Medieval, Renaissance and LOTR wedding dresses

I just found this site for medieval wedding dresses, appropriately called Rivendell Bridal. It's in the UK, but they ship anywhere. They have a good gallery of 'real brides' wearing their creations. You can obviously get some good ideas here, and adapt the dresses for organic/fair trade/winter/ whatever you wish. I've never done a LOTR wedding, though we did a couple of StarWars, see the Padme post below. You might enjoy our civil Medieval ceremony, which we've adapted for secular use. It would be interesting to create a MiddleEarth variant. Perhaps a water, air and earth ceremony... hmmm

Oh, and here's another costumier in the UK, who used to work for ballet companies and the RSC. Enjoy her Pre-Raphaelite and custom wedding dress designs.

Here is a great source in New York for Medieval dresses: The Very Merry Seamstress. It's a great site, and the owner writes a nice blog, as well. I love their bodice fitting process: (and I learned a new word: sloper - I shall now talk about my 'slope', I think, it's a fun word to use instead of bosom)

"Customized fit for brides: If you're worried about the fit, just let us know. We offer a muslin sloper (sample bodice) service for $50. We will send you a "practice" bodice with instructions for you to try on, write on, pin and send back to us to ensure your bodice fits you to a tee - In order to use this service, You must (and this is required) be able to take this sloper to a local professional seamstress - or someone who understands how to fit a sloper - and have them "fit" it to you, then mail the sloper back to us"

Multicultural weddings - so many dresses, so little time

In some cultures, the bride and groom change clothes for each separate element of a traditional wedding. I once witnessed a bride changing three times for a Chinese wedding, and also a Korean wedding. However, THIS wedding is astounding. Four changes, four ceremonies, 1000 people at the banquet - the horse, the band, the lion dancers -- it makes you want to scream "elope, already!" I hope they had a good party.

We have conducted several weddings which blended cultural traditions. As we specialize in non-religious weddings, we have sometimes co-officiated with religious clergy (an imam, a deacon, a rabbi), so that appropriate blessings and ceremonies could be performed by religious clergy. We handled the civil, legal parts. Or the bride and groom have had a religious ceremony or a private tea ceremony earlier in the day, and then we performed the civil ceremony in the western tradition. But many traditions are cultural, not religious. So we have also incorporated the arrhae, the cord and the veil from Filipino (Spanish) traditions, the fire ceremony, the 7 blessings, the wine blessing, the bread and salt, the tea and saki ceremony, handfasting, and many other lovely traditions in our standard ceremony. Write us if you're interested.

In some cases, it's possible to blend the ceremonies together. So once we included the garlanding of the bride, the 7 steps (fire ceremony) and the Filipino rope ceremony in one simple outdoor ritual of walking around a wedding candle, while the bride and groom were covered in a chain of flowers draped in an infinity (8) pattern. It suited the parents and the couple, and was lovely. But you can do this in a small family wedding or with even a handful of people. If you want the BIG FAT MULTICULTURAL wedding - better start looking for the horses.

When do you sign the marriage license?

This was a recent question on Yahoo - so I wrote an answer:

The important point about the marriage license, is that whenever you sign the license, that is your legal wedding time and date. The wedding ceremony can be held at the same time, as is usual, or before or after the legal signing. Remember Charles and Camilla's wedding: They went to the registry office and signed the marriage license with a few witnesses (that was their legal wedding). Then Camilla change clothes and they went to the Cathedral for their "Wedding Blessing". It could have easily happened on separate days.

We have had cases where the couple wanted their legal wedding to be a different date or time (for sentimental reasons, perhaps their first anniversary date, or because an astrologer picked a better date for a propitious wedding, or because it was their parents or grandparents wedding anniversary) or -- because they need a legal marriage license filed earlier for healthcare or travel documents, or other legal reasons.

So I have gone to couple's homes with their witnesses and signed the license at various dates before or after the family/church wedding ceremony. Just be sure that your officiant is careful to comply with the laws in your state or country - some places have waiting periods - most common is 24 hours to the MINUTE after the license was issued -- before it can be legally signed. ONCE IT IS SIGNED BY THE COUPLE AND THE WITNESSES AND THE OFFICIANT, that is your LEGAL wedding date and time, as compared to your CEREMONY date and time.

If you don't want to see each other before the wedding, you can ask your officiant to go back and forth between the bride and groom and have them and the witnesses fill out the license separately, so the couple do not see each other. If you leave the signatures blank, a simple signature signing can be completed after the ceremony. The license is not legal until the officiant signs and dates it, so you should leave the time and date blank until the wedding is finished. But it is technically possible to have the license signed by everyone but the officiant before the ceremony.

Some cultures (esp Jewish) sign the license and the ketubah before the ceremony. Some cultures (Quaker) include the signing of the license and a larger marriage certificate at the end of the ceremony, and then ask all the guests to sign the certificate at the reception.

To incorporate a signing into the ceremony, we often follow the vows and the rings and the kiss with the official signing, and say: "to comply with the laws of _______ state, we will now ask the bride and groom and their witnesses (which can be best man/maid of honor OR siblings, or two moms, or two best friends, etc.) to come forward", and we each sign. This is very quick, if we have filled out the license before.

