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A bride should feel queenly during the biggest day of her life. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to bring back the Middle Ages into your wedding? Firstly, you need a fair amount of lead time in preparing for your Medieval-themed wedding. There are other major considerations that go into the planning for this once in a lifetime event.

The Venue

It’s a good thing that most churches look Medieval enough. You should have a wide range of churches to choose from with either a Gothic or Romanesque style of architecture. Check out libraries or other old structures as they may allow lending their space for your event. If you’re loaded, a Scottish castle is just perfect.

The Gowns and Other Clothing

The challenge here is getting your guests to go with the theme. The key is to improvise and to educate your guests on what type of wardrobe would pass as Medieval. You may want to research inexpensive costume-rental shops where your guests can rent their clothes for the wedding. They might even thank you for it as rentals are way cheaper than purchasing an attire that they would likely use only once.

Flowers and Other Embellishments

It’s quite easy to create a medieval themed venue. Think pillars and spacious halls, colorful banners and a lot of gold. Switch flowers with herbs and ferns. Your bouquet should be predominantly herbs and wheat with little sprinkles of flowers. You may want to rent a carriage to take you to the church and from the church to the reception. Pewter goblets, plates and utensils are common enough and easy to arrange for.

Just think of how pretty all these would look in your photographs and it will be all worth the long and detailed preparation.

Even with the advent of the Internet, weddings should still be marked by memorabilia or keepsakes. While you can save all your photographs in a flash drive or a compact disc, you will definitely want to have something tangible to remember the day by.

Why not compile your prints in a scrapbook which can be enjoyed by friends and family and can be preserved for a long time without needing upgrades or any other technology to be able to keep accessing it for a long time?

Your wedding scrapbook can be divided into three segments; the wedding preparation, the actual wedding day and of course, the honeymoon. Apart from prints of all the wedding pictures, you can also collect certain artifacts relating to all the stages of the wedding and the honeymoon.

You may want to preserve a copy of the wedding invitation and thank-you-cards, the paper where you wrote your vows, some trimmings from your bouquet, your plane tickets to the Bahamas or receipts from the hotel you stayed in. 

Make sure to use sturdy materials that can be preserved and hidden for posterity. Surprisingly, plastic covers endure for a long time and even if they deteriorate with time, you can always replace them.

You can even laminate the paper stuff before sticking them to your scrapbook to preserve them forever. You will be thankful 20 years down the line for keeping your wedding mementos in a scrapbook as you can show them to your children and their children as well.

Most brides still carry a small purse or a clasp at their wedding. This is handed over to the bridesmaid or the wedding planner during the ceremony. While they may be awfully small, you can still utilize the space for some things that may come in handy in the course of the wedding. Though you may not be able to use them, it is reassuring to know you have them just in case. 

Powder and lipstick

Compact face powders and lipsticks now come in ultra small sizes which can slip into anything. The entire wedding can run anywhere from three to five hours and you would need to touch up your face especially between the meal and the rest of the reception. 

Safety pins and hair pins

You never know when parts of your bun would come lose and you would need hairpins to put them back in place. Gowns and veils may sustain tears or slight damages from moving around and the very reliable safety pins can fix them instantly. As these articles are really tiny, you can bring a lot for you or your entourage. 

Saltines, candy bars or hard candies, smelling salts

We’ve often heard stories about the bride swooning at the middle of the wedding ceremony and more often than not, this is due to hunger and not sheer ecstasy. Most women are unable to keep anything down or they simply have no time to grab a meal until the reception. Saltines are thin enough to fit in your purse, as well as candies and smelling salts. These things can prevent an embarrassing passing out episode at the point where you will say “I do”. 

Who doesn’t want to give a gift that the newlyweds will remember and be genuinely thankful for? Many people still fall into the trap of starter-sets such as beddings, cutlery and china. These are the top three gifts to avoid as there would definitely be a number of guests who will bring them. 

Choosing a wedding gift entails some serious forethought. Probably the first thing to consider is the couple’s culture and your relationship with them. You should also decide what kind of message you wish to convey to the couple.

You can count your lucky stars if the couple signed up for a wedding registry in a number of stores. This way, you can be sure you won’t be sending a duplicate gift. But more often than not, there is no registry where you can purchase your gift so you need to rely on some creative thinking if this is the case. 

You cannot go wrong with monogrammed gifts unless you get the letters wrong. Pretty much anything can be monogrammed and can come in his and hers version so this is probably the safest kind of wedding gift.

You may also opt for the gift of choice or the gift card or gift vouchers. You can be sure that the couple would highly appreciate a gift that will allow them to actually choose what they want in their married lives.

Finally, you can be very unique by picking gifts that are in line with the couple’s hobbies. So it could be some climbing gear, fishing equipment or a stylish backgammon game. Just steer clear of gifts that come in sizes as you might not pick the ones that will fit.

Believe it or not, the food you will serve at your wedding reception will leave the most lasting imprint on your guests’ minds. Bear in mind that the success of your wedding hinges on the food that you will serve your guests. There are a number of important decisions to make in terms of planning your wedding feast.

Scrimp or Splurge

The banquet is not one of the things you want to scrimp on but if you want to splurge, better make sure your pockets are deep. Food will be your single most expensive cost. Buffets come up cheaper than sit-down meals and brunch is more economical than lunch and lunch is more economical than dinner. A dinner service will always be more memorable as it can extend to dancing, which would mean that cocktails will be served.

To Cater or Not to Cater

Unless you or your spouse are cooks or own a restaurant or are in the food service business, a caterer is almost always necessary as food preparation and presentation are two monumental tasks. Leave all the dirty work to your caterers and you can still slip in a dish or two if you really want to. Go for a theme, this usually makes things easier. Go for a steak dinner, an Italian buffet or some popular French cuisine.

As glitter is increasing in popularity, you should indeed go for it! Before you do however, use these tips to ensure that the glitter and sparkle is applied to flatter your features, rather than cause you to reminisce about your raver-chick days.

• Avoid glitter, go for sparkle. Glitter seems to reminisce of chunks of sparkles which are thrown into makeup to up the cheese factor. Use sparkle or even sparkle dust to increase your look for evening in one aspect of the makeup only, choose to highlight your eyes by dusting sparkle on the brow bone or taking your lips up a notch with the use of a sparkled lip-gloss.
• Reserve the shine factor for the evening. There are very few workplaces that sparkle and glitter should be worn throughout the day. This can avoid to an unprofessional look that leaves co-workers wondering if your make is reminiscent of the night before.

Glitter should be used sparingly, rather than trying to find glitter make-up find a shimmering poweder that can be combined with the makeup that you already have, this way, you can save money and choose how much glitter is appropriate.