Some LDS brides and grooms hire a professional wedding photographer and rent a reception hall with professional catering and DJ services for their special day; others let family and friends handle the pictures and serve homemade food at a wedding reception in their backyard or at a local LDS chapel. Which way is best for you depends on your circumstances, preferences, and of course your budget.
First, let’s take a look at the reasons why people hire professionals – and why they sometimes choose not to. Many people like professional wedding services because they…read more
For the single girls at your wedding reception, the bouquet toss is one of the most looked-forward-to events of the reception. Make it perfect with a bouquet toss song that celebrates girl power and all things feminine.
This One’s for the Girls by Martina McBride
I Feel Like a Woman by Shania Twain
It’s Raining Men by The Weathergirls
Just a Girl by No Doubt
Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Ani Difranco
One Way or Another by Blondie
Another One Bites the Dust by Queen
Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It) by Beyonce
Independent Women by Destiny’s Child
Where My Girls At by 702
Luck Be a Lady by Frank Sinatra
Girls Just Want to Have Fun by Cyndi Lauper
Diamonds Are…read more
Having an outdoor wedding reception in the spring and summer months is a beautiful choice. Mother Nature offers a more picturesque backdrop than even the fanciest ballroom or hotel, plus you’ve got all that fabulous natural lighting for your photos! But an outdoor reception means you’ll also have to take extra precautions to protect your wedding cake against hot weather.
If you know you are hosting an outdoor wedding reception, the weather will have to guide your choices in the icing and filling you choose for your wedding cake. You don’t want your $700 cake to start sweating, melting, and sliding 20 minutes into the reception.
Fondant is generally considered a good summer wedding cake icing since it stays put once set, although it does tend to sweat in the heat. Buttercream icing made with real butter will …read more
When most LDS brides set out to procure their wedding cakes, they don’t know they’ll most likely be paying a separate cake cutting fee in addition to the cost of making and decorating the cake. Surprised? Learn who charges the fee and why, what it covers, and how much a typical wedding cake cutting fee runs.
When you bring in a cake from an outside bakery (or one that you’ve made yourself,) your reception venue may charge a cake cutting fee. If you have your cake made by their in-house baker, however, they will waive the fee.
Depending on the venue, a typical cake cutting fee runs between $1 and $2 per slice. Cake cutting fees can add up to several hundred dollars, so make sure to…read more
Professional wedding vendors can now advertise on WeddingLDS and have access to over 3.8 million page views a month!
Watch the video below to find out how easy it is to create an ad with our point-‘n-click software
The wedding cake receives a place of honor near the head table at the reception, where it is only display until the moment it is cut and served. A wedding cake topper can be the crowning touch on an LDS wedding cake, and even those who think they don’t like wedding cake toppers may be surprised at some of their options.
When most people think of a wedding cake topper, they immediately picture traditional bride and groom figures that are either standing next to each other, holding hands, linking arms, dancing, or kissing. While these traditional style wedding cake toppers are still available and popular, there are also…read more
photo courtesy of Teresa K Photography for WeddingLDS.com
Flowers play a huge role in any wedding, regardless of the size of the wedding or the wedding theme. Combining the right kind of flowers into the bridal bouquets can turn them into a masterpiece, and topping a wedding cake with the correct blooms of fresh flowers transforms it into the focal point of the room. Even when flowers aren’t front and center, they are forming a beautiful backdrop for the entire wedding day. Flowers also tie together the visual elements of a wedding reception into a unified whole. Since wedding flowers are so important, they deserve a generous amount of a bride’s time and attention during the wedding planning process.
Wedding flowers will be a main element of the wedding pictures, as the LDS bride and all her bridesmaids will be carrying bouquets and the groom and groomsmen will be wearing boutonnieres. They will adorn the wedding reception site, and let’s not forget the all-important bouquet toss at the end of the night. Brides might want to make a checklist of bouquets and arrangements that they’ll need to order for the special day. So, remember, while choosing a wedding florist to ask lots questions of each one while taking into account some of the information below.
Importance of Wedding Flowers
Wedding flowers are a visual representation of the wedding theme, so they must be chosen carefully. In order to pick the right types of wedding flowers for her special day, a bride needs to sit down and decide four important things:
The wedding season
The type of ceremony and reception
The wedding color scheme
The wedding flower budget
photo courtesy of Carley Daniel photography for WeddingLDS.com
Wedding Flowers by Season
For now, the date only needs to be an approximation. The season in which the ceremony is held will determine what types of flowers are appropriate for your LDS wedding.
Spring and summer wedding flowers often have bright hues, warm colors, or pastels. Multicolor bouquets, as well as bouquets made up of many small blooms, are more often seen in summer and spring wedding flowers.
Fall and winter weddings generally look best with larger blooms and deeper colors. Monochromatic bouquets, as well as those with stark contrasts, make a dramatic statement and often appear in the colder months of the year. You may even want to look closer at flowers for each month of the year or find out about flowers and their meanings. Every month has its own special flowers that represent it and most flowers have special meanings and this may help you get more ideas.
