OBT member Cassie has written a great advice post that I thought I'd share with the masses.

I've been an old married lady for just under a week now, and I thought I'd offer some handy-dandy advice for those of you still gearing up to walk down the aisle! So without further adieu, here are my top 10 pieces of advice for brides to be:

10. For the love of God, don't leave everything to the last minute. Just don't!
I am a huge procrastinator, but I regret leaving so much to the last minute. Granted, there are some things you just can't do in advance, like frosting the cake, etc. However, there were plenty of things I could have done in advance but didn't. I was up until nearly 2am doing last-minute wedding things when I should have been in bed. Trust me, when you get down to the wire, you will want to hanging out with your out-of-town guests and not putting the finishing touches on your wedding programs.

Photo by Sarah Maren.

9. Eat something. And not just on the wedding day.
The old "make sure you eat something!" advice is pretty tried and true for brides. But, in my experience, this is super important for the days leading up to the wedding, as well. A few days before my wedding, I was so nervous and excited that I lost my appetite completely. And I am a chick who ALWAYS has a big appetite. So have a plan, keep some easy-to-prepare meals at home, enlist friends or your FH to ensure you've had something to eat, or do whatever it takes to make sure you don't go without.

Continue reading "My Top 10 Wedding Lessons, by Cassie" →

Now that she's back from her honeymoon, Meg from A Practical Wedding has posted an excellent list of wedding advice nuggets, including this gem:

Learn how to kindly but firmly say no. If you know deep down that something is just not right for you, be kind but firm, it will save you endless heartache in the end. Maybe you learn this in wedding planning because its the single best preparation for adult life that there is.

Read the whole post!

You know that wedding file you have on your computer desktop that's a tangled hodgepodge of random inspirational photos, ideas, and links? (Mine was labeled "wedding crap.") Well, Snipi helps you bring order to that online inspiration chaos.

With Snipi, you can create a wedding inspiration stream by dragging and dropping products, photos, and videos you find interesting into a convenient web browsing tool. Snipi not only saves the snippet, but it also automatically gathers the information (descriptions, prices, website of origin, etc.) and adds it to your collection. I gave it a try with some of the links from my old "wedding crap" folder … and it's awesome! It's like a living inspiration board.

Ooh, but then it got cooler — you can share your Snipi stream with people (your fiance, bridesmaids, mother-in-law, etc.) using a custom URL, or people can subscribe to your stream using RSS. You can also easily share the items via Facebook, Twitter, or your WordPress blog without leaving the original website where you found the inspiration.

Oh and by the way… there's an iPhone app too.

And also… it's free.

So do yourself a solid and head over to Snipi and sign up — you can get all your wedding inspiration organized and shared within minutes!

(Oh and PS: Leave us a link to your Snipi stream in the comments — we wanna peek at your inspiration.)

This post was written from the perspective of a girl who was dealing with a boy, so it's totally hetero groom-centric. While sometimes same-sex relationships have similar imbalances, it seems like this is one of those issues that comes up more with the whole boy/girl partnership thang — clearly, offbeat hets aren't exempt from wrestling with traditional gender role issues! That said, many of these tips would work with an uninvolved partner of either gender. -Megan

1. Talk to him
It's a common misconception that the bride plans the wedding and it is the role of the groom to just show up wearing a suit. If your guy hasn't participated in the planning yet, it could be that he has no idea that he's even allowed to! So the first step is to come right out and say, "I'd like us to plan our wedding together." If you're lucky that'll be all it takes to get him to enthusiastically climb aboard the crazy wedding planning train! If not, no worries, keep reading…

2. Support & encourage his ideas
You can't ask him to be involved and then shoot down all of his ideas. He's gonna get frustrated with that pretty quickly and then you've blown your chance to have him as your partner in planning. 

OBT member Kathleen put it well when she said, "Give him support and encouragement. When James comes to me with an idea I usually just tell him that if it is important to him and if he thinks it will make our day better, then let's go for it! Which is why I am having a graveyard/tombstone wedding cake — despite the fact that our wedding is nowhere near Halloween."

Continue reading "9 ways to get your groom involved" →