Have your wedding at someone else’s house

As I alluded to recently, I am going to be helping a friend of mine who is getting married in April at a Malibu home. The mission: decorate an ultra-modern Malibu home with balconies for miles in silver and gold with lots of candles and lights.

Forgive my terrible Photoshop job on splicing together two photos to demonstrate how much balcony I’m going to be working with. Every house is different, which means there are unique challenges to decorating each one, for each individual bride. The bride, by the way, is my AAJA-LA co-president Jinah Kim (and NBC reporter), here in red. My partner in crime to help with the planning and decorations is Caroline Paras there, standing next to Jinah. The owner of the home is Jon Hoffman, in blue.

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Get married at home

It has occurred to me recently that so many people have really beautiful homes, so why are hotels and other venues the only places we think of when planning a wedding? The thought didn’t come completely out of the blue — a friend of mine is getting married in April and will be doing it at a Malibu home. More on that later. Anyway, having a wedding at home used to be the standard, not the exception, unlike today. When scouring Flickr — and I mean clicking through the hundreds of pages of thumbnails tagged “home wedding” — I found very few pictures that actually fit the keywords. One photo I definitely wanted to share was this one from the ’30s. It was a simpler time…

Photo by Flickr’s Dan Kroesbergen

I don’t think I’ve ever decorated someone’s home — a house someone was actually living in at the time — for a wedding. Not even my old house in Hacienda Heights, which was gorgeous and beautifully landscaped and probably had the room for such an event. I have decorated venues that were homes but are now dedicated event facilities, like La Venta Inn on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and The Palace in Hancock Park (which inexplicably has no website address!).

But as with all things, there are many things to consider when having a wedding at home.

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Why winter weddings are so great

I’m a born-and-raised Southern California girl (not too many of us blogging out there), so I’ve never been to a wedding where it was colder than 70 degrees. Yep, that would be true. Even when decorating weddings, the rare time we had a wedding when there was rain, it was still at least 50 or 60 degrees — apparently, that’s still warm to East Coasters. Hey, what can I say? It’s sunshiney out here. Heheh.

Photo by Flickr’s ZekiZeki

However, I got to thinking the other day. Is it just me, or when we think of our weddings, we think of outdoors, sunshine, warm weather, bared shoulders and long necks, gazebos or beaches? That’s all warm weather stuff. Its odd, because I’m of the opinion that cold weather clothes are actually more fun to wear. Not only that, the cold weather lends itself to spectacular surroundings — not decorations, mind you, although, weddings held in cold weather climes almost look as if they’re decorated by God.

For example, check out this fountain. I’ve shot fountains before — in fact, I love shooting moving water — but I can’t think of a more gorgeous picture than this one. The ice almost looks like diamonds decorating the fountain. Cold weather seems lend itself to really dramatic photos. I’ll show you what I mean.

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Poll: What month are you getting married in 2009?

Friends Belinda and Karsten marry in January

So, its that time of year again! We’re in November, fast approaching the holidays, but I know many brides-to-be have already gotten engaged (I personally know at least three planning 2009 weddings, and a third, I’m not sure what her date is) and are in the throes of wedding planning now. The past two years, two “auspicious” dates dominated the wedding date selection debate — 7/7/07 and 8/8/08. I put auspicious in quotes since 7 and 8 are not lucky numbers for everyone. Hey, I could’ve said “so-called.” Heheh.

Anyway, there is another one of those triple numbers coming up — 9/9/09, but its on a Wednesday. However, if 9 is a lucky number for you, you could really save on mid-week rates for your reception or banquet venue.

But anyway, it’s time for another poll — what month will you be getting married in 2009?

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October wedding? Then think about wedding insurance

Photo by Flickr’s TooterMonkey

I’m sitting at home on my usual day off, just watching the orange-reddish glow of the sun illuminate my fingers at the keyboard, wondering why I’ve been to so many weddings in Southern California in October. “So many” may be an exaggeration, but maybe not, since I’ve not been to a lot of weddings as a guest, but I’ve been three as a guest in October. That’s a lot in my book. And since determining earlier this year that October is quite the popular month for weddings (at least among people who read this blog), it seems that wedding insurance must also be a popular must-have for October weddings in Southern California. Or at least it seems it should be.

The above photo, by the way, is of Malibu Presbyterian Church, which was destroyed in last year’s fire in Malibu, which was part of the 2007 California Firestorm.

Having worked in news the past five years and lived in Southern California all my life, October and November are reliably the worst wildfire months of the year. I have actually decorated and been a guest at one wedding where a fire broke out in the canyon behind the reception site, the Castaway in Burbank. But it seems to me that maybe wedding insurance isn’t for everyone…

Apparently, cold feet is one of the main reasons for a wedding being canceled, and insurance doesn’t cover cold feet. Sorry. However, let’s be optimistic and posit that both bride and groom and in-laws-to-be are ecstatic to be joining families and talk about all the other things a bride or groom or wedding planner cannot control and might need insurance on.

