Dreaming of a Perfect Wedding?

Wedding Video - A Memorable Keepsake

noreply@blogger.com (Adlene Johnston) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:45:00 +0000

Hiring a wedding photographer has always been a pretty straightforward affair. Most photographers, after all, have references, a portfolio, and a distinctive style that is easy to identify. You can decide what kind of wedding photographs you want by seeing what is available. Do you want ones that look staged and perfect, or ones that look more natural and spontaneous? Do you want to take most of your wedding photographs before the actual event, or do you want the photographer to catch everyone in action. Going to a couple professional photographers, you can easily make up your mind and hire someone who does things just the way you like.

Getting wedding movies made, however, can be much more difficult. There are so many wedding video choices to make that it can be baffling. As a matter of fact, not everyone hires professionals to do their wedding videos. With wedding photographs, you see, the key is to get a limited number of perfect pictures. You want a small album filled with photos that perfectly capture the events. With a wedding video, however, there are many different choices to be made.

Some people simply want to capture the event as a keepsake. Many families I know don't even hire a wedding videographer. Instead, they will pass around one or several camcorders, letting everyone take a turn at it. Sometimes, this gets a better result. You see, having a family member sticking a camcorder in your face is much less offputting than some professional you don't know. Unfortunately, there are disadvantages to this wedding video approach as well. For one, it is harder to get it professionally edited. Unless someone in your family is very good with editing video clips, you might have to deal with a rough, uncut finished product.

If you have the money to spend, I recommend using both approaches. You can have a professional marriage movie made, while allowing a few relatives to film their own wedding video. That way, you get the best of both worlds. You have a wedding video that is seamlessly assembled, professional, and down to earth, and one that is a little bit quirkier and rough around the edges. If you don't like one, the chances are the other one will work out. Best of all, you will have even more wonderful keepsakes to help you treasure your special day. All in all, the more recordings you make, the better!

Outdoor Wedding Is Everyone's Dream

noreply@blogger.com (Adlene Johnston) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 08:01:00 +0000

As an outdoor wedding reception planner for the rich and famous, I have pretty much seen it all. I have planned outdoor weddings in almost any location you could think of. I have planned garden weddings, of course, and done them in great numbers. When a lot of people think of the stars, they picture the extravagant headlines of tabloids, but the reality is often much more banal. Usually, the rich want private outdoor weddings, free from the scrutiny of the press and the paparazzi. A garden wedding is just the thing.

Of course, these outdoor weddings aren't your typical garden parties. When most people think of a garden party, the picture a humble event, held in the backyard around the old picnic table. Maybe if you have a little bit of money, you will buy new tables and have some landscaping done, but nothing extravagant.

The weddings I have planned, however, have gone beyond anything that most people can imagine. People with the most extravagant, elaborate gardens will tear them down completely and have them completely redone in order to have the wedding of their dreams. They will not hire normal landscapers, but rather famous architects, people who specialize in harmonizing an environment with the surrounding buildings. Rather than hiring a single wedding photographer, they will often hire entire film crews, occasionally calling in favors from producers, directors, or cinematographers that they know. Although most of these stars are divorced within the next year or so, the sky is still the limit when it comes to wedding planning.

Of course, when people ask me about the outdoor weddings I have planned for famous people, they don't want to hear about garden parties. They want to hear about the truly bizarre. I have seen them as bizarre as they come. One celebrity who will remain nameless had a certain fascination with the desert. He had me design one of the most ambitious and difficult weddings parties I have ever had to pull off. It was in the middle of the Sahara Desert, completely surrounded by miles and miles of nothing. I basically had to design and build a virtual oasis, symbolic – at least in his mind – of the oasis of his love. Needless to say, like many of the more extravagant outdoor weddings, this one did not mark a lifelong commitment. Unfortunately, they were divorced six or eight months, if I remember correctly.

Are Pass On Wedding Bridal Gowns For You?

noreply@blogger.com (Adlene Johnston) — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 11:49:00 +0000

The very fact that people regularly pass on wedding bridal gowns to the next generation tells you something about the tradition of weddings in our culture. It is refreshing to know that, while so many things change in our society, some things stay the same. Although some people like to get the latest fashion in bridal wedding gowns, many people treasure antique wedding dresses above all else. It gives a sense of continuity to families, and brings back old memories of previous wedding and forgotten ancestors. Although wedding bridesmaid dresses are seldom ever used in other wedding parties, many people believe that bridal dresses get better with age. In reality, however, it is not so simple.

When I was planning my wedding ceremony with my hubby, I was very excited about inheriting a wedding bridal gown from my mother. It had been in my family for generations, and I loved anything traditional. Although in many ways I am a very modern woman, I love old clothing, antique furniture, and other things that have the feeling of antiquity. I had never seen my mother's wedding bridal gown, but I had a clear picture of it in my head.

Unfortunately, that clear picture didn't really adequately reflect the appearance of wedding bridal gowns that have been locked in closets for several decades. I had no idea what kind of shape that wedding bridal gown was in, and had no way of anticipating it. You see, no one had opened the closet for years and looked inside. They had all assumed that it would perfectly preserve all of the clothes within, but they were wrong. They all looked much worse to wear, particularly those dresses that had been in the family for several generations. Despite my wishes, I now had to go shopping for wedding bridal gowns.

