5 Great Wedding Blogs to Follow

As you plan your wedding, you may find yourself in need of a little inspiration. When you’re searching for the perfect centerpieces for your tables, or a truly knockout bridal dress, or a whimsical wedding theme, wedding blogs can be a great source of ideas. Many of them can serve as the hub for planning your entire wedding, in fact. Here are a few of our favorites:

The Knot

This is the grand dame of wedding blogs, a massive site with years of blog content, calculators, planners, listings of local vendors, you name it. They even have budgeting tools and checklists to keep you organized. In terms of sheer size and utility, The Knot is definitely a must-bookmark site for wedding planning. The only downside is the site is seriously huge, so there’s a lot of material to look through. Oh, and they’ll keep bugging you to log in until you break down and give them your email address.

A Practical Wedding

These guys have a similar mission statement to the Knot--provide a one-stop destination for wedding budgeting, planning, and ideas--but they’re a little more down-to-earth. Our favorite is the section devoted to DIY wedding projects. For your basic middle-class wedding without every conceivable bell and whistle, these guys have great ideas for making a beautiful wedding happen on a budget.

Offbeat Bride

If the previous two are a little too staid for your sensibilities, the name says it all with Offbeat Bride. They have a lot of solid info, but it’s served up with a side of humor and irreverence that’s refreshing. There’s a section called “Wedding Porn,” if that’s any indication. Want to have a rockabilly wedding and wondering what to serve at the reception? Are you wondering how to dye your bridesmaid’s Mohawks to match their dresses? Want the latest in Steampunk wedding accessories? Look no further. What’s more, Offbeat Bride works with mywedding.com to produce wedding website templates for offbeat couples.

The Broke-ass Bride

We’ll give you one guess what the main focus of this blog is--and no, it’s not about donkeys in need of repair. This site focuses on planning a frugal wedding, with articles about finding great deals on bridal and bridesmaids dresses, tips for cutting down the budget, and interviews with real broke-ass brides to see how they pulled it off. This blog is definitely a “must-read” for couples looking to cut the budget without the wedding feeling cheap.

The Anti-Bride

The Anti-Bride’s credo is “tying the knot outside of the box.” While that’s a little geometrically confusing, it’s not a bad way to approach planning the big day. From punk rock wedding dresses to budget tips to the latest in reception desserts, the Anti-Bride’s seriously cool. Plus, they have a great iPhone app.

When the wedding planning process hits a wall, you can use these great wedding blogs to give you inspiration. As you compile your own thoughts and ideas, consider starting your own wedding blog that chronicles your journey and documents the entire planning process. Whether you’re planning a huge fairy-tale wedding or an intimate bohemian get-together, sharing your own experiences on a wedding blog can help make someone else’s wedding a whole lot better. And who knows; maybe your wedding blog will be on a list just like this one someday.

The 7 Most Helpful Wedding Apps

Planning a wedding is a huge job. With all the decisions to make, moving pieces to coordinate, and vendors to schedule, it’s a minor miracle when everything goes smoothly. Fortunately, in the year of our Lord 2015, you carry a wedding planner in your pocket: your smartphone! Here are a few apps that can help make your wedding run smoothly.

iDoo

Don’t let the vaguely scatological name fool you; this app packs plenty of wedding planning punch. You can create budgets, search for vendors, and even create seating charts, all with this one app. It also comes with an inspiration section to help you visualize how your big day will look.

Wedding Budget

Keep on top of all your wedding expenses with this little powerhouse. It lets you allocate funds to everything from the bachelor party to the reception, and then lets you keep track of expenses. It’ll even generate pie charts so you can see at a glance how you’re doing. If you’re trying to keep your wedding on budget, this app is one of the best tools out there.

Zola Registry

Kick your registry up a notch with this app. It pulls together registries from various stores into one master list, and then allows you to scan in new items using barcodes and your smartphone’s camera. You can even set up a honeymoon or charitable fund your guests can contribute to in lieu of gifts.

Appy Couple

How many times have you received a wedding invitation and somehow lost it before the ceremony? If you’re like us, you’ve been late to at least one wedding while you frantically call other guests to find when and where the ceremony is. Appy Couple can help! It allows you to make a customized app for your wedding that guests can download. Process RSVPs, give directions and registry information, all the stuff that a paper invitation does, only much harder for your guests to lose.

Fun Wedding

Are you going to DJ your own wedding, but are worried that you won’t be able to keep the party rocking? Fun Wedding will help you pick the perfect tunes for every demographic at your wedding, from millennials to senior citizens. Get inspiration with lists of the most requested wedding songs, Billboard top 100 lists, and more.

The Knot Wedding Planner

There’s no wedding blog quite like the Knot, and there’s no wedding planner quite like the Knot Wedding Planner app. It’ll help with inspiration and ideas, give you checklists to fill out to make sure nothing gets left out, help you connect with vendors and manage your budget, and more.

Wedding Party

This app is the digital equivalent of giving each guest a disposable camera to capture candid shots, but without the rounding up cameras and paying for developing. You can set an event name and guests can upload their photos on the timeline. When someone wants to see your wedding photos, you’ll have them all in one place!

