Chapter 1
Lunch Hour Wedding Planning
Congratulations! You're engaged! And it's no secret that engagements are a stressful period in the lives of couples. After saying, "I will," but before saying, "I do," every newly engaged couple experiences one single moment of sudden and perfect clarity of mind. During this revelatory period, they realize that in the few seconds it took to slip a ring on a finger, they inadvertently agreed to plan a hugely elaborate party for 150 or so relatives, friends, acquaintances, and, in some cases, strangers. No, wait, make that 200 -- Mom has demanded that her flock of high school girlfriends be invited, and Dad says everyone should be allowed to bring a date.
No wonder so many future husbands and wives contemplate running off to Vegas.
In the not-so-distant past, newly engaged women and their parents were responsible for planning the entirety of the future wedding. This meant they had to do a nasty thing called "legwork." To gather dress, tux, floral, favor, cake, and catering ideas, they were forced to first phone for catalogs and then wait until they arrived via mail.
After browsing these thick tomes of nuptial niceties, mothers and daughters (and, less frequently, fiancés and fathers) had to hoof it from vendor to vendor, often with a gaggle of female relatives in tow. In extreme cases, brides-to-be guilty of nothing more than indecision were subject to endless, boring sales pitches, usually given by salespeople more interested in profits than true love.
Now, some future brides still do have endless hours at their disposal to stroll leisurely from boutique to boutique. And some future grooms think nothing of whiling away hours inspecting ceremony sites and interviewing reception hall managers. But no doubt these people exist in tax brackets so high they can't even see the rest of us. Lucky them.
Here's a quick reality check: The majority of modern bridesand grooms-to-be spend their days working and, in their off hours, have plenty of errands and obligations to fill their agendas. They're getting married in towns and cities hundreds or thousands of miles from where they actually live. And their best pals, moms, and siblings reside nowhere near either of those places, making it almost impossible for anyone involved to casually jet off to meet with bakers, caterers, or DJs. That's why more and more engaged couples faced with the prospect of sneaking wedding planning into the gaps between work and play and food and sleep are turning to the one friend they know will never let them down: the Internet.
Let's face it. Most of us are pretty adept at navigating the virtual world. We socialize, schmooze, and share our journals online. We shop without ever changing out of our pajamas.
Yet while more than three quarters of all engaged couples fire up their web browsers when planning their weddings, only a little more than 10 percent ever buy or reserve headpieces, cakes, shoes, centerpieces, or other wedding gear on the net. Why? Maybe people don't feel comfortable putting their matrimonial happiness in the hands of the postal service. They may also crave the security of knowing who they're dealing with when dropping mad cash on stuff they'll only ever use once. But a friendly face is no guarantee of quality. And since online sellers who deal in cake toppers, freeze-dried rose petals, and other nuptial knickknacks are in it to make a buck just like a brick-and-mortar retailer, they have as much riding on a customer's happiness.
So why research and buy on the Internet? Because being able to plan your wedding during your lunch hour is awesome. More time online means less time spent wandering the streets of your town trying to track down elusive bakeries, less time wasted trying to make bridal salon employees understand that, yes, you really want black bridesmaid dresses, and less time avoiding the puppy-dog stares of bad eighties hair bands desperately looking for work.
That means more time to snuggle with your honey, more time to nurture those new familial relationships, more time to relax, and more time to simply enjoy being someone's future spouse.
Saying "I Do" with iDo
This book serves two purposes. Its pages are filled with easy-to-use matrimonial info that will introduce you to the wide (and wacky) world of weddings, and it also contains tons of tips and tricks that will show you how easily you can plan a wedding using the Internet as your primary -- or only -- tool. Impossible, you say? Get real. Just about everything you need to orchestrate picture-perfect nuptials can be found online.
With a little forethought, you, too, can use the Internet to take the stress out of wedding planning. Seriously. There is no reason whatsoever that getting engaged should sentence otherwise rational people to months or even years of pounding the pavement in search of products and services that are right there on the net for all to see. Being engaged should be fun! You should be able to look back on this period of your life without gritting your teeth.