This actually turned into a great opportunity for me. My hubby was surprised at how quickly I got over the ruined wedding dress and got into picking out my own. I would spend hours looking at the photos of wedding bridal gowns on the Internet, trying to choose just the right one. Although it took me a while, it was fun to get so excited about it. I have to say that the dress that I picked out looked even more beautiful than my grandmother's dress had in the old wedding photos, and certainly better than it looks now!

Wedding Decorating Is Fun To Me

noreply@blogger.com (Adlene Johnston) — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 03:05:00 +0000

I was among the last of my group of friends to get married, so I had a chance to see how they dealt with wedding planning. They did not make it look appealing! They would stress out about every little matter of wedding decorations, until I thought that it was a nightmare to even plan a wedding. When it was my turn to do it myself, however, I was surprised at how much fun it was. Not only was it not excessively difficult, but it was a great opportunity to express myself. I suppose that wedding decorating all comes down to what you make of it. If you are the type of person who likes setting up parties, decorating rooms, arranging events, and the like, planning a wedding will be easy for you. If you're the type of person who worries and stresses about it instead of enjoying, it will be a huge pain in the neck. My advice is to not stress too much about wedding decorating. Try to make it fun.

I had always wanted to have a huge party with all of my friends there, a chance to really set up a perfect ambiance and plan a perfect evening. A wedding gave me the chance to do just that. That was what was so great about planning a wedding. I got to pick out wedding colors, find the perfect location, design the bridesmaid dresses, and even wear a beautiful bridal gown. At your wedding, after all, you are the guest of honor as well as the host. That is practically a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! That is why you should make the most of it, enjoying every moment, from planning the wedding decorating to going through the ceremony.

One of the best elements for wedding decorating is candles. Streamers, lighting, photographs, and wedding centerpieces all play a part, but having the right candle accents can really add something beautiful and classical to a wedding ceremony and reception. In the case of our wedding, we opted to have a reflecting pool filled with candles put in the center of the party. The tables were arranged around it, and all of them were bathed in a dull glow from the flickering flames. Not only was it romantic, but it also kept the bugs away from the guests at our outdoor wedding reception. It was just one of many successful decorative elements at our wedding reception.

Affordable Weddings - Are They Doable?

noreply@blogger.com (Adlene Johnston) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 11:23:00 +0000

You see, until people plan their first wedding, they never think about how much weddings cost. They want to have affordable weddings, yet they also want to have all of the glitz and glamor. The problem is that, even if you buy affordable bridal gowns, affordable wedding cakes, cheap bridesmaid dresses, and all the rest, it will still add up to a lot of money. The bottom line is that, if you want to have an affordable wedding, you have to be willing to make sacrifices.

I am not saying that having affordable weddings is impossible. If you are willing to have a small wedding ceremony with only a few of your very closest friends there, you can do it for quite a reasonable price. The problem is that, if having affordable weddings is your intention, you have to plan everything around it. That means that you have to have a small guest list, make reservations at an inexpensive place, have an affordable wedding dress, rent a tuxedo for the groom, and generally scrimp and save at every opportunity. Some have actually taken their own wedding photographs to save on the cost of hiring a wedding photographer!

The bottom line is that the most affordable weddings are done in a judge’s office. Everything else that you do costs extra money. Some families go into debt for years because of what they spend on holding a grand, elaborate wedding. To me, it seems like a pity. When I meet people who really want to have affordable weddings, I tell them to have them in the back yard. That way, they can save on wedding reservations. If they are really ambitious, they can even cater it themselves. If there are going to be more than thirty people there, however, this is usually not a very good idea.

I guess that it all depends on what you expect from your wedding. When I first got married, all I wanted was a simple ceremony with only my closest families and friends. If this is all that you want as well, it will be quite easy for you to plan an affordable wedding. If, on the other hand, you want to have an elaborate party with all of your friends and family, you will have to pay for it.

Wedding Checklist - First Thing's First

noreply@blogger.com (Adlene Johnston) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 10:56:00 +0000

I know that when I was getting married, the wedding checklist that I got with my planner was not enough, and I had to find one online. This was something that saved me a lot of time, and also saved me from forgetting some things that I may not have remembered until it was too late. I may have remembered them, but I would have found myself overwhelmed as the wedding approached trying to do everything that I had forgotten.

A good wedding checklist not only lists everything that you have to do, or at least that you might want to include, but it also gives you a good time frame. Some wait until it is too late to order their bridesmaid dresses. A good wedding checklist will advise you to do it early enough for the order to come in, and to give you plenty of time for alterations. It might tell you to do this six months before the wedding, where as many might wait until three months before and end up with a lot of problems. You should always assume something will go wrong, so too much time is better than cutting it close.

You might also see that a good wedding checklists advises you to do things that you never thought to do. Did you remember to talk with your DJ or band about music selection? Did you organize what people will do between ceremony and reception? Do you know where everyone should stay as far as hotels? Do you have gift bags for your out of town guests? Did you give your wedding photographer a list of wanted poses? A good wedding checklist will have all of this information, and plenty more. You can find a few and compare them.

You may think that you are having a simple wedding, and that you might not need a wedding checklist. That simple isn’t true. You should find one anyway. You can whittle it down to the things you need by going through the list and marking off the things you don’t want to do or don’t have to worry about. Not only will a good wedding checklist help you remember everything, it will also offer you some peace. That nagging voice in the back of your head that keeps saying you might be forgetting something will be very quiet. There’s nothing like a calm bride and groom.