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.

5 Non-Traditional Bachelor Party Ideas

We all know the trappings of a traditional bachelor party: booze, strippers, and more booze. Whether it’s a private party with a girl jumping out of a cake or that strip club downtown, bachelor parties tend to be on the raunchy and debauched side of celebration. If nudity and alcohol don’t seem like the right way to celebrate your impending nuptials, though, you’re not alone. Here are some ideas for bachelor parties that keep it a little classier.

Brewery Tour

Yes, there’s still alcohol involved with a brewery tour, but the point is to taste a lot of delicious craft beer, not pound cheap shots until you pass out. Small breweries have been cropping up like crazy over the past decade, so odds are there are three or four near where you live. Grab your best buddies (and a designated driver) and tour through all of them. You’ll learn how beer is made, taste some one-of-a-kind brews, and even pick up a few growlers (that’s a 64-oz to-go bottle to drink later; preferably not all in one go).

Virtual Mayhem

Arcades have changed a lot since the 80’s and 90’s. Now instead of taking quarters for simple games, they take dollars--or fives--for cool, immersive experiences. Some arcades have massive machines designed to simulate the cockpit of a battle robot or a tank. Some have full virtual-reality options with goggles and 360-degree treadmills. Most of those machines are networked together so you can play against your friends. Presumably, your wedding signifies a step into maturity: what better way to mark it than by playing video games with your bros?

Poker Night

This one’s cheaper than a night on the town and easy to arrange. Just pick your buddy with the biggest living room to host, have a $20 buy-in to make it interesting, and make sure to have plenty of snacks and beer on hand. Green visors are not required, but they’re encouraged; ditto fancy cigars.

Rent a Cabin or Beach House

If you can get your buddies to buy into a weekend trip, vacation rentals divided enough ways are far cheaper than a bunch of hotel rooms. Most vacation homes have amenities hotels don’t, either, like private pools and hot tubs (you know, for male bonding). Make sure the rental you’re looking at has options for entertainment during the day--or pack your cards, video game consoles, board games and a whole lot of booze and plan on staying in. Even if you end up doing what your crew always does when you hang out together, it’s more fun in a different locale.

Go See a Game

Sure, you may occasionally go to a baseball, football, hockey, or basketball game, but this is an excuse to pony up a little more cash for good seats, or a sky box, or that third $10 hot dog. Maybe even pack up the grill and a couple of coolers and tailgate beforehand, so you get the most out of the day.

It’s About the Groom

The goal of a bachelor party should be for the groom to have a great time and for all of you to connect as friends. If the groom loves paintball, slap on your gear and go to war. If he’s really into nerdy board games, an entire uninterrupted evening playing Twilight: Imperium or Arkham Horror is better than a trip to a strip club. If he likes golf, make it a golfing trip. If you take something you all enjoy doing together and take it to the next level, the bachelor party can be a great bonding time without risking bodily injury or a jealous spouse.

Sparkler Tip #5: Supply a Way to Light Them

Sparklers are really fun when you make them part of your wedding, but that fact can quickly become moot if you don’t give your guests a reliable way to light them. Whether you are handing out the sparklers during your reception for your guests to use at their leisure or coordinating a specific use for them such as a grand exit, the ability to quickly and efficiently light your wedding sparklers is crucial to a successful and enjoyable time. Fortunately, since sparklers are such a popular addition to weddings these days, there are a few tried and true methods that work very well.

BBQ Lighter

BBQ lighters are a fast and simple way for your guests to light their sparklers. Simply pass out a few of them to your guests, and they can be having fun with their sparklers in a short period of time. They are also a great choice because of how easy they are to use, but they are more expensive than some of the other options so it may be out of the question for couples on a budget.

Matches

Matches are another simple way to light sparklers, but not as fast as some of the other methods. The main problem is that taking the time for each guest to strike a match and light the tips of their smoke-free sparklers can be a bit time consuming, but you can buy personalized matchboxes which adds a fun and elegant touch to the whole affair.

Using Another Sparkler

A super-fast and inexpensive method to light everyone up in a hurry is to use another sparkler as the starting device. Once your guests touch the tip of their sparklers to another lit sparkler, they will immediately light. However, once a sparkler is lit, your guests may get the wrong idea and light their sparkler up before you can start passing it around. You will want to make sure everyone knows what is going on if you use this method.

Candles

Likely the most elegant and overall best way to light your sparklers quickly and efficiently is to have a few candles scattered about the area where people will be lighting their sparklers. The beauty of using candles is that they burn for hours as opposed to seconds, so there is no rush in coordinating everything in a massive hurry. Also, candles are fairly inexpensive and look very nice at a wedding. This makes them both useful for your purposes and also a great addition to your wedding décor.

Sparkler Tip #1 – Check with Your Venue

So you were at a wedding and saw how fun and elegant wedding sparklers can be as part of your celebration. But hold on one second, have you thought about checking with your venue? While we certainly don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade when it comes to their ideas of planning their wedding, it’s equally important to encourage doing the proper research to make sure you aren’t wasting money that could be spent elsewhere. As the industry leader in wedding sparklers, we obviously want you to enjoy having sparklers at your wedding. However, if you’re venue doesn’t allow you to use them, we would much rather you spend your money elsewhere to get the most fun and exciting day possible.

The reason we stress that you check with your wedding venue before you buy wedding sparklers is because they may require special permits or not allow their use at all. Depending on where you live in the country, some states only allow the use of sparklers on or near the 4th of July which makes them impossible to use even if the venue were to be okay with the idea. Other areas require that you buy additional fir insurance or apply for a permit by paying a fee in order use sparklers at a wedding.

Furthermore, some venues may require you to use your sparklers in an area that won’t work for your purposes. Many venues only allow them to be used indoors if they are smokeless sparklers, so they may have a policy that requires you to use them outside. This can be fine if you are planning to use your wedding sparklers as part of your send off line or as something for the kids to do while the adults dance, but if most of your reception will be happening indoors it can be a real hassle. As long as you check with your venue in advance and clear your plans with them, you can order your wedding sparklers without fear that they may go to waste or that you will be breaking any state or local laws regarding their use at your wedding reception.