Pre-wedding weight loss might be on your mind. After all, stress-eating and running around ragged before the wedding day may have taken a toll. Here are some quick and simple fad diets that can help you whether you need to lose five pounds, ten pounds or more.
Top Quick Diet Picks:
Special K
Target: 5lbs
Difficulty level: moderate
Special K Diet: Replace 2 meals with bowls of cereal a day for 2 weeks and lose five pounds. Eat your regular dinner and plenty of healthy low cal snacks.
Sacred Heart Diet
Target: 10lbs
Difficulty level: moderate
5-10 lbs: Sacred Heart Soup Diet. Eat lots of soup, fruit and veggies and follow a special diet plan for a week and lose up to ten pounds.
Calorie Shifting / Fat Loss 4 Idiots
Target: 10-15 pounds
Difficulty level: Fairly Easy
Go with Fat Loss 4 Idiots. This plan can help you shed pounds fast with an online generated diet plan that is selling like hotcakes!
Master Cleanse Lemonade Diet
Target: 20 lbs
Difficulty Level: Hard (but effective)
15+ pounds: Willing to fast for a week? Try the Master Cleanse.
If you’ve got a few weeks and some resolve, you can trim down before your wedding day!
Tags: fit into your wedding gown, wedding diet, wedding weight loss
When you plan your wedding reception, dancing is a big part of the fun. Having great music is important but having music that means something to you as a couple is what will customise your wedding and give you and your guests really fond memoires. When talking to your DJ, you’ll have to give some information so here are some special songs to plan for:
Your First Dance
This is the first dance as husband and wife and all eyes are on you. Do you have a ’song’? If not, time to shop around for one. You want your first dance to be really memorable.
Dance With The Wedding Party
It’s traditional for every wedding party to dance together. Best man gets paired up with matron of honour and ushers are paired up with bridesmaids. Even the little ring bearer should dance with your flower girl. (Awe!) Great songs for this dance include songs that speak friendship as these people are probably your best friends. Together Forever by the Nylons, You’ve got a Friend by James Taylor, etc are great songs for this dance.
Dance for EVERYONE
One Love by Bob Marley, Everybody Have Fun Tonight by Wang Chung, We Are Family, Celebration and other classic songs can set the tone for the evening! A great song will get everyone up to dance!
Don’t forget these dances:
- Father Daughter Dance
- Mother Son Dance
- Parents Dance
- Last Dance of The Night
There are a lot of online suggestion lists of various songs for these dances that might mean something to you and your family. Your DJ will probably play music for classic dances in there such as line dances, YMCA, The Macarena and other wedding classics but don’t be afraid to ask for specific music to be played as well.
Digital Wedding Resources:
Tags: father/daughter dance, first dance, mother/son dance, parents dance, wedding dances, wedding dj, Wedding Music, wedding party dance, wedding planning
Planning your wedding is the ultimate test in patience for many brides. It’ll test your friendships, your family bond, your future marriage and your own sanity. Between the finances and the seating plans and the choices and everyone’s whining you might deserve to be crowned as queen of the saints by the end.
Here are a few tips to keep you sane during the process:
- It’s YOUR day. Despite trying to please everyone, you want to look back and remember the day fondly instead of with disdain. Ultimately every single choice is yours and your future husband’s.
- It’s only ONE day. Don’t let it ruin your relationship and breed bitterness between you and your future spouse. Compromise.
- You can’t please everyone all the time so choose to please yourself.
- Don’t sweat the small stuff. In the bigger scheme of things, all that is TRULY important is the vows you and your man share. At the moment you gaze into his eyes and get ready to say “I do” nothing else will matter.
- Marry for forever. Don’t take the plunge unless you’re convinced this man is someone you want to grow old with; flaws and all.
Styles come and go and you want your wedding day hairstyle to be beautiful and timeless too. No one wants to look back in twenty years and think, “Gawd..that was awful!” when they look at their wedding snapshots.
Tips for Perfect Wedding Hair
- Go for classic and timeless instead of trendy
- Don’t have a haircut within a month of the wedding unless it’s a trim only to avoid a bad hairdo
- Go for a trial run (or two) with a new hairdresser to see what the hairdo will look like. Don’t leave it till the day of the wedding!