The church or the reception site: Say you’ve picked the most gorgeous sites available, nestled in the mountains of Malibu or along the beach in Texas — but then there’s a wildfire or a hurricane. This is where insurance would come in handy.
A vendor is a no-show, something happens to the food or the flowers, someone’s car/truck breaks down or something else vendor-related: This happens more than you might think, and I’m sorry to say I’ve had this happen to me too. If you had to cancel or postpone for something like this, insurance would cover it.
A member of the wedding party gets sick or is injured in an accident: God forbid your mother or father or an in-law becomes injured or gets sick, but this is definitely something covered by insurance.

I think those would be the main reasons, although, TheKnot.com also includes military deployments or surprise corporate moves as another reason why a wedding would be postponed or canceled. Although, I think in the case of a corporate move, the wedding might just become more of a destination wedding.

Anyway, do you think to might need insurance? In tough economic times, most would say — better safe than sorry. Personally, I think the ratio of cash flow to wedding expenditure should have more to do with the need for wedding insurance, and as that ratio becomes bigger, the more you should consider going easy on your wedding budget.

Then again, what about people really looking forward to getting married that day? I did a blog post last year on one couple that immediately readjusted their plans as Malibu burned. The whole point to the wedding, after all, is to get married.

At any rate, beside TheKnot.com article I found, here are a few more resources on wedding insurance from USA Today, InsWeb’s Insurance Blog, and MoneyTalksNews.com.

And as with anything wedding related, I would recommend going with a wedding insurance policy on a recommendation, rather than what comes up first in Google. Hey, that’s how I looked for it too!
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Wedding planning in the news

Is it just me, or is everyone doing news stories about weddings lately? A few weeks ago, the L.A. Times did a story about how the economy is forcing brides to get thrifty, and all of a sudden, its wedding week at the Washington Post.

I suppose that no matter what happens, people always do three things: be born, get married and die. Sorry to put it so bluntly, but its true. But at this point, let’s focus on what everyone is really talking about: How to save money.

The L.A. Times starts with a bride who is planning to spend only $8,000, not the average $30,000 spent on weddings today. That’s a big cut, but personally, that’s still a lot for me, since I want to buy a bed, a bedroom set, a MacBook Pro…Oh, sorry. Got sidetracked there.

Planning a cut-rate wedding might seem out of step with the gauzy dream of the big day, but lately, more brides have been thinking thrifty as the economic slowdown has left them worried more about the higher cost of living than whether to serve chicken or filet mignon.

“There’s no question that the recession has affected the wedding industry,” said Jolene Rae Harrington, director of creative content at Here Comes The Guide, a wedding planning resource. “Brides still want to realize their wedding dream — they just need to be more creative in how they achieve it.”

That includes inviting fewer guests, getting married on off-peak days such as Fridays and Sundays, crafting handmade wedding favors and holding receptions at low-cost or no-cost venues such as parks and beaches.

As thrifty as I am, I knew my friends would be too. So a few months ago, I quizzed them as to how they saved money on their weddings. My girlfriend Olivia:

i would definitely have passed on the favors. they were dumb. i got my dress on ebay brand new for $100. my mom spent way too much on too much food. i dont know what else i would cut because it was all pretty cheap per person because we had to have 300 people. so it was more the number of people than the stuff that made it so much.

My former editor Amber:

1) We bought the flowers at Costco the day before the wedding and did them ourselves.
2) We had a destination wedding, so we rented a big house and had the rehearsal dinner and wedding ceremony there. For the dinner, we hit Costco since we were buying a lot of food and then fixed the dinner ourselves.
3) Jill Karnicki (old GNP photog) took the wedding photos — that was her present to us, which I suggested.
4) It’s not something I did, but a friend of mine bought a wedding dress that she later dyed black and has used as an evening gown.
5) Instead of a wedding cake, we did cupcakes (again, made them ourselves) and decorated them up really cute.

But you don’t have to take it just from me! I stumbled across this great post from Unclutterer — Ten tips for planning a simple wedding. Hey, you brides could use all the help you can get in this day and age.
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Wedding planner books and guides

I was at Barnes & Noble last night with my husband and I wandered near the wedding books shelf. Wow, there are all manner of wedding guides, planners and books, aren’t there? It seems a waste of money to spend $25 or more on a book that’s going to tell you what to do…oh wait. That’s a good chunk of the book industry. Never mind! 🙂

In all seriousness, are these wedding books truly helpful to you, you brides-to-be in prep mode? I am all about lists, but I like to create them on my own. In a way, I wonder if a book with just wedding decorations, flowers and what to expect would be more helpful (maybe that’s why I’ve come to enjoy writing this blog!)

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