home, doesn’t mean that you have to provide homemade everything – or even anything. Decide what you want your level of involvement to be as far as preparation, set-up and service and then make plans to suit your budget, your wishes and your time. The point of this type of wedding is to keep it easy and relaxed.

Tomorrow, we will talk about more at home tips that you can use for your wedding celebrations!

Unique Wedding Gifts

I just spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to buy a wedding gift for Friday. The bride isn’t registered anywhere. The couple is combining two households and starting a third one, so in some ways they are getting rid of "stuff." That is all very nice, but doesn’t help someone like me who is trying to buy them a nice gift!

I decided that getting them a practical or traditional wedding gift was not quite what was needed. So I headed over to Pier 1 Imports and decided on a piece of decorative glass, artistically designed. It can sit on a wall or on a table and, if necessary, serves as a nice platter for hors d’oeuvres. With a nice, personalized printable wedding card expressing my sentiments, it will do nicely as a gift.

Just think, if I hadn’t procrastinated, what a really unique wedding gift I could have gotten the couple. Besides money, there is a whole host of gifts that you can give a couple who have everything!

One of the nicest, most altruistic gifts is giving to a charity in the couple’s name. Sites like Changing the Present™ offer you the opportunity to give gifts that promote worthy causes like planting trees, educating a child or adopting a tiger to stop illegal poaching. Not just the couple will remember your thoughtful gift, but the causes they help will remember the gift too!

If that sort of gift is too esoteric for you, consider other unique wedding gifts, from a cubist picture frame to a personal bath caddy or hall gallery wall frame. Other gifts can be a gift certificate to an upscale restaurant or a night at a nearby bed and breakfast.

Print out a wedding moneyholder card and instead of money enclose "coupons" for services or promises of work to be done for the couple’s new home – painting, lawn mowing, planting, laying tiles, etc.

Give a "Wine of the Month" or "Fruit of the Month" club or some other monthly variety membership for 3 months to a year. These are gifts that keep on giving for months after the main event and remind the couple of your thoughtfulness.

If you put a little thought into it, you can come up with some terrific gifts that will make what you give the bride and groom something that they can appreciate for years to come.

Pre-Planner Planning

Weddings are huge events – even the smallest of them – that take a lot of organizing and expert precision. I once heard a mother-of-the-bride describe a wedding as a military operation with wedding favors and not bullets. (Not sure if we need to go that far...)

One of the things I want to do is examine how you make this important day manageable and exciting.

TV networks have shows that tout “Whose Wedding is it Anyway?" Or who can forget “Bridezilla?” Wedding planning has become big business and wedding planners persuade unsuspecting couples into lavish extravaganzas that are often budget-busters. I know it is a secret dream of every girl to have a Princess Diana wedding, but for many, that is totally out of the question!

If you are going to hire a wedding planner, it is important to have an idea of what you want to do, how much you want to spend and a general concept of the atmosphere you want to convey to your guests.


Now even before you sit down to figure out the budget for your special day, you have to get organized. There are a number of areas you have to consider even before you discuss it with a planner.

I suggest that you have some wedding ideas in mind before you and the parents (if they are helping defray the costs) sit down and brainstorm just the type and style of wedding you want to have.

Before we talk about a checklist (that will be in a later blog), let’s talk about some generalities:

Ø When do you want to get married? What time of year?
If you want to get married in the winter, you will have to take into account severe weather conditions if you live in a snowy region, or rain in other parts of the country. In the summer, you need to consider severe heat and nature's other furies if you plan to wed outside.


Ø Where do you want to get married?
Do you want to do a destination wedding? Are you interested in a Las Vegas wedding, replete with Elvis impersonators? Do you want a huge church wedding, a wedding chapel or a garden wedding at home?

Once you have decided on these general questions, you are also going to have to consider:

• costs
• attendants
• wedding dresses
• wedding decorations
• wedding favors
• a whole raft of other topic areas!

We will consider all of these and how to best incorporate them into your grand scheme in posts to come.