It’s one of those cliches that will never die: the little girl daydreaming of herself on her wedding day. And while, in those fantasies, the groom’s face may look like nothing more than a question mark, one aspect of her mind’seye wedding day is likely in sharp relief: The Dress. Once the wedding day has been relocated from a softlens figment of her imagination to an actual date on her calendar, she is off. On a mission. A mission to find the dress of her dreams.
“Gorgeous dress,” people say after a good wedding. “Beautiful flowers.” But no one ever says, “Did you see those tables?” or “That shade structure was incredible.” Know why? Because they’re usually boring-bordering on ugly. Plastic and vinyl have become the material of choice for everything from canopies to table legs, giving most wedding receptions something in common with weekend swap meets and Motocross signups.
y brother was my “best man” at my wedding, and his son Haruki Holden wore a kimono. I carried no flowers and wore no jewelry, although I did teeter on lofty pink satin slingbacks. It was not black tie. It was in a Frank Lloyd Wright building, never before used as a wedding site.
By holding the ceremony and reception at the same site, you’ll save on site fees, flowers and other decorations, transportation, and rentals. And guests will appreciate being spared additional car time.
The costs, demands, and stress of putting on a good celebration loomed as the wedding of Jenny Baron and Alan Dowdall (pictured) drew closer last year. The California couple had already called off their marriage a year before when the Coast Guard abruptly transferred Alan from San Francisco to New London, Connecticut, and this year the show just had to go on. They wanted to get married back home in Santa Barbara, but the pair was a bit short on savings, and having a oneyearold son did not facilitate the matter.
Everything I need to know about weddings I learned from The Worst Wedding Ever.
This wedding was one of a string of weddings to which I’ve been invited since I turned 25 and everyone around me started tying the knot (or, in many cases, smashing the glass). It was in Orange County. In a fundamentalist church. And it was awful.
I knew as soon as I got engaged that I wanted to have my wedding in Santa Barbara. Though I had moved to New York a few years before, Santa Barbara was the place I returned to when I needed to reconnect with my roots and my sense of self. My fiance loved spending time in Santa Barbara too, having fallen for my hometown the first time he visited my mother’s house and looked out the window at the Montecito hills sloping down to the Pacific. So with his enthusiastic approval, I set about planning our wedding.
It can be easy to forget, living in Santa Barbara, just how beautiful our city is. A drive to work is still a drive to work, even when it includes cityscape views and a skyline edged with lush, green mountaintops. Unless, of course, your business is directly linked to our city’s bounty.
Wines and weddings are a perfect match. There are few ways more appropriate to celebrate one’s nuptials with family and friends than by raising a glass to future joys. Before you decide upon your wedding wines, there are a few guidelines that may help you to navigate the sometimes choppy waters of wedding reception planning.
The celebrating came early for this team. While Dos Pueblos went about its warm-ups, the other side of the soccer field featured a pre-game hugs-and-flowers ceremony that honored the five San Marcos seniors who were playing their final regular season home game.
