The First Dance

Your First Dance should be one of the many beautiful memories of your wedding day. By preparing in advance you will be able to relax and have fun with each other, enjoying your moment.

Bride Online is pleased to offer you some suggestions for the First Dance on your wedding day.

SONG TITLE	ARTIST
A Whole New World	Soundtrack "Aladdin"
Against All Odds	Phil Collins
All I ask of You	Michael Crawford
Always and Forever	Luther Vandross
All The Way	Frank Sinatra
Always	Sarah Vaughan/Billy Eckstine
Beautiful in My Eyes	Joshua Kadison
Because You Loved Me	Celine Dion
Can You Feel The Love Tonight	Elton John (Lion King)
Can't Help Falling in Love	Elvis Presley
Chances Are	Johnny Mathis
Crazy	Patsy Cline
Don't Know Much	Linda Ronstadt/Aaron Neville
Endless Love	Luther Vandross & Mariah Carey
Every Woman In The World	Air Supply
Everything I Do	Bryan Adams
For Once In My Life	The Four Tops
Glory of Love	Peter Cetera
Groovy Kind Of Love	Phil Collins
Grow Old With Me	Mary Chapin Carpenter
Have I Told You Lately	Van Morrison
Heaven	Bryan Adams
Here and Now	Luther Vandross
Here We Are	Gloria Estefan
Hero	Mariah Carey
I Believe in You and Me	The Four Tops
I Got You Babe	Sonny and Cher
I Swear	All 4 One
I Finally Found Someone	Barbara Streisand/Bryan Adams
I Was Made To Love Her	Stevie Wonder
I Will Always Love You	Whitney Houston
It Had To Be You	Harry Connick, Jr.
Just The Way You Are	Billy Joel
Love Will Keep Us Alive	Eagles
More Than Words	Extreme
My Girl	Temptations
Never Gonna Let You Go	Sergio Mendes
Nothing's Gonna Change My Love For You	Glenn Medeiros
Now And Forever	Richard Marx
Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now	Starship
On Bended Knee	Boys II Men
Only You	The Platters
Power Of Love	Celine Dion
Take My Breath Away	Berlin
To Be With You	Mr. Big
Tonight I Celebrate My Love	Peabo Bryson/Roberta Flack
Unchained Melody	Righteous Brothers
Unforgettable	Nat King Cole
We've Only Just Begun	Carpenters
When A Man Loves A Woman	Percy Sledge
When I Fall In Love	Nat King Cole
Wind Beneath My Wings	Bette Midler
You Are So Beautiful	Joe Cocker
You Are The Sunshine Of My Life	Stevie Wonder

Insider's Guide to wedding flowers

How do you decide on the flowers for your wedding and where do you start?

You first key to your flowers comes from your dress. Have a good look at the design – is it straight lines and strong accents? Then frilly flowers like carnations, roses and babies breath will not work. Better options may be strong lined flowers such as orchids or lilies.

The opposite is true as well. If your dress is a romantic soft creation, strong and textured flowers may not work as well as masses of roses with lots of ferns and other fine flowers between them would complement your look.

Your dress also sets the colour palette of your flowers. There are mainly two options as far as colour is concerned. You can opt for cold arrangements or warm arrangements. Cold arrangements contain all the blues, greens and whites of the spectrum whereas warm flowers are the oranges, reds and yellows.

A dress that has cold undertones like brilliant white or anything in the blue colour sector will not work with warm flower arrangements and the opposite is true as well.

The time of day also plays a role when you select your colour pallet. Bright cold colours work great during daytime weddings where they simply pop in the light.

Prepare well before you approach a florist. They will be asking you a lot of questions, so have the answers ready. Questions like the dress design will be pertinent in their quest for your perfect flowers so be ready with a picture of your dress or even a sketch will do. Also show them some cuttings from your dress materials as well as the linen you will be using at your reception.

Florists will also need to know way in advance if you want out of season flowers. Note that almost any flower is available in any season, but you need to book in advance and be prepared to pay top dollar for imported flowers.

Best advice is to ask what is in season round your wedding day and use those flowers where possible.

Finally, florists can do a mock-up of wedding arrangements for you to see. Arrange the items for your table setting and bring them to this mock-up session, also set your table with the flowers on it. If you can, get your photographer to come to this session too!

