Wedding Planning Exposé!!!

Three more months to go till the big day - wow! I finally understand what people mean when they say "you can plan for a wedding as long as you want!" and which the advice of "so make the engagement period as short as it can be!" often follows.... Ah ha....

As I look back on my wedding planning experience, I realized that somewhere down the road, I have decided to keep a list of "Did you know's" (which will maybe one day go into my book titled Wedding Planning Exposé) as far as wedding planning is concerned to help all future brides. Yeah, think of it as the wedding industry's version of Fast Food Nation.

Here are some starters:

1. Who says it has to be white? Did you know that the tradition of the bride wearing a fancy white wedding gown to her wedding was the creation of Queen Victoria (see photo below of her wedding) back in 1840 to boost the textile industry in the UK??? Before then, it was very common to simply wear your favorite dress to your wedding. Just imagine - had it not been for her, Vera Wang probably would not be who she is right now!! And who knows - I probably would have been ok wearing a polka dot (my fave!!) patterned dress to my own wedding!

1. JPG" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/aa/Queen_Victoria_Albert_1854.JPG/462px-Queen_Victoria_Albert_1854.JPG" border="0">

2. Flowers flowers everywhere. Did you know that many florists often require a minimum of a few thousand dollars to even work on a wedding (and talk to you further)? Between the center pieces on every guest table and the floral decorations throughout the ceremony and reception, the amount of flowers used (and thrown away the day after) is incredible as well as extremely wasteful. But why ARE flowers used? Why does there HAVE to be flowers everywhere? I would bet $20 that this was probably the creation of the likes of queen Victoria for white fancy wedding dresses and DeBeers for diamond rings.

3. "Just add it to the registry!" Did you know that when you start a bridal registry, you are highly encouraged to add as many things to it as you can (the logic being that "you can always take it off")? While I don't have the facts on this, I would, again, bet $20 that a large portion of the money retailers in the registry business make is from the gifts on the registry that are NOT fulfilled by the guests. Now, instead of trying to get you into the store to do more shopping the rest of your life, they simply have to send you a 10% off coupon that applies to the unfulfilled items to get you to open up your wallet. I mean, we all want to save money, right?

The point is - I've realized that with wedding planning, as it is with many things in the world, when you ask "why?" you can sometimes be surprised by the answers you get. Sometimes, traditions are not what you think traditions are. Like I have always said, it always goes back to marketing...