Oh, those wacky Europeans! I don’t know if it’s their droll sense of humor or their entrepreneurial spirit, but the diametrically opposed version of the Bridal Fair—the Divorce Fair—is taking place in cities all over their continent, where more than 800,000 marriages end each year. Can you imagine the overall mood at one of these things? Even fair organizer Anton Barz, who held his first Divorce Fair in Vienna, Austria in 2007, admits they “need a lot of handkerchiefs there.”

WHAT’S IN THE BOOTHS?

Well, it’s not wedding favor ideas and gorgeous gowns—I can tell you that! No, behind the tables filled with brochures and other marketing materials are lawyers, counsellors, private investigators, life coaches, DNA testing agencies, makeover specialists and non-profit services to provide guidance inexpensively or free of charge. They also offer workshops by relationship experts. Oh, and you can expect to be assailed by a number of journalists wanting to know why you would attend a Divorce Fair, if you’re finding it helpful and, of course, how you’re feeling at this gut-wrenching moment in your life. But you’ll be happy to know that Divorce Fairs are non-profit events that are “intended to educate and inform.” The organizers say attendance has not been spectacular (except for the journalists) so far, but the numbers are steadily growing.

WOULD YOU ATTEND A DIVORCE FAIR?

I’m celebrating my 25th anniversary this Saturday, Valentine’s Day, so I won’t be needing a Divorce Fair anytime soon, but if I ever came face to face with divorce, I’d probably consider attending a Divorce Fair. I think a lot of people, women in particular, get a bad deal in a divorce because they’re too upset to find out how to protect themselves and move forward. What would you do?

HAPPY ENDING!

I’m going to end this bummer of blog post topic with a couple of great wedding party favors for your Valentine’s Day wedding reception! It’s all about hearts, flowers and love that lasts forever, and these unique wedding favors say it all. The “Key to My Heart” Chrome Bottle Stopper in your choice of Personality Box at the left is brand-new from incredible wedding favor designer Kate Aspen. Check out the little keyhole in the heart. Once you’ve got his heart locked up, throw away the key! At the right is “A Place in My Heart” Porcelain Bud Vase wedding favor, combining hearts and flowers. The heart at the base of the vase holds a place card or a photo. All you have to supply is the love that lasts forever!

That’s Normal, as in Normal, IL. Don’t get me wrong. I actually like Taco Bell. I’m crazy about their Burrito Supremes, but I never imagined the restaurant would make a desirable wedding venue. And they didn’t even reserve the whole place. While customers ordered quesadillas at the counter, Caragh and Paul Brooks (they both had the same last name before they married) sat in an orange booth and said their vows in front of several dozen guests. They married at the TB because they liked hanging out there. Hey, whatever floats your boat.

Streamers and balloons were wedding decorations, and employees displayed hot sauce packets labeled with the words “Will You Marry Me?” I guess those were the wedding favors for the guests. I wish they had checked with MyWeddingFavors.com before they went with the packets.

Caragh and Paul could have surprised their guests with “Turnin’ Up the Heat!” Personalized Hot Sauce made with jalapeños, finger hot peppers, Serrano, cayenne and habanero peppers. Believe me, guests will remember their wedding every time they sprinkle some of this stuff on a homemade plate of nachos. Another great reminder of the couple’s unusual nuptials would have been the “Hot! Hot! Hot!” Pepper Magnet in its cute, southwest-kitchen gift box. Oh well, at least other couples who decide to tie the knot in a Taco Bell will know about these caliente favor options. On a personal note, I miss Taco Bell’s chihuahua spokesdog like you wouldn’t believe.

First, mazel tov (good luck in Hebrew) to the happy couple! That said, I find this incredibly fascinating on a number of levels. To start with, I’m amazed there’s a Jewish community in the town of Mattancherry, Kochi in India. According to the news story, the wedding was held in the Paradesi Synagogue in the dwindling Cochin Jewish community just after Chanukah. And more surprising, this was their first Jewish wedding in 21 years! Sounds like the “dwindling” ship sailed ages ago. But there were 250 guests at the wedding, and, presumably, a good number of them lived close by and were Jewish.

NEVER ASSUME

You’d think that, with a couple of hundred Jewish people in the neighborhood, there would have been at least a couple of weddings at this beautiful synagogue within the last two decades. Well, I’m totally wrong about many of the 250 living close by. The groom, Solomon, son of Josephai Abraham of the Thekkumbhagam congregation in the Cochin Jewish community married Susan of the Bene Israel Jewish community in Mumbai (formerly Bombay, and a very large city with a significant Jewish population.) Clearly, most of the 250 guests traveled from Mumbai to Kochi (almost 1,400 miles!) for the colorful, 5:30PM ceremony. If you want to find out more about this interesting story, go to http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/29/stories/2008122956551800.htm.