Never guess that it will be ok if you do not have the exact coloured items with you – in most cases your green and the green you thought it was are never the same and looks out of place. The rule of thumb is that perfect practice makes perfect!

Catering Tips and Advice

It is important to take great time and care when choosing your wedding caterer. We've compiled a list of questions to ask your caterer and tips to ensure your wedding feast won't be marred by any surprises.

    If you advise your caterer of your budget, they will be able to help you work out an arrangement to suit it. Buffets are not always cheaper than sit down dinners so always ask about all your options. Prices usually depend on the price of the food that you select for your menu, not the way it is served.
    If you have already decided on the level of formality that your wedding will have, inform the caterer as this will provide a good outline for them to create a menu for you.
    Find out if your caterer uses fresh food and produce. Ask if any of the items are canned goods.
    Your caterer should be able to provide you with a timetable that will state what courses will be served and when. This will help you to structure any other events at the reception, eg: speeches, cutting the wedding cake.
    Food sometimes looks better than it tastes, so always be sure to ask for a sample of the food as this is the only way you will find out if it's good or not.
    Find out if your caterer offers wedding cakes in their packages. Some wedding caterers may be able to provide you with one, so this will save you going to another provider.
    Find out if GST included in the quoted price or if it needs to be added on. Does the price include table linens, napkins, dishes, and glassware?
    You may want the catering staff to wear uniforms on the day, so find out if this is an option with the catering company of your choice.
    It is not uncommon that caterers will be able to incorporate your wedding theme colours into the decorations and floral arrangements of the buffet table or food station. If this is what you do want, be sure to ask if the caterer can facilitate this.

An Engagement Party: Should we or Shouldn’t we?

Not all marriages start with and engagement party and considering the immense cost of the wedding, and the effort of organising a party, many people think this through carefully. So should you have one?

Pros:

• A way of announcing your engagement to your friends and family in a fun way
• If you are budget restricted, the engagement party is an opportunity to invite people who you would not invite to the wedding reception
• If you are planning a destination wedding, the engagement party may be the only opportunity for your friends to celebrate with you.

Cons

• You will have to get organised with your guest lists
• There is a lot of work and expense involved in the organisation of the party
• Depending on the length of the engagement, it may be awkward to have an engagement party close to the wedding

When should you hold your engagement party?

This depends mainly on two things; the date of the wedding and the seasonal opportunity. Some people have their party within one to two months of the announcement of their engagement; others who are having a more formal engagement party may leave it for much later. Usually, there is at least 6 months between the engagement party and the wedding

What sort of event should it be?

There are no rules or norms for engagement parties. It can be as formal or informal as you choose, and at any time of the day.

Who should you invite?

The engagement party is a great opportunity for members of the bride and groom’s respective families to meet and get to know each other. Don’t leave anyone who you intend to invite to the wedding, off the list, but you can invite people to the engagement party that won’t be invited to the wedding. Apart from family, often there are work and sport colleagues that you may want to invite.

Should we send out invitations?

Obviously the guests will need to be invited one way or another. If you are organised enough, you could include engagement party invitations with your stationery order and save a few dollars and be consistent with the other wedding events. Some people use email invitations and rsvp’s and others make telephonic invitations.

What about gifts?

For the guests, this is always an awkward question. Some will feel obligated to bring a gift, others who perhaps expect to be invited to the wedding, may decide to give a gift at the wedding. You have some options. You can specify on the invitation “No gifts please”. If you don’t do this, you can set up your registry early with some moderate gifts so guests thinking of buying a gift won’t feel too much pressure.

Transformer

Music: Pink Nasty is more than meets the eye.

It’s difficult to get a straight answer out of Sara Beck. She makes you go “‘Hmm?” or maybe “Ha!” But never, “Huh, saw that coming.” A fresh-faced singer/songwriter who changed her plain-Jane name to Pink Nasty, Beck is often confused in the press as an oversexed Peaches clone or ultra-ironic hipster who messes with well-meaning music critics and influential bloggers ready to put her on a pedestal. In fact, Beck is about as slutty and mean-spirited as a Noxzema commercial. She just has an unconventional way of viewing the world and a deadpan delivery that disguises her chronic shyness.

