Category Archive

Friends & Family Advice

Whether it’s your mom pressuring you to lose weight or not inviting family to your wedding or how to fire a bridesmaid… this is our archive of how to handle wedding planning drama with friends and family. Be sure to check out our archive of copy ‘n’ paste conflict resolution posts, too!

exploitive wedding industry alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

The wedding industry isn’t targeting you… it’s targeting your parents

One thing that my time working as telemarketer gave me — other than a very black conscience — is understanding about how different generations process and interpret media.

We spend a lot of time here laughing about the Wedding Industrial Complex, and we should, because it’s fucking hilarious. But it’s not really directed at us. It’s directed at our mothers.

Photo by Orlando Claffey alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

The “faux-ficial” Bridesmaids’ Bill of Rights

I’m planning to officially ask my potential bridesmiads to be my maids of awesome/wedding goon squad/honor guard/etc. In the package I put together for them, I included this faux-official Bridesmaids’ Bill of Rights, both for a laugh and to assuage any nervousness.

costumes 3 1 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

Flexibility & hand-holding: 5 tips for having a successful costume wedding

A costume wedding isn’t all that different than a regular wedding. Most weddings are actually costume weddings, unless you wear white formal dresses and tuxedos on a daily basis, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility (and is totally awesome — is your work hiring?).

But for these instructions are for a full-on costume wedding, in which you ask the wedding party and guests to dress up around a specific theme. And here is how you can successfully pull that off…

Chicago Wedding Photographer 167 alternative wedding ideas from Offbeat Wed (formerly Offbeat Bride)

How to let people help you with your wedding

One of the first things I ever read on Offbeat Bride was an article about having open expectations. It really resonated with me, and I tried to keep that philosophy through the entire process. It also helped that I was planning a long-distance wedding, so I HAD to let people help me to stay sane… or to avoid massive amounts of credit card debt from flying from Salt Lake City to Wisconsin a gazillion times. Did I have some minor freak-outs? Yes. But the wedding went off swimmingly, and it was better than I could have done myself thanks to the helping hands I had along the way. But here are some tips I learned, and maybe even those of you who are extra detail-obsessed can step back and let someone help you!

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Celebrate ALL your relationships on your wedding anniversary

Each time our anniversary has come around I think about how much I love my husband, but also how much I love all of the people in my life. Because I’m grateful to have him, but it also makes me think how full of gratitude I am to have people who wanted to help us have a great wedding when they could have just gone home.

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6 reasons why wedding planning seems to make everyone act crazy

In the wake of some drama with our families, I’ve been reading a bit on why wedding planning seems to make people act crazy and unreasonable. And I think I’ve come to some conclusions on why both of our families are being so bloody difficult throughout this whole process.