Six Helpful Beach Wedding Reception Centerpiece Tips

We all want that perfect dream wedding day. And a beach wedding with gorgeous reception centerpieces is a great start for many, but the sun and the gentle ocean breezes that makes the beach so magical also poses challenges for your wedding plans – and really impact beach wedding reception centerpieces.

Most any bride who has been married on a beach will tell you that the wind and the sun are the biggest challenges to overcome when designing the centerpieces for the beach wedding reception. The question is what to do about them? What works under those...

Continue Reading ... Six Helpful Beach Wedding Reception Centerpiece Tips

Greening Your Wedding: Think Light

Daylight, that is. God supplies us plenty of lighting through the sun - especially during the traditional wedding seasons of the spring and fall. Make use of it.

• Plan a garden wedding
• Plan a beach wedding
• Get married by the lake or river
• Rent a hall during daylight hours with ample windows so that a minimum of lights are required

Finding a location or facility that works in this way is not as hard as it may seem. I know a church whose north facing back wall of the sanctuary is mostly glass, looking out onto their own private garden. This facility rarely needs general lighting during daylight hours.

Of course, there is nothing like an outdoor wedding for beauty and unless the wedding or reception is held in the evening, there is no need for lights. Instead, time your ceremony so that the two of you are literally riding off 'into the sunset' on your departure. It is a picture perfect way to complete the public celebration of your wedding and begin your private celebration.

Barefoot Sandals: A Sexy Addition to Your Wedding

Who doesn't love a wedding? What's not to love - except the exhausted feet at the end of the day. With barefoot sandals you don't have that problem. By loosing the high heels - and if you are getting married on the beach you really don't want high heels anyway - you relieve yourself of the source of your feet's exhaustion and by putting on a pair of barefoot sandals you put on a tantalizing mixture of sexy, beautiful, and comfortable so you can party the whole night through!

That's the beauty of barefoot sandals. In most situations you enjoy your own wedding day just by slipping into a pair - footwear that is as comfortable on the dance floor as it is on the beach. And because they are comfortable on the beach, they can go on your honeymoon with you!

That's right. You can make your budget stretch. With little effort, you can find a pair of barefoot sandals which will look as good on you in a bikini as they do peeking from under your wedding dress!

Barefoot Sandals are not the same thing as bridal flip flops. Instead, they are a kind of bridal footwear that amounts to jewelry for your feet decorating your feet in pearls, beads, and / or crystals. The result being that you have the beauty of elegant sandals and the freedom of being barefoot.

This type of construction makes it appear as though the bridal footwear you are wearing is a fancy pair of sandals. In reality, however, with Barefoot Sandals you are enjoying the comfort and freedom of being barefoot because you truly are barefoot.

How to Make a Beach Wedding Theme Work

Yesterday's post got me thinking about beach weddings. It's the time of the year to be planning your nuptials by the sea - though really, with the prevalence of materials available nearly anyone can put together a beach wedding regardless of whether they have access to an actual beach at all.

The trick to planning any kind of themed wedding is to narrow your focus. Far too often brides decide they want a beach wedding and that's where they stop their planning efforts and begin gathering decor items. As a result they pick up anything that;

1. captures their fancy, and
2. reminds them in any way of the ocean.

As a result, pretty soon their budget is spent and they don't really have anything more than a box full of sea shells, some plastic flower leis, and a few Frisbees.

Instead they should choose an aspect of beach life that stirs their imagination and look for ways to make every item in your wedding lend to your theme (it's an article on building a mermaid wedding but it serves as a great example of this point). Starting with your dress, consider how each element of your wedding serves or detracts from your theme. For a beach wedding, a dress with a long train, for example might not be the right choice. Maybe you'd want something in a shorter gown whether than means short as in knee length or short as in just to above the ground. Then you might want to choose barefoot sandals with shells and pearls instead of high heels.

For a lighthouse themed wedding, maybe you'd want to choose a restaurant on a bluff with lots of windows and get a slowly rotating light. If you did, you could play the sounds of waves crashing on the rocks and then hold your reception at night to give the illusion that your reception is being held in a large lighthouse.

To continue the lighthouse theme, you could build a wedding theme around the beauty of lighthouses what elements are characteristic of lighthouse scenes? Light? Fog? The sound of waves crashing on the beach? Lighthouses? Raincoats? Umbrellas? Rocks? Ships? Sailboats? The list goes on.

The trick, whatever your beach wedding theme, is to then do a theme specific search for the decor, favors, accessories. That way, if you choose your accessories and favors well, you won't have to spend as much on decor because your they will go a long way to creating your theme.

This is one reason that I love shopping on the Internet for nearly everything you need for your wedding. Simply put, you can do very specific searches as you look for the best decor, favors, and accessories to build your theme. That makes it easy to find what you are looking for from the comfort of your own home without wasting an entire day and a tank of gas looking for something that may or may not be available in your community - and when you do find it, it can be shipped right to your door!

I digress.

The point is that the key to building a beach wedding theme (or any theme) is focus. The beach wedding theme is entirely too broad. But by zeroing in on a specific aspect like sea animals, or surfing, or mariner, you can create a wedding theme that will be remembered for years to come.

A Fun Idea for Beach Weddings

Getting married on the beach? Have someone stash a pair of bridal flip flops for each of you (yourself and you new husband) to slip into right after you’ve said your vows. As a matter of fact, they could even have your bridal flip flops buried in the sand where you will stand so that all the two of you have to do is slip out of your wedding shoes and discretely slip your feet into your partially submerged flip flops after you have exchanged your vows.

Imagine your guest’s amusement and astonishment as they look at the “Just Married” impressions that your bridal flip flops leave in the sand as the two of you walk back down the aisle. It will be a fun wedding moment your guests will... more

The Destination Wedding Option

The destination wedding is an option that has gained popularity in recent years. This option generally abandons the idea of a large wedding in favor of a ceremony with just a few friends and family members in an exotic local that the couple can look back on forever as a wedding that was not just like every one of their friend's wedding.

One appeal of the destination wedding is the very trait that turns many off to the choice: When the wedding ceremony is over, typically the friends and family stay in that exotic location with you and help you celebrate. In effect, for at least a few days after your ceremony, your guests are there with you on your honeymoon. For some people this is a great thing. For others, not so good. Either way, it is one characteristic that a perspective couple should talk through before choosing this option.

The destination wedding option is not the cheapest option but it might be the easiest. The reason for this is that since you are coming in from out of town - unless you can afford to make multiple trips or stay there for months prior to your wedding - you have to pay someone else to take care of all of the details. So, if all goes as planned, all you do is choose your gown and show up.

Fortunately, there are companies (resorts, wedding planners, and wedding hosting companies) everywhere that I am familiar with that will be happy to do this for you. This is true regardless of whether you are wanting to be married in a Scottish Castle, or on a Caribbean island, on the Atlantic, at sunset in Hawaii, or against the rugged beauty of the Oregon Coast or Canadian Rockies.

The obvious downside to a destination wedding is that they are often most expensive option you can choose. The reason is simple: Travel. You not only have to pay your own travel expenses, but you need to be prepared to pay for the travel expenses of everyone in your wedding party as well. That's a big expense, but that's the trade off.

The obvious exception to this is a Las Vegas wedding. If you live within driving distance of Las Vegas, etc and your party is content to drive, well needless to say, your costs could be more manageable.

Fortunately for today’s bride, with a consultation with a good wedding planning service, she can choose a wedding that is as traditional or unique as she chooses it to be.

If you are unsure of what kind of wedding you would like, consult a planner who will most likely be full of with wedding ideas.