Leah, A. J., and Jeanette -- three wired brides who share their experiences in sidebars scattered throughout this book -- wanted no part of the prenuptial hassle so many people assume is unavoidable. Instead of stressing out, they and their geeky grooms typed in a few keywords and were good to go. All right, maybe it wasn't quite that easy. But by turning to their computers first instead of immediately running full speed into the offices of their local wedding retailers, they saved some cash and found almost everything they needed with a minimum of fuss.
Leah, a graphic designer from North Carolina, met Will, a programmer from Massachusetts, at a party populated by people who previously knew each other only through the collaborative writing site Everything2.com. Once she and her web-savvy beau were engaged, Leah fired up her browser and started collecting wedding ideas: "Since I could check out things online in a few seconds at work, I could take care of tasks like looking up the wording for my invitations or finding the perfect shoes incrementally over the course of a few days, as opposed to spending hours on the phone."
Without the Internet, Leah maintains, the wedding planning process would have felt like a full-time job. Because she and Will were responsible for coordinating the comings and goings of a large number of out-of-town relatives, guests, and attendants, they needed some way of ensuring that all the essential information was easy for everyone to access.
"Both our parents -- mine in Alabama, his in Massachusetts -- and our entire wedding party lived far away, so getting a consensus on some wedding plans required us to be able to contact them all at the same time with our questions and concerns. E-mail and our wedding website were invaluable in this regard."
Leah's main regret? That she couldn't find a web-based retailer selling her perfect gown.
While A. J. and her husband Matt didn't meet through online acquaintances, the Internet did play a big role in their courtship.
They planned their first date over AOL Instant Messenger and kept love alive via e-mail when Matt spent an extended period of time in France. In fact, before he proposed, A. J. was already scouring online jewelry stores looking for the perfect ring. And when Matt popped the question, A. J. put her own spin on the wedding planning process by turning to the web for ideas and then taking those ideas to brick-and-mortar vendors.
"I found my reception venue online, as well as my dress and bridesmaid dresses. I decided on my color and theme ideas after coming across pictures of stuff I liked that was similar to what I already had in mind. But I mainly used the web to do price comparisons, because I am more comfortable with person-to-person contact. Still, I spent a lot of time researching flowers, decorations, and hairstyles online."
Throughout the planning process, A. J. and Matt used Yahoo! Notepad to keep track of wedding-related purchases, ideas, and vendor information.
Jeanette and Chris's romance got its start in an online chat room, which was fortuitous, considering that they lived more than two thousand miles away from one another. A long engagement meant that they spent quite a few years avoiding the wedding planning process altogether. When they finally buckled down and got started, the Internet was the first resource Jeanette turned to.
"Unlike most little girls, I didn't have my wedding planned from the moment I turned five. I didn't have any ideas. And I needed to get some, fast. As for bridal magazines, the more I looked, the more I found that most of them were focused on what is 'in fashion.' But I wasn't interested in the latest trends. Part of my problem was that I was planning a wedding that didn't follow the traditional patterns of events. I needed to figure out what I had to do, what I wanted to do, and what I could skip without offending anyone."
Jeanette believes that her wedding would never have gotten off the ground without the Internet. Being able to search and shop and plan online allowed her to devote bits and pieces of time to her wedding searches, as opposed to whole days or weekends.
"The thing I valued the most about having Internet resources available to me during my lunch hour or at four in the morning or whenever was that I didn't have to make my wedding my whole life. I could continue to work and relax and have fun, because I knew that when I needed to, I could get a whole lot done in just a few hours."
Using This Book
Right now you're probably freakin' excited. You may even be turning on your laptop as you read this sentence. But there are some things you should know before you get started. First, this book doesn't acknowledge the existence of the mythical beasts known as bridezillas and groomzillas. Planning a wedding is usually stressful and can set even the most saintly person's teeth on edge....
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