The MOST common signing is during the cocktail hour. The couple leave the wedding location, the witnesses and the officiant follow them (often after leaving them alone for the traditional 18 minutes, or 9x2 in the Jewish tradition), and we all sign in a calm atmosphere before the couple re-enters the reception. The best man often presents them, and says "and now, for the first time as a LEGALLY married couple, we welcome x and x, husband and wife ...."

Recycled wedding favors and decorations

Many of the DIY bridal sites have ideas you can borrow and make yourself, of course, so you don't have to worry about the carbon offset imprint of shipping your eco-recycled wedding invitations from San Francisco. Here's an example. Etsy was spotlighting these decorations made from recycled Harlequin Romanance Novels (cut as daisies with buttons for the center). It looks to me like they xeroxed the pages and enlarged the print, though. However, most public libraries discard or sell their romance paperbacks for a dime - get your young relatives or someone else crafty to make the flowers - or fold the pages into orgami shapes (they've painted the edges, and you could also fold them into baskets and paint the tops). You could probably use the cover for stuff, as well - put them in those $1.00 picture frames that stand up -- table decorations, perhaps. The point: a little browsing around on the etsy and diybride.com will give you lots of ideas you can adapt for a no-cost/low-cost wedding.

Here is a post on our ethicalweddings site on recycled paper and tree-free invitations.

Vintage Wedding Resources

The Etsy site is a clearinghouse for indie and handmade items - not just wedding items, of course. More on Indie later... Here is their etsy wedding category, which can absorb entirely too much time browsing the individual artists creations.

Check out Sweet Sassafras who specializes in Vintage Weddings. She has lots of useful information, including links to vintage patterns, and warnings that "sizes have changed over the years" (as has nutrition, health, and weight training workouts - which is why you might pop out of your grandmother's dress). She also has a section on Makeup from the 20s to 40s, and accessories. For some fun research, see the Vintage Bride photo pool on Flickr. Here are some 1920s pools.

Vintage can mean any time frame - someday, it may mean the 80s. But probably not yet. Unless you're have a bighairshoulderpad fetish. And a lot of hairspray to use up. You might consider THIS vintage pix for bighair inspiration. Those are pretty big lapels, too! These vintage wedding photos on Flickr are public domain, so you could print them for decorations.

We've started a list of Vintage dress retailers, over at agreenbride. And you might need Vintage Undergarments, too.

Wedding cake alternatives: Cake Balls!

From an indiebride. Go see pictures here:
Sort of like round cupcakes filled with truffles, it seems like an American version of the French Croquembouche (the traditional French wedding cake: a mountain of profiteroles covered in syrup eaten with icecream).

However, unless they're VERY NICE, there is definitely a resemblance to donut holes...

And here is a Croquembouche. It's also traditional to hide things inside (it's hollow) - such as a magnum of champagne.

More on Themed weddings - a rant

A punked-out country ragtime hippie medievil disco

That's got to be the best headline for a themed wedding rant I've read in ages. The bride, a Canadian, writes:

"Yes, I have been tossing glasses full of cranberry-coloured contempt onto white weddings. That’s because I find the traditional trappings of weddings obnoxious, nauseating, and frankly, an insult to feminism. I am not, however, opposed to marriage itself. Granted, a decade ago, I couldn’t imagine myself getting married. Now that I’ve found someone worth fusing my life with, I quite like the idea of joining our paths officially. What I’m trying to figure out is how to do it an unconventional way that will show our friends a good time, and be in line with our tastes and beliefs".

She then catalogues how people's lifestyles may determine their wedding theme, from punk kids moshing in Ozzy look-alikes, to rural folk decorating a barn. Not much originality there - but her nightmares of a swing dance theme, where no guests know to dance to a '70s party awash in BeeGees to her FH's idea of a Bridget Jones tarts and vicars theme ("Sigh. Dirty-minded men. This idea is way out of line with my vision of a pro-feministic alternative wedding") show how the trend for thematic content, from steampunk to starwars, is overtaking the simple idea of a good party.

If your closet already is full of bridesmaid's dresses you hope you can wear to semi-formal weddings as a guest, just imagine the drag of making your guests put together another Halloween costume for your theme. Nobody has that much clothes budget, or that much time to go to Value Village and the SallyAnn looking for props. Our advice? Unless you are ALL members of the Society for Creative Anachronism (see our reworked Secular Medieval Wedding ceremony) or StarWars Celebration geeks, limit the theme to food, favors and music. Let those who will, join in. Don't make your grandma dress up (especially if you're having a steampunk wedding - my grandmother REMEMBERS real corsets). Do what one of OUR couples did. Add little touches to your ceremony (the march from StarWars for the bridal procession). Put little inside hints in the wording of your vows. Make some some funky favors as keepsakes for those in the know.

Then run away to your theme paradise with just the TWO of you, and fantasy party to you heart's content. Our bride took bits of her original wedding dress and sewed them into her complete Padme wedding costume, and they had a second wedding at a convention. Bliss.