I love my fiance but GOD, he's such a fucking GUY. It seems like all the wedding planning stuff ALWAYS FALLS TO ME. He says things like "Oh but honey, you're so good at it." Why won't he help me!? -Jen

Jen, this is a perennial question, and it seems to be almost as much of an issue with offbeat grooms as for more, well, stereotypical ones.

I wish I could completely skip over the gender issue on this one, but I have to at least acknowledge it. I don't know what there is to say about the fact that some men don't enjoy planning weddings. Is it an embodiment culture-driven gender influences? Probably. Could your guy be lazy? Maybe. Is making gender generalizations about it self-reinforcing these very gender influences you're decrying? Most likely. Are there lesbian couples who deal with this same interest-in-wedding-planning imbalance who don't reduce it to a gender issue? Yes.

We could debate why it happens and what it means and who's to blame for a long time. But really, that's not accomplishing much — what can you actually DO about it? What can you actually LEARN from it?

Continue reading "Acknowledging and learning from partnership imbalances OR "My stupid fiance won't help me with wedding planning"" →

The short answer: very, VERY carefully. The longer answer? Watch:

We're trying to do our wedding on the cheap but still have it be unique and cool. So, we decided that our theme needs to start with the invitations! We hired a local tattoo artist to draw up [Editor's note: DRAW, not design!] a 50's-60's rock concert poster for us that we plan on printing off at Kinko's and mailing as our invite. The problem is, he just told me it's going to cost $500 in order for him to draw up the original! So, I'm thinking $500 for the original + ($.48 X 150) for printing + small manila envelopes for mailing + postage + home printed response cards = me being taken to the cleaners on my "cheap & cool" invites? Or, is it worth it for the cool factor and the fact that we will forever have original artwork to remember our wedding by? I have to laugh that our invites could cost us more than our rock-club reception space! -Becky

Ah yes. How well I know the progression from "cheap and cool" to "handcrafted and awesome" to "hey wait a minute — this would have cost less if I'd gotten invites at Target!" Awesome offbeat custom wedding stuff has a sneaky way of costing more than mass produced mainstream stuff. A custom dress made in China is going to cost you less than a custom dress made around the corner.

Continue reading "Is it worth spending money on wedding art?" →

I have a question that is probably going to make me sound really mean, but here goes: how do I gracefully turn down offers of jewelry or other accessories to wear on my wedding day?

Both my mom and mother-in-law-to-be are very nice, generous people. But they have taste in clothes & jewelry that really clashes with mine. They love delicate gold sparkly pretty princess things, and I love big chunky bold modern stuff — soooo very different.

I will let them know in advance that I have already purchased everything I need, but that might not get the point across. Is there a decent way of pre-emptively saying "please don’t give me anything, no really, please DO NOT"? How do I say this TACTFULLY but make sure the message is loud and clear? OR, if they ignore me and give me something and it's awful, how do I turn it down tactfully?

Definitely make it clear that you've already purchased your jewelry. Show off what you've gotten in person or via email. Explain why you love it so much and how excited you are about it. Hopefully this will nip things in the bud. But if they insist on giving you jewelry anyway, try this technique:

Continue reading "How to deal with gifted accessories that just don't go" →

You can thank OBT member "Curly Fries" for the following ring shopping tip. We pulled this from the "British Offbeat Brides" group on the OBT.

The German and I bought our wedding rings last week and followed the most awesome tip from a friend of a friend. Forgive me if this is totally obvious but we had no idea that we could do it so I thought I would share…

Continue reading "A tip for ring shopping from a UK bride" →