Let’s Do It Again – Renewing Your Wedding Vows

There are many reasons to renew your vows.  Couples often wish to “renew” their marriage after surviving a long separation or an unsettling period.  Some couples choose to renew their vows after a particularly difficult crisis in their lives, say for example, the overcoming of a serious illness.  Others simply want to reaffirm the tremendous love that has matured and deepened with the passing of years.  Others are simply looking for a momentous way to celebrate an important anniversary. 

Renewing wedding vows can be a meaningful, touching, revivifying ceremony for you and your children, family and friends.  As a married couple, it is a time to pause and reflect on where you have been and where you are going. 

Wedding vow renewal ceremonies can be as creative and personal as you want them to be.  Your ceremony can be less formal than a wedding – more casual and fun. It should completely reflect the two of you.  Here are a few ways that a renewal of your vows can be both fun and meaningful:

• Involve the children or other family members in ceremony
• Recreate your original bouquet
• Use your wedding photo to make personalized invitations.
• Return to your original honeymoon destination.
• Display your first wedding photograph.
• Write personalized wedding vows.
• Enter to your favorite song.

Renewing your vows is a wonderful way to let them know–along with family and friends–that you would marry them all over again.

Extravagant Cakes for Extravagant Brides

Some of the most beautiful wedding cake creations cost a fortune and I do mean a fortune.  The quality of the ingredients, the sheer size and intricacy of detail and the addition of jewels and precious stones can make your dream cake impractical.  These things often place these most extravagant cakes only on the tables of the very wealthy.  Gaze at some of the world’s extravagant wedding cake designs. 

One of most expensive jeweled wedding cakes was unveiled in Beverly Hills at the Luxury Brands Bridal Show.  This diamond-studded wedding cake was created by Mimi So Jewelers and cake designer Nahid La Patisserie Artistique.  The cake is embellished with diamonds both  exclusive and priceless.  The cake wasn’t meant to be edible or even touched.  The diamond-studded masterpiece was said to be worth $20 million when it was unveiled in 2006.

 Delicious Cakes and Dallas Gold and Silver Exchange collaborated to create this stunning and expensive nine tier confection.  As another of the world’s most expensive wedding cakes, it was adorned with 1,200 carats of diamond and precious gemstone, at a cost of $1.3 million. This fabulous jeweled cake was the star in the annual Dallas Bridal Show in 2010. This cake was designed to be edible (after the removal of the diamond and precious gemstone embellishments) but not touched.

These luxurious yet costly confections were not meant for the faint of heart or for a bride on a budget. They were designed as novelty, fantasy cakes.  Use these designs as inspiration to create your own extraordinary wedding cake to fit your budget.

Grooms Step It Up

You have found the woman of your dreams, you have popped the question and she said yes.  You need to do more than just show up on time for the big day.  Do not let the stress of planning the wedding keep you two from being the happy couple.  Your future wife needs you to be her rock as well as a soft place to land.  She has to juggle planning her dream wedding, family pressures, friends’ opinions, etc.  It will mean so much to her for you to step it up by taking more interest and responsibility in the planning process.

Here are a list of responsibilities that traditionally should be performed by you:

• Choosing his groomsmen, best man, and ushers
• Choosing attire for himself and his wedding party
• Choosing a gift for the bride
• Compiling his guest list, including his parent’s additions
• Planning the honeymoon
• Choosing his wedding band
• Arranging wedding transportation from the ceremony to the reception site
• Paying the officiant
• Buying the marriage license
• Making toasts at the reception
• Tipping Vendors
• Arrange wedding night accommodation
• Choose thank you gifts for the men in the wedding party

Although the above list is just shows traditional responsibilities, don’t hesitate to be available and fully present when your future wife needs your ear, your thoughts, and your time.  It will go along way toward starting your marriage right.

Five Wedding Day Don’ts

The truth is that planning a wedding can be stressful and take a heavy toll on you financially and emotionally. It doesn’t have to be quite so bad. You can avoid most of the hassles and headaches associated with a wedding by adhering to these wedding day DON’Ts.

1.      DON’T go into debt just for the big day.  You should make it special and memorable, but don’t do it at the expense of your financial future and marriage.  Create a realistic budget, and stick to it.  The first years of marriage are hard enough without adding the stress of excessive debt to the mix.

2.      DON’T be your own event planner at wedding.  The stress of trying to keep everyone and everything on schedule will take away from your enjoyment of the day.  Let others take care of the details so you can just relax, smile, and enjoy your special day.

3.      DON’T be late for the date.  This applies to the bride, the groom, and everyone else involved in the wedding. Be considerate of your guest as well as the vendors servicing your wedding; try to start your wedding on time. If you must delay the start of your wedding; do so by no more than 15 minutes.

4.      DON’T forget to eat a little something.  A famished and fainting bride and groom are a bigger problem than you might think. Don’t skip breakfast just to look svelte in your wedding attire.  It may be the only time you get to eat and you’ll need the energy. Eat something before the wedding, and try to eat a little something at the reception too.

 5.      DON’T forget what the day is really all about.  It is about your marriage not just a day.  The day will pass quickly and seem like a blur.  Try to remember the feelings you two are sharing on your wedding day.  Commit yourselves to finding a way to bring the same joy and happiness to your marriage every day.