THE WEDDING FAVOR DILEMMA

So it’s a Jewish wedding in India. What to do about their wedding favors? The bride and groom are tied to both cultures. If they decide to go with their Indian background, I’ve got a couple of favorite Indian wedding favors that would add so much to their colorful event. With its richly exotic Indian design, the Golden Lac Box Photo Holder/Place Card Holder (left) is a spectacular and versatile way to thank your wedding guests. And what would an Indian wedding be without elephants, which bring power and strength, long life, patience and wisdom, energy and good fortune—wonderful sentiments for your family and friends! The “Good Luck” Wooden Elephants (right) enhance any table decor  And as they say in Hindi—सौभाग्य! (Good Luck!)

What an excellent way to show support for our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan!

If you’re currently on active duty in the military (or your fiance is), you can trade in your fatigues for a beautiful new wedding gown.  It’s all thanks to a wonderful program called Brides Across America, an organization that supports military families, and our troops in general, by providing free wedding gowns.

Brides Across America is partnering with bridal shops across the country to sponsor a nationwide giveaway of wedding gowns to military brides.  In honor of Veteran’s Day on November 11th, participating bridal salons will give away a select amount of wedding gowns on a first-come, first-served basis to qualifying brides.

Here are the requirements:

1. Bride must be engaged
2. Bride must be on active duty in the military or have a fiance on active duty in either Iraq or Afghanistan
3. Military brides must show ID, copy of deployment papers/orders
4. Brides do not have to reside in the area where the giveaway is taking place

Appreciation abounds!

As a military couple looking to have a fairy-tale wedding, Brides Across America is doing something to appreciate you.  At your wedding, you can do something to appreciate your guests.  Thank your guests with a fabulous wedding favor.  Whether you’re having a military-style wedding or not, they are a great way to add a personal touch to your special day.  I’d have to suggest the Star Bottle Stopper.  For a stars-and-stripes theme, it shines!  Or maybe a place card holder that could also double as their wedding favor.  They’re both useful gifts that are sure to be appreciated.

Mark Your Calendar!

All wedding-gown giveaways are being held on Veteran’s Day, November 11th.  Visit the Brides Across America website to find the location near you.  For unique wedding favors and accessories, visit My Wedding Favors.

It’s the height of wedding planning season! Wedding planners, caterers and bakers are all abuzz with the details. Preparing for all of those summer weddings is a pain-staking process for the owners of a Wisconsin bakery. They’ve taken nearly 250 wedding cake orders by hand, thus far. Each order is too detailed for the computer, including photos and sketches of the cake designs. That’s why these precious gems are kept in the office safe.

Burglars must have thought there was more than contracts in there, so they recently stole the entire safe from the 25-year-old business. To the burglar’s surprise, there was very little petty cash in the safe, just the contracts. When the police notified the owners that the store was robbed, they weren’t upset because they knew that they only kept a small amount of money at the office. But when the owners were told that the thieves stole the entire safe, they hit the roof! And rightly so. Imagine all those orders–gone just like that! It will definitely take some time for them to recreate the information.

In the meantime, why not try these cakes instead? The baker’s search may just be beginning, but your search for perfect “cakes” can end with these. They are beautifully crafted, cake-shaped candles that will be the icing on a beautiful wedding or shower. Or forgo the cake altogether, and let them eat cupcakes! These dainty cupcake holders are a stylish and practical way to serve up some smiles at your event.

Add to: BlinkList, del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Google, ma.gnolia, Netscape, reddit, Simpy, Spurl, Squidoo

Mr. Christopher from the My Wedding Favors blog with some encouraging news.  Muslim women in India have been touted by women around the world as the most mistreated and right-denied people on the planet.  Having to cover almost every inch of their bodies in public to avoid enticing men, being subservient to their men and forced to do many things that would have American women crying foul.

Well thanks to The All India Muslim Women Personal Law Board (AIMWPLB) and the release of what’s called the “Shariat Nikahnama”, things are getting a lot more difficult for Muslim men in India to carry on their male chauvinistic ways towards their wives.   The organization established many new divorce laws that create more equality between Muslim men and women.  Muslim women now have the right to divorce their husbands if they’re caught having illicit affairs,  if he has AIDS and even if she is forced to do unnatural sex acts.

AIMWPLB President Shaista Amber says, “We have framed the new nikahnama strictly in accordance with the tenets of Islam, which clearly prohibit any kind of harassment or oppression of a married woman by her husband.” It also allows for a woman to get a divorce if the husband is denying to grant it.  Other ground breaking amendments include the ability to divorce if there has been no sexual relations for a year, if the husband doesn’t provide for the wife and family, if the husband has abandoned her in excess of 4 years,  or in the case of any kind of ill treatment or torture.