- Take a friend who will tell you the truth when you have your trial run for an updo.
For hair ideas, you can find countless magazines and use the internet as well. There are also some great online programs that allow you to import a snapshot of yourself and try on different virtual hairdos to help you choose. Follow the tips in this post and you have a much better chance of having the glorious mane you want for your big day!
Tags: wedding hair
Is there such as thing as wedding cash etiquette? Knowing how much cash to give at a wedding is a good question and depends upon many factors including: how well you know the couple and how much they have spent on the wedding.
If you are aware of the price of the dinner plate, it is often customary to provide enough funds to cover that. However, that’s not neccesary. When a couple invites you to their wedding hopefully they’re not counting on your covering the cost of your food. Feel free to give as much as you are comfortable with.
Weddings can be expensive especially if you’ve already had to attend a wedding shower and a Jack and Jill or Buck and Doe party. Do what you can and be as generous as your budget allows.
Tags: cash wedding gifts, wedding cash, wedding gifts, wedding money
Instead of having separate bachelorette and stag parties, think about having a Jack and Jill or Buck and Doe party where everyone comes together to have a casual party with the bride and groom. The benefits of this type of party are multiple:
Benefits of Couples Bachelor Parties
- There’s no need for separate parties which often cause friction in the relationship where things like strippers are involved
- There’s money raised to help with the wedding expenses or for the honeymoon
- It’s a great ice breaker for the wedding.
In terms of the final reason, the icebreaker…this is the best reason of all really. When you have everyone attending a wedding come to a party in casual clothes with lots of dancing and drinks, everyone gets to know one another. That way, you are all friends by the time the wedding rolls around and it can make for a much more fun event.
From a cash perspective, here’s how they are typically structured. This is flexible but these are guidelines for you:
-sell tickets to the event. Have everyone in the wedding party try to sell tickets as well. Make the door fee a little higher than the advanced ticket fee.
-have food available as a buffet but have that included in the ticket price
-Sell a cash bar. Get a liquor license and pocket the profits. (Don’t forget to set up designated drivers and awaiting taxicabs for the end of the night)
-Raffle items off for a fee. You can buy rolls of tickets at party supply stores.
The Jack and Jill (or Stag and Doe) can be a lot of fun for you and your wedding guests as well as help everyone get to know one another better before the big day, not to mention helping you with some expenses. Many couples use the fund as their honeymoon money.
Tags: bachelor's party, bachelorette party, buck and doe, jack and jill party, stag and doe, wedding fund raising, wedding party
As the wedding day approaches and your nerves feel frazzled to the brink of you turning into She-Hulk, it might be time for a day of pampering. A few days before the wedding try to get a day with your best friend or maid of honor and get some pampering done including:
- Eyebrows
- manicure
- pedicure
- facial
- massage
- Hair color (if neccesary)
- wax of leg, underarm and bikini area (for the wedding night AND the honeymoon)
It’s a good idea to do your color at least a few days before the big day so you can get a few shampoos in so that there are no dye marks on your scalp. And, getting a massage and facial can do wonders for you.
Try your best to really enjoy the day and de-stress. Wedding planning is hard work and a nice day of r&r&r&4 (the third r is renewal and the fourth is rejuvention) will do wonders for your inner beauty and calm as well as your outer appearance.
Tags: wedding spa day, wedding stress, weddings
Guest Post:
Choosing your engagement rings is a big decision for most couples, as these tokens of love and commitment will hopefully be worn for a very long time.
With preparations under way for the big day, you would think that the wedding rings would be one of the most important items to arrange, yet they often get overlooked and left until quite late in the day to arrange.
Because of limited choice of jewellery on the high street, much of which is mass produced and imported, many people looking for something a little bit different are turning to the internet to purchase their wedding rings.
Some people are a still a little nervous about making a purchase on the internet, especially when it is something as important as a wedding ring.
One of the biggest concerns is getting the ring size correct as many people, especially men, will not have worn a ring before.
