What Not To Ask Your Bridesmaid To Wear #4

#4- ANYTHING THAT DOES NOT FLATTER HER SHAPE

Newsflash: Women come in all shapes and sizes and they are all beautiful.

Another Newsflash: What you see in the magazines are fake bodies.

If your bridesmaides are real women with real bodies, then understand if they can't all wear the same style of gown. If your sister Joan is really tall and long legged, don't try to force her in a teensy tiny dress. If your cousin Nellie is under five feet tall, with a tiny build, don't drown her in yards and yards of flounces and frills. If your groom's sister Katie is thinny thinny thin, she probably does not have full hips or a copious chest so she should not be in a dress that was cut for a woman with both. If your best friend from highschool, Tiffany, is big boned and full-figured, don't try to squeeze her lovely self into a dress designed for a box. If Barb, your best friend from college has a strong athletic build, she can't wear anything that could be mistaken for a slip (I generally discourage ladies from wearing those no matter what they look like.) This dress might not have to be one that they can be versatile and mult-occassional, but it should be one that makes them feel breathtakingly beautiful, as they are.

What Not To Ask Your Bridesmaid To Wear #3

#3-ANYTHING IN A COLOR THAT DOES NOT BECOME HER

Ladies, I can understand the desire to have an entirely uniform train of bridesmaids. I can appreciate the deisre to have the bridesmaids wear you favorite color. I know it can be a splendid idea to color coordinate the color of the bridesmaid dresses with the church, the reception hall, the theme, the centerpieces, etc. However, NOTHING JUSTIFIES MAKING A BRIDESMAID WEAR A COLOR THAT LOOKS TERRIBLE ON HER!

If your favorite color is chartruese, I am terribly sorry, but practically NOBODY looks good in that shade of sickening yellow green (why is that color so popular right now?) If you have a bridesmaid with heavy rosecea, red hair and brown eyes, I am sorry, but she simply can't wear steel gray. If you have a bridemaid with white blonde hair, pale skin and blue eyes, she is a "cool", if she is tanned with golden blonde hair and amber eyes, she is a "warm". Don't assume that because they are both blonde that they can both wear the same shade of blue. What is most important in a wedding, is not the buildings, and the decorations, (though these are important) what is MOST important is the PEOPLE! Human beings are more beautiful than the depths of the ocean, the heights of the mountains or whole galaxies of stars. It is they who deserve the primary adornments during a holy sacrament or during any celebration.

What Not To Ask Your Bridesmaid to Wear #2

#2- ANYTHING WITH A BUSTLE OR ANYTHING THAT LOOKS LIKE A TUTU OR A COSTUME

There were ages past, when adding an enormous wire frame that made you have to walk sideways through a door, added mystery and elegance to a lady. Those days are over!

What Not To Ask Your Bridesmaid To Wear #1

#1-Anything with huge, puffed sleeves

I do not care if they ever come back in (which I seriously doubt), they flatter nobody!

If your shoulders are tiny, they drown your frame. If your shoulders are stronger or broader in frame, they make you look huge. Even if you have emaciated arms, they do nothing for you. Sleeves are one of the best way to add dignity and elegance to any outfit or event. Huge puffed sleeves just make you look like you should be in a costume drama. (Yes, that is right! No Civil War era or costume gowns either!) Or worse, they make your dress look like it belongs on a little girl!

Innocence is Beautiful

Why do so many advertisements, movies, and magazines depict women in expressions of aggressive, domimating, almost violently intense lust. This is sometimes referred to as "provocative" or "seductive" or "aggressivly sexual" but all of these labels are misleading and a trifle insulting. Women are naturally seductive (coming from the Latin "se" and "ductio", meaning "to lead someone after one's self). Women are naturally sensuous, beautiful, powerful, and when healthy, the are confident in their power and charm. Women are naturally provocative to men as well. This is not just because of concupiscence. Which leads me to my next point.

Women are called by God to be happy in innocence. Do not misconstrue innocence as naivete, or ignorance. Women are ideally supposed to be happy, confident, secure in their power, free, passionate and innocent. And in all of those qualities...women are breathtakingly beautiful. Instead, what the culture is too often trying to persuade us is that beauty is not only taut, half-starved, strained, never at rest, unnatural, painful and extremely rare but that it is dirty, slavish, masocchistic or sadistic, dominating or submissive, relentless or needy, obsessive, insatiable, and dehumanizing.
I am enamored of beauty. In fact, I worship the God who is Beauty itself. I want to see women like me portrayed as they are suppossed to be, peaceful, joyful, loving, nuanced, captivating, multi-faceted, mysterious, powerful and innocent.

My Bridal Bouquet

Flowers often bear symbolic meanings. I love the artistry of a well-arranged bouquet or floral arrangement. My cascade bouquet is going to have white roses, white lilies, white amarylis, white azalea, white gardenia, white jasmine, white orange blossoms and white stock.

Flower Meanings:

Rose- Love

Lilies- Purity, Innocence

Amaryllis- Splendid Beauty

Azalea- Romance

Gardenia- Joy

Jasmine- Sensuality

Orange Blossoms- Fertility, Good Fortune, Everlasting Happiness

Some more dreams coming true

This is going to be a year of dreams. I began this New Year with some more dreams off my infinitely long list of things to do and see and experience coming true. Some of them are too personal to mention even here. This is the one that is the most important though: "Become engaged to the man you love best who loves you more than any other man in the world."