“I have a hard time talking about myself,” she says from her home in Austin, Texas. Unlike Michael Hurley, the outsider folk artist with whom she’ll share the stage on Friday, Beck sports a stiff upper lip and agrees to interviews. It helps that we met through friends four years ago when she came to town with her brother Ted, aka Black Nasty, a hardcore sex rapper whose performances with Salt Lake City’s Rodeo Boys are pure debaucheries. Ted helped co-write Pink Nasty’s 2003 debut Mule School, 14 tracks of off-kilter country/folk pop delivered in a sweet Midwestern cadence with an occasional Southern twang.

School is on first listen solid and innocent with each song launching like a Linda Rondstadt ballad (“Seems we’ve been doin’ more hurtin’ than flirtin’”) until Beck drops “I must be the dumbest in this class/ ’cause not all of the Asians will help me pass.” How can such a nice girl be down with un-PC?

“I always like to be a little inappropriate,” she says. Which is fine for a musician—they’re expected to act out—but at the restaurant where Beck works as a hostess, her humor doesn’t always translate for white-collar office drones. When one customer asked how to make his business card more appealing for a free-meal contest, she suggested he cover it in porn.

“I didn’t realize I was talking to a 45-year-old father and, of course, he just wanted to draw some colored rocks on it or something—and I’m telling him to draw pictures of naked men. I thought, ‘Oh shit! He’s going to tell my boss!’“ she says, though it’s unlikely a threat of unemployment is enough to make her believe. “I just get so bored having normal conversations so I always say something weird. It’s all premeditated.”

Beck didn’t expect, however, to pop her touring cherry with Will Oldham (Bonnie Prince Billy) who discovered her after Ted sent him a copy of Black Nasty’s AIDS Can’t Stop Me. And, while she recognized the offer as a tremendous opportunity, she didn’t have any idea what she was getting into. “I was 21 or 22, and I was just like, ‘La la la; whatever,’” she says with a laugh. “I didn’t realize his shows would be so huge. The first show I did with him was in Chicago at Logan Square. It was packed, and I almost passed out.” Beck recovered, and Oldham continued to work with her, lending his charms to Mule School’s 2006 follow-up Mold the Gold which is tighter, but no more conventional, than its predecessor. The most talked-about track is “BTK Blues,” a little ditty about the Kansas serial killer whose threatening presence Beck felt throughout her childhood. “When I wrote it, he came out in the news again,” she says. “He was raising his family for 15 years, and then he came out and said he was ready to kill again. He would leave stuff all around town—cereal boxes tied around posts with evidence of other murders. Pretty frightening. That was our claim to fame besides airplane manufacturers.”

Beck recently filmed a video for Gold single “Away Message” with friend/director Ben Steinbauer, paying homage to Pavement by being “playful and not too serious, because a lot of videos are kind of serious,” she says. Which pretty much sums up Pink Nasty, singing about heartbreak and psychopaths without getting all Kierkegaard-ish on her audience. If that’s inappropriate, we should all be more offensive.

Snap Happy Weddings!

Unless you have a body to kill for, a dream smile and cheekbones you could slice bread on, chances are you're probably a bit camera shy. So herein lies the problem: How do you, the blushing bride, ensure that you'll look like Cinderella rather than one of the ugly sisters in your wedding photos and still have enough money left over to hire a carriage for the reception rather than a pumpkin? Solution: Choosing the right wedding photographer.

Should you find that master lens-man, you'll still need to consider many other aspects of his or her services. Price, coverage, reputation... the list goes on. However, by addressing these eight essential areas you'll be well on your way to getting the perfect pics.
THE PROOF IS IN THE PUDDING

Ask the wedding photographer if you can view a proof portfolio, which is a sample album of another couple's wedding. Otherwise, you'll be shown a display album compiled using the photographer's best images that, more often than not, have been shot with professional models. This can only serve one of two purposes (neither of them good). It will either raise your expectations to an unrealistic level of how your wedding album will turn out or make you feel a little insecure because let's face it, how many of us can really compete with those flawless giraffes?Also, ensure the wedding photographer that took the photos for the proof album will actually be the one attending your wedding. Some companies have multiple photographers and some even subcontract the work out.
STREET CRED

Is your wedding photographer a smooth-talker, a con-artist or the real deal? A smart bride will check a photographer's reputation. There are many online chatrooms where brides log-on to recommend or warn against various wedding service providers. It's an added bonus if a wedding photographer has a professional membership to a reputable institution such as the Australian Institute of Professional Photographers (AIPP). The AIPP only allocates memberships to fulltime photographers and encourages a high standard of ethical conduct which weeds out some of the cowboys and hobby photographers out there.
YOUR WAY OR THE HIGHWAY

