Life After

Anne Remembers What Weddings Are All About

I learned something this weekend. Something about weddings. Something that is easy to completely forget in the rush of planning or helping plan or thinking about planning a wedding. Something that I forgot completely in the last two weeks.

That something is this: you don’t need fancy decorations or huge bridal parties, a dj or a three-tiered cake to have a wedding. Those things are fun and wonderful and can be part of a celebration that you and your friends and family will always remember. They’re a way to share part of your life and your likes with the people you care about.

But they aren’t what, really, at the end of the day, makes a wedding a…

Anne Remembers Finding Her Perfect Dress

It’s like kissing frogs – finding your wedding dress, that is.

Rumor has it (okay, I heard this from a recently engaged friend) that you’re likely to find your dress by the sixth one you try. Less than a week later, that friend found her dress on the fourth attempt.

My experience was slightly different.

I don’t tend to think of myself as incredibly picky or high maintenance (although that could very well put me in the third category of women, according to Billy Crystal’s When Harry Met Sally logic: the high maintenance one who thinks she is low maintenance), but I will admit that I tried on more than a few wedding dresses. Thinking back…probably at least…

William Discusses Post Wedding Blues

So down the aisle you went in the fairy tale fashion you always dreamed of and were sent off in style with Prince Charming. Now, back at home after the busy year of planning the day you had anticipated your whole life –you realize it is over. The wedding is complete and there is nothing left to plan.

Post wedding let down can often be a difficult time for new brides and MOBs alike. The result of investing every emotion and dollar possible into one magic day is often aftershock vs. after glow when it is all over. Some brides may simply feel a little blue, whereas others may experience more severe depression. While many of the newly-wedded start their new lives as…

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Wedding Planning

It’s time to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly of wedding planning.

Okay, except for the fact that the third part of this isn’t really ugly. It’s more…well, let’s just call it the “what I wish I’d known when I was planning my wedding” section. But that doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Anyway. I work with a woman who has officially entered the home stretch of planning her wedding. As in, the wedding is only two weeks away and she has everything pretty much taken care of (wish I’d been in that boat!).

Recently, we got to talking about weddings (which happen to be one of my favorite things…

Anne’s Take on Summer Weddings

Summer is over. Finally, irrevocably, completely. Which is fantastic because it just so happens that I love fall (adore fall might be more like it. The colors, the smells, the fact that it will soon be okay for me to put pumpkin in everything I eat – okay, I might be a little bit obsessed.). And, while it is incredibly difficult to beat a wedding on a cool summer evening…well, let’s just say that crisp fall twilight gives pretty much every kind of evening a run for its money.

But. Before we leap headlong into autumn leaves and candlelight and apple pie-laden dessert tables, I want to look back on two of my favorite things about summer weddings right now: ribbons and…

Anne Looks Forward to 55 Years

I’ll be the first to admit it: I’m a hopeless romantic. But that doesn’t take away an ounce of my sincerity when I saw that weddings are absolutely fantastic. From the proposal to the sparkler-lit getaway they’re a celebration of one of the biggest and most exciting decisions in our lives: choosing who we want to share them with.

It’s entirely possible that my hopeless romanticism is about to run away with me. I’ll apologize in advance (sorry) but I’m plowing ahead nonetheless. Last weekend I attended a 55th anniversary celebration. It was simple, it was family, and it involved several of the happier (and certainly more tear-inducing) moments I’ve experienced in the past couple of months.

Sometimes it is…

Anne Helps You Navigate Parental Input

It’s coming: the day you’ve been waiting for, looking forward to, possibly planning for and dreaming about for most of your life. You’ve thought about the dress, the music and the look in his eyes as you walk down the aisle…

But what do you do when it’s not all up to you?

A friend of mine is getting married. She’s been engaged for about six months and still has almost a year to go, making for a long planning process with plenty of time to figure things out. But there’s one thing going (to some degree) wrong: Her parents want to make all the decisions for her.

Now, planning a wedding can be a complicated process and these…

Thank You Note Etiquette

So, the wedding is over and chances are you staring at a giant stack of unwritten thank you notes. Hopefully you took good notes when you were unwrapping and know who gave you what! All you need now is to bite the bullet and get started. Pour yourself a glass of iced tea, find a comfy spot on your deck and get to it! Here are a few links to help you with any etiquette questions you might have about thanking your guests, including how to handle honeymoon registry gifts and those gifts you have returned or exchanged.

Thank You Note Basics

Exchanged Gifts

Honeymoon Registry Gifts

Photo Credit: Maison Yellow

Newlywed Perspective: First Year Anniversary Gifts

It’s entirely possible that what I want to talk to you about today is the furthest thing from your mind. You are, I’m only guessing, reading through this blog because you are just about waist-deep (or very soon to be waist-deep) in things like flowers and bridesmaid dresses and dinner menus (or, more importantly, dessert menus!).

But what I figure is this: you’re already planning for the wedding. Why not plan for the marriage, too?

My next guess is that you’re all doing this as well – the daydreaming and excitement doesn’t stop at the “I do’s”! And, for better or for worse, the work and the potential for stress and conflict and the (thank goodness) celebrations don’t stop at…

Newlywed Perspective: Anne’s First Anniversary

Anniversaries are fun. Enough said, really. They’re an opportunity to spend time with the one you love, to enjoy each other’s company, to splurge a little bit on yourselves and celebrate the fact that you’ve worked, played and loved your way through another year together.

I think it didn’t occur to me until this year that anniversaries can also be about celebrating something else: the fact that you have a whole, brand new year ahead of you!

It’s like New Year’s Eve – you’re with your friends and your family and you’re acknowledging the past year but you’re also reflecting on that year, on the things you’ve loved and enjoyed and the things that have challenged you and the things that…