Every bride-to-be wants her wedding to beone-of-a-kindand spectacular. Savvy, stylish brides are looking for ways to add their own style and sophistication to their wedding without relying on tradition-heavy standards. This idea-packed guide contains everything you need to personalize a wedding beautifully and elegantly, but also simply and inexpensively. There are dozens of fun-to-make projects including creative wedding invitations and seating cards tovery special gifts for the wedding party, dramatic centerpieces, and customized glassware-all of which lend a unique, handmade touch to your special occasion.

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The editors of Creative Publishing international have created dozens of best-selling titles in the fields of cafting, sewing, home repair, home improvement, home decor, and landscaping.

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Avery special shape for a uniqueevent Adds a touch of class An alternative to the traditional Silk Rose Petals A must have for any wedding Celebration Color as shown Approx. size is 2″ x 2 1/4″ – Complete your wedding, party or any special gathering with these beautiful heart shaped rose petals. Impressive details & vibrant

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You know the drill.  The ceremony is exciting and fun and full of joy, some tears and plenty of meaning as the bride and groom kiss and become one family.  Then it’s all over and everybody files out to go to the reception to dance, have cake and celebrate this union.  But wait, the whole proceeding has to grind To a haltwhile the photographer stages the wedding celebration for as long as an hour or more to “recreate” the ceremony and make those perfect wedding photos.  Meanwhile the reception may be getting underway and many of the guests that the bride or the groom or others in the family want to hug and share the joy with may have to go because they just can’t wait out a fussy photographer.

Somehow this complete disruption to the day has become accepted as just part of what the wedding day is all about.  And the worst part about it is that the photographs, while nice and well staged, look like a bunch of mannequins being arranged for a store window.  The joy and fun of the ceremony is over.  For decades to come everybody will say they are beautiful and meaningful but if you look closely the wedding celebration looks nervous, uncomfortable, bored and like they wish they were somewhere else.

Well maybe its time to throw that tradition out and put some creativity into how the wedding pics and the wedding photographer works in your wedding.  By finding a photographer who will put together some wedding photos that have some style, some creativity and some sense of inventiveness, you will have that wedding album that really is full of memories worth remembering.

To get that kind of photographer, you’re going to have to startearly.  You have to find that maverick photographer that “gets it” that the wedding is about the people, not the gowns and the hall and that his photographs must shout out “this was a wonderful day and we celebrated this union.”

You may have to look outside of the conventional “wedding photographers” listing in the phone book.  An artistic photographer may be more appropriate.  But be patient and find one that is just as professional as any photographer in that yellow pages but can bring some creativity and investment of getting to know this wedding celebration to the job of taking your important wedding pictures.

That wedding photographer should become as much a part of the wedding celebration as the groomsmen.  After all, if he is going to capture the personality of this couple, he’ll have to get to know you.  Spend some informal time with him and share those fun memories of when you met, those special times while you dated and certainly those very specialplaces where important moments in your relationship took place.

Armed with that kind of creative individual in charge of your wedding photographs, you’ll look forward with great anticipation to what he comes up with.  Many of the ideal shots will be created before the wedding, at some of those special places and he can Photoshop them to blend them with wedding day moments.

Above all that wedding photographer will comprehend that he’s there to serve this wedding and capture those special moments as they occur.  Sure, you may “pose” for a picture from time to time but this whole business of bringing the wedding day to a grinding halt to take stilted pictures of bored wedding party members will go out with the trash.  The outcome will be wedding pictures with style, with life and a lot of love in them to reflect the love that was exchanged in those vows and the love of family and friends as they enjoyed this magical day with you.

The following ideas will help keep your guests happy.

Frequently, the numbered table system is incorporated in order to shorten the queue and waiting time.  Each table is assigned a number that are randomly chosen by the MC or DJ at various intervals, people sitting at the the tables that are called out by the DJ will then line up in the queue while everyone else stays seated.  You can put the numbers in a variety of locations on the table, including on the flower arrangement. For a fun variation on the numbered system, you can have your florist add one extra flower to table one, two extra flowers for table “two” and so on. In order to guess their numbers, each table will need to count the flowers in their arrangement. This is quitepleasingfor guests and wedding party alike, and can lead to veryentertainingscenarios, especially if your guests have been drinking.

Another spin on the numbered tables, is to use colors instead. In this case, you can place different colored label or napkins on each table and then have the DJ simply call out each color name. To be safe, it’s wise to have the DJ have a sample of each color with a tag so that there is not too much confusion.  With the color system, it’s easy to arrange to have different tables where guests are related or close to each other line up in the queue. This is done by duplicatingthe colors on the tables that you want to queue up together. For example, if your friends are seated at two or three different tables, you can make those tables the color Pink, for example, and when the DJ calls out Pink all two or three tables will head to the buffet queue.  The color method is great in order to help you’ve your family and friends queue first, without it appearing that you’re picking favorites.

One astounding amusing game that’ll bring all your guests together is a trivia game. In essence, you place a little bell at each table and have the DJ ask questions about the Bride and Groom, the ideal man etc.   When the DJ or MC asks a question,  seated guests can ring a bell to guess the answer. Whoever answers correctly will head to the queue. This game is bothentertainingand endearing because it helps the guests and bridal celebration connect.

If you’re incorporating a buffet dinner at your wedding reception, be sure to make it fun and appear fair in order to not arouse any resentment among your guests. You will find that even thoughnot everyone will eat at the same time, everyone will still have an enjoyable time.

Most guests look forward to the wedding toast, but there are no rules engraved in stone that you need to add a toast activity into the wedding, you are definitely free to leave it out, it’s your wedding. But for those of you who feel that a wedding toast is an essential component of a wedding, there are manythings that you can do to spice it up.

One popular wedding toast, is to incorporate the toast into the wedding video,and essentially have all of your closest friends and families state aTiny special something about the bride and groom.  The video toast is a great way to give everyone a voice and help them share a heartfelt message that would not be appropriate at the wedding reception.

Another wedding toast is to have one person at each table be required to make a toast. Number the tables and at various intervals, have the MC or DJ call a number, which will require guests at that table to decide amongst themselves who will give the toast at that table. Certainly, more than one person can if they like, but there will likely be at least one ham at each table who will enjoy standing up and toasting the newlyweds.

Say you have plenty of public speakers in the group, and finding willing toast participants will not be a problem. But you think the subject matter might be. There’s an easy solution to this problem. You can provide open-ended topics for the toast speakers. Say you are providing an “open mike” toast arrangement, where anyone can request the microphone and offer a toast. The DJ, MC or someone else in the wedding party (perhaps the maid of honor or best man) can offer the speaker a surprise topic, which might be pulled from a champagne flute or drawn out of the floral arrangement on the head table. There might be slips of paper to choose, or just one sheet of paper with several ideas.

The speaker might choose to finish this sentence, “I remember when (groom’s name here) was aTiny boy, he always …” or answer this question, “When was (insert bride’s name here) at her silliest? Tell us the story”. You might have to give each speaker a minute or two to collect their thoughts, but you are sure to have some interesting stories, some uniqueanecdotes and some different perspectives on the bride and groom.

There are no limitations to the number of ideas regarding the wedding toast, and it should reflect who you are as a couple. You can often include wedding toasts to the delight of your guests, and ideal of all, you’ll have memories to share for many many years to come.