The web has become the dominant way to shop for electronics, travel, cars, housing, even education. But you can just as easily use the web to find caterers, event halls, dressmakers, DJs, photographers, videographers–even a wedding planner if you decide to take a break from doing it all yourself.
Here’s how the web helps you plan a wedding:
* Local search. No, you don’t have to sort through vendors from here to Timbuktu. Local search technology now makes finding someone downtown as easy as finding someone anywhere. If you use Google, you only have to enter a place name along with your keyword to get a list of local businesses. Try “wedding planner fargo” (without the quotes) and see for yourself.
* Real people. The people you are buying from online aren’t “virtual.” They’re as real as the people you’d meet in person. In fact, especially with local business, the website is just a first contact. You can always call them up or arrange to meet in person.
* Dedicated wedding information websites. There are now websites solely devoted not just to planning a wedding, but to catering, wedding cakes, even dying shoes for weddings. These same websites often have directories of wedding vendors arranged by location.
* Message boards and customer reviews. You wouldn’t buy a book on Amazon without reading a review a customer had left. Now you don’t have to buy decorations that way, either.
Web Wedding Planning Alternatives
The web has a lot of advantages over most other ways of discovering and evaluating wedding vendors. Just look at what your other options are:
* Recommendations from friends and colleagues. How much do your friends and colleagues really know about wedding planning? Very often, one person’s idea of wedding elegance is any sane person’s idea of bad, bad taste. Just look at anyone’s wedding pictures. You can’t trust this decision to your friends. This is your big day. It deserves a little research.
* Bridal fairs. If the vendors at bridal fairs were so great, why would they be trawling for business? Do you want an in-demand wedding vendor, or one who has to set up a booth and hand out free samples?
* Yellow pages. I remember the time my mother used the Yellow Pages to find a contractor to install some new doors. During the holiday season, the draft would blow out the candles in the window if they weren’t electric. Anyone can get in the yellow pages–and believe me, anyone does.
Web Wedding Planning Advantages
* Selection. No offline source will ever have as many options, whether it’s songs for the wedding reception or fabrics for the gowns.
* Ready information. As soon as you see an option you’d like to consider, you can find out all you’d ever like to know as easily as copying and pasting into Google.
* It’s All in Writing. By their very nature, websites put a lot of information in writing. The written policies regarding shipping, warranties (if any), returns, and service will almost always be easy to access. (Hint: look for links to policies at the bottom of each web page.) The fact that everything is written down gives the vendor much less wiggle room to change the terms of the deal. Almost as good as the paper trail is the photograph trail–at least when it comes to merchandise. Save any relevant images along with the text.
* Better Business Bureau’s Convenient BBBOnline. On the web, it’s easy to check for Better Business Bureau membership. The site should have the BBBOnline logo displayed prominently on the order page. Click on the logo to be taken to the BBB.org profile for that business. The BBB page should say that business is a member in good standing. With the BBBOnline, the Bureau’s ecommerce program, you can dispute a sale without having to go to the local Bureau where the store is headquartered.
In short, the web makes it much easier to get a perfect wedding.
Joel Walsh is a freelance writer. Check out this website for wedding planning information and to find wedding vendors: planning a wedding: www.bridalocity.com
Let’s face it, not many of us have the kind of skills or experience to write truly poetic wedding vows. Or do we? Here’s the truth: Even if you don’t know Dylan Thomas from Bob Dylan, and you’re pretty sure T.S. Elliot was that guy who wrote the words to Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Cats,” all is not lost! In fact, there are ways to learn to write the words you want. With four simple steps, you can take what you feel in your heart and make it come out as sweetly as any Shakespearian sonnet.
Step 1: Decide on a theme
Finding a theme should arguably be the easiest part of writing poetry for your wedding vows. But you don’t want to be stuck with something trite or cliché, even though the theme of romantic love is probably the oldest known for poetry. There are lots of ways to avoid writing the same old “roses are red, violets are blue” type of poem. One trick the pros use is to envision what a newspaper article about your relationship would say. Would it discuss how and where you met? How your relationship has stayed strong, even during the hard times? What your love has meant to one another? Since newspaper articles get right to the point, this exercise can help you pick out an overriding theme for your vows.
Step 2: Allow time for reverie
No, not “revelry” (hopefully that will be what your wedding day is all about), but reverie – a quiet time devoted to a kind of dreamy meditation. Try some tricks for allowing yourself time to truly think about your poem — and not just those things that allow you to “act like a poet.” Go for a walk alone, listen to instrumental music, or simply shut the door to a room in your house and ask not to be disturbed. The most important thing to remember with any of these methods is that you don’t let other people interrupt your time.
Step 3: Choose your topic
Theme, as discussed above, is the driving idea behind your poem. The topic, however, is the specific vehicle you use to express the theme. While finding the theme should be the easiest part of writing a poem for your wedding, finding a topic that isn’t hackneyed and trite can be a challenge. For instance, love is your theme, but the beauty of your betrothed’s eyes may be the topic. You are using the example of her eyes as the symbol for your love. The key is to find something new. There’s something that makes your chosen one special, be it appearance, wit, or style. That’s the topic you want to choose. Poets use tools like automatic writing, journals, or “dream work” to come up with topics for their prose. (These tools are all discussed in detail in the home-study course I put together for couples personalizing their wedding vows – visit http://www.WeddingVowToolkit.com for more info.) But anything that allows you to spark your creativity can suffice if you’re short on time.
Step 4: Pick Your Style
As many different poems as there are, there are almost an equal number of styles in which they are written. There are traditional forms, modern, post modern, and many more. You can work on fitting your rough draft poem into one of these many forms, or you can go with no form at all. The benefit of working on an art form is that there are no hard and fast rules on what the end product must look like. Perhaps you’d like to try your hand at penning your vows in the form of a Shakespearean sonnet. Or, to go a completely different route, maybe “experimental” is right up your alley. No matter what you choose, just make sure it fits your style. After all, personalizing your wedding vows means just that – they should be personal, not forced to fit into a style that just isn’t “you.”
Chris Simeral is the creator of The Ultimate Wedding Vow Toolkit, the wedding-coordinator-approved home-study course for couples personalizing or renewing their wedding vows. Learn more at http://www.WeddingVowToolkit.com.