Some wedding photographers try to manipulate the wedding so that it runs to their schedule or in the order that they are used to photographing. It's your day and you should have the freedom to enjoy it. Don't be bullied into doing things the photographer's way. Make sure that from the initial meeting there is a good rapport between you, your fiancé and the wedding photographer; as there should be in any harmonious and professional working relationship.
NAME YOUR PRICE

Make sure that you have a confirmed all-inclusive price for the final album at the time of booking otherwise you may be billed for hidden extras such as enlargements and reprints. Do you want images in black and white? Sepia? Hand-coloured photos? Knowing what you want makes it easier to fix a price.

Some wedding photographers also make themselves a healthy bonus by charging overtime. Make sure you know how much of their time you will be getting and ensure this is enough to cover all of your photographic needs. Remember if you have children amongst your wedding party, they are not always co-operative. You should be able to get full coverage of your wedding for between $1500 – $4000.
COVER ME

Get everything in writing because then there will be a point of reference should any disputes arise. The written contract should specify:

    The total cost of the album
    The size and the amount of prints to be received
    Who keeps the negatives and for how long
    The additional cost should you want more prints than the number initially agreed to
    How many hours the photographer will spend with you on your wedding day
    How long it will take to deliver the proof album after the wedding.

I'M LATE, I'M LATE... FOR A TERRIBLY IMPORTANT DATE

If you don't leave yourself enough time between the beauticians and the photographer's arrival you may find yourself without the gorgeous 'at-home' beauty shots. Couples also often underestimate how much time they'll need at each location and find themselves fitting in only one or two settings. This means there's less of a choice when it comes time to put together the album.
PLAN B

Don't let Mother Nature rain on your parade! You may find taking outdoor shots impossible due to the weather or a planned street setting may be unsuitable due to traffic congestion. Anything could happen on the day so make sure you have back up plan. Your wedding photographer should be able to suggest alternative locations that will still make for beautiful or interesting photographs.
PRESS START

As with everything to do with weddings, the hardest part is knowing where to start. Why not begin by browsing Bride Online's extensive list of wedding photographers in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and throught Australia just by clicking here. A skillfully composed photograph can convey a thousand emotions. A good wedding photographer should be expert at capturing the tenderness, intimacy and love between newlyweds and able to present you with a portfolio to rival any supermodel's.

Choosing the Right Music

The music played on your wedding day is important in setting the tone and mood. A special song shared between the newlyweds or an upbeat dance number that gets all the guests on the floor will be sure to make your wedding day unique and memorable.

Try to remember that there will be a variety of different people of varying age attending your wedding. This is important when selecting wedding music for the day as most couples want to accommodate their guest’s tastes and play a wide variety of music from romantic ballads to the latest commercial tunes.

It is also important to specify to your DJ or singer what their role is. Whether it is to keep the wedding music flowing or to double as a master of ceremonies, ensure you have discussed your expectations. Let the musicians know where they will be performing so that they can adequately prepare and be sure to check your venue for adequate power sources and room for the band to perform. Also ask your musicians if there is an extra charge for learning new music and allow them plenty of time to do so. Finally, make sure you book your wedding music as early as possible. Provide the musician with a deposit to secure the date and ensure you have a signed and written contract stating what you expect from them.

Wedding music during the ceremony is usually of a softer and more romantic tone to ease the guests in. Instrumentals are a favourite amongst brides and serve as good unobtrusive background music. If the ceremony is to be held in a church it is important to remember to ask about any restrictions with musical pieces. Some churches may request that only sacred music is featured.

At the reception a wider of selection of music may be played that properly reflects your tastes and those of your guests. You may prefer a traditional string quartet or soothing jazz band for a romantic feel or perhaps a band or DJ if your mission is to get all the guests involved and on the dance floor!

Approximately 10% of the cost of the wedding is set aside for wedding music and entertainment. A popular alternative to having a band play at your wedding is to hire a DJ to play pre-recorded CD’s. This trend has become which is become increasingly popular due to the high cost of live entertainment. In addition to this, using mixed CD’s ensures that you can have all the songs you want played non stop on your wedding day without the worry of hiring a band and figuring out where they will be located and how well they will execute songs.