Wedding Flowers by Ceremony Type
Wedding receptions and ceremonies come in all different kinds of types and themes and no flower is right for every one of them. A bride doesn’t have to figure out every detail before she’s ready to think about flowers, but she does need to know generally what kind of ceremony and reception she is going to have. Will the wedding reception be held indoors or outdoors? What is the wedding theme? Will it be casual or formal? These questions will guide her in selecting the right wedding flowers. A light bouquet of daisies and wildflowers tied with a pastel ribbon, for example, would be a perfect complement to a casual, outdoor summer wedding. But the same bouquet would seem far too flimsy and insubstantial for a decadent formal ceremony on a winter evening.
Wedding Flower Themes by Wedding Color
Every wedding must have a clear color scheme. Honing in on a wedding color scheme will make it easier to select the bridesmaid’s dresses, a cake, and other elements of the décor, including the wedding flowers. The wedding colors should be echoed in the flowers. If you aren’t sure what colors to select for your wedding or how to match colors, then study a color wheel to see the relationships of different colors to each other. Using a wedding color wheel can help you to identify colors that look good with each other, even if you don’t have a “natural” eye for complementary, analogous, or triad colors.
photo courtesy of Amelia Lyon photography
If you still don’t know where to start when choosing flower colors, consider the color meanings of wedding flowers. Colors convey meanings and that may help you to choose special flowers that say what you want them to say for your wedding. Once you’ve given plenty of thought to color, you can select the actual varieties of flowers that you’ll be ordering for the big day.
photo courtesy of Delane Robinson photography for WeddingLDS.com
Tips for Buying Wedding Flowers on a Budget
If you’re working with a wedding budget, which almost all brides are, a florist can be your best friend in planning your wedding. A qualified florist can recommend less expensive substitutions for bouquets and arrangements, tell you which flowers are in season when you want them, give advice about wholesale flowers, and quickly give you realistic cost estimates. With a florist’s help and a willingness to be flexible, it’s possible to save money on wedding flowers and still get beautiful results.
But remember, though most wedding florists genuinely care about your happiness and want to see you have a spectacular wedding day, remember that they are also running their floral shop to make a profit. So if you walk in and announce that you have X amount to spend, a florist will probably try to steer you toward flowers and arrangements near the upper threshold of your budget.
Silk Wedding Flower Options
You can also consult with your florist about silk flowers. Silk flowers used to be more popular than they are now, but they are still chosen from time to time. Fresh flowers have a bright and vibrant appearance that silk closely replicates but doesn’t quite match, and they also have a lovely fragrance that silk obviously does not. But when the bride, groom, or a member of the wedding party has severe allergies, finds silk much more economical, or really wants to be able to save the wedding bouquet for a memento, silk flowers might be the right option.
Your wedding flowers will fulfill many purposes throughout your wedding day. With the enormous visual impact of flowers on a wedding a bride will definitely want to pay careful attention to the flowers and the florist they select. A single theme repeated through flowers provides a segue from one part of the wedding day to the next, leaving guests with the feeling that the entire day was a complete event. It can be exhausting to plan such an overwhelming facet of the wedding, but the rewards of a well-planned and well-executed floral landscape for your big day is immeasurable.
Wedding Cake Arrangements: How to Display the Tiers of Your Cake
Photo Courtesy of Linsey Hale Photography
So you’ve decided on the colors, shapes, and styles you like – but have you given much thought to the final arrangement of your wedding cake tiers?
Most wedding cakes have between two and five tiers – or levels – with the most common number of tiers being four. Of course, how many tiers you need depends on the size of your guest list and the diameter and shape of each tier.
Wedding cakes have a prominent place on their own dedicated “cake table” near the front of your reception room, slightly off to the side of the head table where the bride, groom, and wedding party are seated.
How you show off your cake on the cake table is just as important as…read more
DIY Wedding Cakes: How to Decorate Your Own Wedding Cake
Photo Courtesy of Watasch Studios
It feels great to have guests marvel over your wedding cake at the reception and be able to grin and say, “I made that.” Making your own wedding cake is something to be proud of, and it’s much more budget-friendly than hiring a professional cake designer. But before pulling out your cake pans and your rolling pin, take a close look at the pros and cons of a DIY wedding cake.
Lots of LDS brides tackle making and decorating their own wedding cakes, but think long and hard about whether you’re up to the challenge before you commit to doing it yourself. Even if you have the expertise, you just might not have…read more
Although there are many factors that go into a wedding cake’s final appearance – shape, size, texture, arrangement, and presentation – color is probably the most salient factor.
People will notice the colors on your wedding cake first and remember them longer than they remember anything else about it, so make choosing your wedding cake colors a supremely important decision.
The color white has long been a universally understood symbol for purity, so naturally it has become synonymous with weddings. No surprise here that the traditional wedding cake color is white – but traditional doesn’t have to mean boring.
The smooth, white layer of fondant can certainly stand on its own without adornment. But using white frosting to create…read more
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For the single girls at your wedding reception, the bouquet toss is one of the most looked-forward-to events of the reception. Make it perfect with a bouquet toss song that celebrates girl power and all things feminine.