From past experience we know that people have made big mistakes when it comes to getting their ring size correct, from using bits of string or plastic to printing off scales from the internet onto bits of paper and wrapping around the finger. All of these methods are very inaccurate and should not be used.
Worryingly, we have dealt with a growing number of customers who have been into high street jewellers to be measured and have been given the incorrect size. This has happened so frequently in the past that we can only presume that this is done deliberately because the retailer knows that they won’t get a sale as the customer has admitted that they are going to buy their rings from the internet.
To overcome these issues, we aim to make the ring sizing process easy for our customers and make it hassle free for them to purchase their dream wedding ring online.
Since all our rings are made to order, if customers really are unsure about size we send out professional wide wedding ring sizers so that they have the opportunity of measuring their fingers in the comfort of their own home. This is important as having your finger measured just once is only a snapshot in time and that measurement could be as much as a whole size out since your fingers change shape throughout the day. Hands swell in the heat and your fingers are slightly larger in the afternoon. Cold weather makes your hands shrink and rings will become loose and could fall off and be lost if the ring is too big to start with.
Love2have specialises in handcrafted jewellery with many of our ring designs being wider than those on the high street. The wider rings are becoming increasingly popular as wedding rings but you may need at least one size bigger if opting for a ring over 5 mm wide. As many of our custom designs cannot be resized it is doubly important right from the outset, to get the size correct.
Our advice to those looking to purchase wedding rings from us, is don’t add to the stress of the wedding preparations by leaving your rings until the last minute. Give us plenty of time to ensure sizing is correct so that we can get their ring made with time to spare.
Stand out from the crowd, find your special wedding ring and know that you are supporting small independent designers based here in the UK making beautiful handcrafted pieces of jewellery. Love2have wedding rings really are worth waiting for.
Written by John Lewis of Love2Have. Love2have specialises in quality handcrafted designer wedding rings made here in the UK by small independent designers.
Tags: wedding rings
It’s wonderfully romantic when you watch a tv or movie wedding where the bride and groom have written their own vows. It’s very fairytale’ish, yes? If you’ve had this in mind for your wedding but your spouse seems lukewarm on the idea, you might have a problem on your hands.
Men might not want to wear their hearts on their sleeves and another issue is that while you might have come up with a great set of vows, your spouse might not have done the same. Your idea of fairytale could feel like the sound of a scratching record if he does or says something that you haven’t envisioned. How do you work it out?
Here are some options:
-Share wedding vows before the day so there are no surprises.
-Have them professionally written for one or both of you. This might sound like cheating but it could be the best way to get results without putting pressure on your fiance. If he doesn’t want to write his own vows, he can talk to a professional speechwriter and convey how he feels and have those thoughts put into eloquent words.
-Go for traditional. You can share your innermost thoughts in private.
The most important thing you can do is to do something that appeals to both of you. If you’ve always had a vision in mind for your wedding day, realize that not everything is possible unless you want to alienate your future spouse. Compromise!
_____
Check out this wedding vows resource if you want some help writing your vows.
Tags: wedding vows, write your own vows
No one wants to invite Aunt Flo to the wedding. In your dream day and your gorgeous white dress, Tampax or Always / Kotex, etc. definitely don’t play into your plans. If you have a fairly regular menstrual period you can easily see whether or not the wedding day or honeymoon will be impacted by your monthly visitor.
If you haven’t thought about it, it’s time to do some charting to see if your period plans to make an appearance. If your wedding is a long way off, you might want to see again 3 months prior what the schedule looks like.
If it looks bleak, there are some things you can do to get Aunt Flo to hurry up or delay her visit. Birth control pills can be very helpful in helping you skip a period or move the day. Some new birth control pills don’t let you have a period at all. If you don’t want to go that route, you could simply move your schedule around by skipping a few pills at the end of the pack to bring on your period early. Of course you’ll want to be sure you use a backup form of contraception or avoid intercourse otherwise Aunt Flo could be replaced by a shotgun wedding.
Tags: Aunt Flo, Aunt Flow, avoiding period during wedding, wedding planning