If you’re stressing about planning your wedding, pull out your phone and check out some of these apps. If you download a couple of them, you’ll be able to organize your wedding without losing your mind or nostalgia.

Wedding Dress Maintenance Tips

Maintaining your wedding dress is something that you will want to do after your wedding. There are certain steps that you need to take in order to preserve your dress and the quality of it.

The process should start before your wedding day even arrives. When you purchase your wedding dress it is best to send it for a professional cleaning. It will look more beautiful on your wedding day if you do and it will prevent fading before you wear it.

Between the time you purchase your wedding dress and the day you get married it is important to store it properly. In addition to keeping it clean and free of stains storing it properly will also keep it bright white as well. Keep your wedding dress in a storage bag in your closet until one to two days before your wedding. The closet needs to be dark and cool in order to preserve and maintain your wedding dress properly otherwise the color could change unexpectedly.

Within 24 to 48 hours of your wedding you will want to remove your dress from storage and check it for stains. They can be spot cleaned by making a cleaner out of laundry detergent and some warm water. Once you have mixed the cleaner, dip an old toothbrush into it and gently run the toothbrush over the stain.

While this is one method of cleaning a wedding dress involves getting it wet, there are alternative cleaning options that don’t involve getting your dress wet. This is when your dress is spot cleaned professionally and then sent to a dry cleaner.

You will need to be mindful of maintaining your dress even during your wedding. It is important to avoid eating or drinking anything at your reception that could run your dress if you spill it. Be especially careful if you are drinking red wine because this type of stain is extremely difficult to remove from fabric.

Following your wedding day you will need a proper box to store your dress in. Your dress should be dry cleaned as soon as possible after your wedding and placed into storage. If you don’t have the time or desire to take your dress to the cleaners you also have the option of ordering a wedding dress preservation kit. These kits are mailed to you, along with a pre-paid label that allows you to send them your dress and receive it cleaned and preserved anywhere from six to eight weeks later.

It is crucial for your wedding dress to be stored in an acid free package. Muslin or acid free paper is used to wrap up your dress for maintenance purposes. You may opt to store your dress in a box that has a clear panel on the front, allowing you to see the surface of the dress without having to take it out of the box.

These are the steps you need to take in order to preserve your wedding dress and keep it looking fresh, new, and clean forever. Your wedding dress is an important part of your personal history, so making sure it’s preserved and maintained properly will ensure that you can hand it down and cherish it for many years to come.

Traditional Wedding Foods from Around the World

If you don’t count the multi-tiered cake, there aren’t many foods associated with a traditional North American wedding. Usually you have a choice of chicken or steak and some dinner rolls and call it good. So when you’re planning your festivities, feel free to borrow some of these delicious traditional wedding foods from around the globe. Whether you’re planning your rehearsal dinner or want something interesting for the main course at your wedding, these delicious options are sure to get your guests talking.

Germany: Hochzeitssuppe

This traditional German soup is a simple clear broth with miniature meatballs and vegetables. Though it looks like a pretty straightforward dish, some traditional recipes call for it to cook for five hours, but there are recipes that rein that in to a more manageable 90 minutes. The trick is to prepare each part of the soup separately, and then combine it into bowls right before it’s to be served. That way the meatballs and vegetables don’t fall apart like they would if they were boiled with the broth.

China: Whole Peking Duck

Imagine lifting the lid off your serving dish at your wedding banquet and finding a whole rusted duck, complete with head and feet! It’s a traditional wedding dish in China, and thought it may seem strange, the dish has a lot of symbolism associated with it. The fully intact duck symbolizes the completeness of married life, and the meat is red, which is a color associated with good luck. Even the choice of animal is symbolic: ducks mate for life, so they make a good culinary mascot for the wedding day.

Brazil: Casadinhos

At weddings in Brazil, guests are served individually wrapped sandwich cookies called casadinhos, which means “married” in Portuguese. They’re soft cookies sandwiched around marmalade or cream, then tied up in paper and string tied in a bow. The little wrapped packages are called “bem casados,” meaning “well married,” and symbolize the joining together of the bride and groom. These make great appetizers for your wedding reception or even a late night snack.

Mexico: Birria

The traditional dish at many Mexican weddings is birria, a stew made with goat meat, which is rumored to be an aphrodisiac. It can also be made with beef, pork, or even iguana, depending on what’s handy. It’s traditionally prepared by baking the meat in a clay pot for hours under burning coals. If you’re not into digging a pit in the backyard to make the dish, there’s a recipe that you can make in your own oven.

Sweden: Prinsesstårta

If you’ve ever been to the cafeteria at Ikea, you’ve seen a miniature version of the Princess Cake served at Swiss weddings. It’s a dome-shaped confection made of layers of cake with filling between, covered with a marzipan seal. It’s traditionally colored a bright spring green to be the highlight of a festive reception.

Granted, there are plenty of delicious North American offerings for a wedding reception. You can go with comfort food, like mac ‘n’ cheese and burgers, or haute cuisine like filet mignon. But if you’re feeling a little adventurous planning your reception menu, consider including one of these global delicacies. After all, what sounds more exciting: “chicken or fish” or “birria or hochzeitsuppe?”