Image from The Fresh Exchange via Pinterest
We often don’t like to talk about wedding planning failures, travesties and woes in wedding world. We like to show you Pretty-Pretty pictures to inspire your Happy-Happy day. Weeeeell, for those of you in the throes of wedding planning, you know that weddings are often far from perfect and planning them can be a downright bitch.
- Have you fought with a your mom (or his) over your theme yet?
- Have you fought with your fiancee over details?
- Or how about the gust list? There’s an argument waiting to happen, as is the budget discussion with, well, whomever.
What about vendors? Any of them flaked on you, double-booked your ceremony arch, your honeymoon suite? Your reception hall? Has your potential caterer offered to show you their reception room while another wedding was going on in it? Big red flag! Big One!
Image from The Fresh Exchange via Pinterest
The point is that wedding planning is full of emotion (both good and bad,) intense family interactions (both good and bad) and encounters with truly exceptional wedding professionals (both good and bad.)
Yet much of what you will encounter in mainstream wedding magazines and blogs is all about the Pretty-Pretty.
So today, in honor of the complexities of life and this battle we call wedding planning, I want to introduce you to my favorite online resources that remind me that it’s OK not to be Martha-fucking-Stewart all the time. And that mine isn’t the only family pressuring me to do stuff I don;t want to do for my wedding (like drape white Thule over the tables or invite Great-Aunt Tizzie’s , and her creepy boyfriend. And that I’m not the only bride with a vision for the rustically-funky-yet-understated fete that no one else seems to understand.
Image from The Fresh Exchange via Pinterest
In my times of wedding distress, when I feel like no-one understands, these are the blogs that comfort me; they make me laugh; and they make me feel like I am not alone. Melodramatic? Maybe, but true nonetheless.
1. Craft Fail: The thing about Craft Fail is that, not only are the pictures hilarious, each submitter describes what she was trying to do, how she went about things, and how said things went terribly wrong. Terribly wrong. Craft Fail reminds me that some DIY projects are better left to the brides with freaking art degrees.
2. Off Beat Bride is a closed community full of self-proclaimed off beat brides who share their stories, problems, plans, and advice. Be warned, if you are a bridal blogger and have any kind of banner on your site (whether paid or not) you may not be able to join this community. See Rogue Bride’s diatribe for details.
3. Wedding Bee is a great group of real brides talking about real DIY projects, troubleshooting real problems and finding real vendors. I especially love all of the pictures of DIY projects taken with a point and shoot camera with an automatic flash. These are not just lessons in the difficulty of some DIY projects, but also a lesson in what point and shoot photography really looks like and how it really differs from professional photography.
4. Cake Wrecks is a reminder to me that not all bakers are created equally. The Wedding Whoopsies section in particular is a painful reminder that not all DIY cake projects are created equally.
5. Anti Duck Face taught me (perhaps a bit too late) how silly this look is. This is also a nice reminder to practice looking relaxed and peaceful in pictures (waaaay more attractive than trying to hard.)
Image from Daily Bits Of Beauty via Pinterest