Basically this is huge progress for Muslim women in India and there’s much more to come.  Not to say that the Muslim women will take a stand and take advantage of laws designed to protect them, but at least there are laws now available for those women who say, “Enough is enough”.  The new laws have Muslim men shaking in their robes because this changes a once archaic view of marriage and begins to put things in line with the rest of the world.  Maybe there is hope on the horizon for equality among the sexes in India after all.  The opportunity exists, so hopefully Muslim women will stand strong and take advantage of these new laws afforded to them that have kept them in marital slavery for many generations.

Every year for the past 100 years, Hungarians in the city of Roma would bury a double bass to signal the end of the wedding season and also would confess their sins that were committed against the instrument. Then they followed up with an all night party. A strange custom to be sure, but a custom nonetheless. Well 2008 saw that custom nixed from Hungary’s event calender. The bureaucrats in Hungary basically forgot to put it on the list of festivals that has been held every year on the first Thursday of every February.

The festival is included along with the carnival that celebrates the arrival of Spring. The custom is really a tradition of the gypsy musicians who have carried on the tradition year after year. However, the strangest part is that the local government of Roma had no choice but to ban the ceremony since it wasn’t listed on Hungary’s Festival List.  So even if it was an accident, it doesn’t matter. It’s not on the list, so it doesn’t exist.

And you thought our government was strange.

As part of a very unusual experiment called “The Week The Women Went”, the women of a small Canadian town called Hardisty near Alberta decided to simply pick up and leave their husbands and children alone by themselves for a week. The husbands had to manage everything from the meals, housework, cleaning up, getting the kids to and fro, putting them to bed and the entire enchilada.For most reading this, your response may be “So what. I do that every day.” And that’s exactly what the study was set to find out. In Canada, over 70% of the households are run by women and most of which also had full time jobs. The study, which was caught on film, was going to find out if, A) the men could handle such a daunting task and B) if there would be an increased appreciation for what the women must do every day that they feel is being taken for granted.

One of the women named Kelly Weatherly stated “It will be a disaster, a complete disaster.” Others such as Heather Mills stated, “I don’t even know if he’s had them for a whole day.” Miller’s husband simply replied, “Two people to take care of, both under the age of five, how hard can it be?” And then there was the negative side of the coin where viewers like Andrew were annoyed by the mere premise of the show stating, “What a misandric (man hating) idea for show. What is wrong with Canadian society that we need to continuously promote how important women are to society at the expense of men?”

Not to spoil the outcome, but to the women’s chagrin, the result wasn’t what they hoped. The men faired very well with only minor speed bumps. One of the participants, the town Administrator and father of three named Tony Kulbisky stated, “It wasn’t that much of an ordeal. We just pre-planned everything, or tried to be as organized as we could be.”

There was a silver lining though as one man who refused to marry his girlfriend of 10 years even after the couple had 3 children together decided to plan a surprise wedding as a result of the time apart. The study will be aired on TV on a yet to be named network and viewers will need to tune in to see how the wedding went along with the antics of “The Week The Women Went” because it wasn’t all smooth. There are some very hilarious and entertaining moments that will be sure to have women and men alike murmuring, “He did not just do that.”

Meanwhile, we at My Wedding Favors will be here to celebrate all weddings from fairy tale to elegant to themed events. So husbands to be, show your respect for your lovely lady and tell her about My Wedding Favors to help do your part in planning your big day.

Share This Article
Ask | Blinkbits | Blinklist | Blogmarks | co.mments | Connotea | del.icio.us | Digg | Furl.net | Google | LinkaGoGo | RawSugar | Reddit | Spurl | Squidoo | Stumble Upon | Technorati

Movie review: 27 Dresses
by guest blogger Donna L.
27 Dresses gets my two thumbs up! I had the pleasure of attending the special advanced screening of this hysterical chick flick last night in Atlanta. Of course, I brought three close friends with me — our first night out celebrating my December engagement! Hundreds of people lined up to see what turned out to be a very entertaining evening, complete with hors d’oeuvres and a delicious pink cocktail at the VIP reception.

Katherine Heigl (Jane) delivered an outstanding performance as the wedding-obsessed girl who is always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Her crush on her boss turns to jealousy and frustration when he falls in love with her kid sister. The movie follows her journey as she works through the now-strained relationship with her sister, her boss, and the journalist who relentlessly pursues her. I especially related to the scene where she tried on the multitude of ridiculous bridesmaids’ dresses that were crammed into her closet, and judging by the laughter in the audience, so did many others! We left with smiles on our faces and a fabulous goodie bag filled with Kate Aspen wedding favors and Vera Wang perfume to name just a few!

Share This Article!

Add to: | Technorati | Digg | del.icio.us | Yahoo | BlinkList | Spurl | reddit | Furl