Sorry brides, this time I'm not talking to you. This time I'm talking to the people who help make your day great.

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Have you noticed the winds of change moving in on the weddings you've attended lately? Maybe you've noticed that some things seem to be missing. Here's a list of wedding traditions that are slowly going out of style.

1. The Dollar Dance

Nobody really carries cash with them anymore, making the dollar dance something rather difficult to execute. I've been to some weddings that still have a dollar dance and see a sad turnout, not because no one wants to dance with the bride or groom, but because they simply didn't think ahead to bring cash. Perhaps in the future this tradition will make a comeback; we can call it the "Visa Dance."

2. Bathrooms and Air Conditioning

With the rise in popularity of barn weddings you'd think that these barn venues would make the investment to include central air and restrooms. But, unfortunately, the venues don't make this change and instead rent portable restrooms and leave the guests and bridal couple to sweat the night away. This lack of amenities might be what's causing the downturn in barn wedding popularity going into 2017. Time will tell if venues will finally start supplying these and perhaps the rustic trend could continue for years to come.

3. Receiving Lines

Brides and grooms are opting to instead spend more personalized one on one time with their guests during the reception. Guests can become bored and impatient waiting in line to see the couple for only a few seconds after the ceremony so more and more couples are choosing to just skip it! Does anyone really miss it?

4. Unity Ceremonies

The classic unity candle has been working it's way out for years now with couples instead using sand, water, communion, cord tying, hand fastening, tree planting, painting, feet washing, flower arranging, I've even seen a couple make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. With all the ideas floating around if it's hard to decide on one that both the bride and groom like it's easier to just not have the unity ceremony portion during the wedding, so many couples are skipping it entirely.

5. Throwing things at the Couple

After the ceremony aren't the bride and groom supposed to be showered in rice? Or bubbles? Or even have doves released? Something? No? In recent years couples have started having the ceremony and reception in the same place, making this tradition awkward at best. No one wants to walk outside for the sendoff just to walk right back in.












6. The Seating Arrangement

How am I going to find a place to sit if no one tells me?? Asked no one, ever.

7. The Veil

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the wedding veil! I love the added delicateness it brings to the brides attire and I think it's flattering on anyone! But, veils are expensive and awkward to wear and often poke your head. I get why some brides opt out of this one.

Trends come and go, but some you wish were here to stay forever! Such as:

1. Baby Ring Bearer and Flower Girls pulled in wagons

Who doesn't love seeing tiny humans snuggled in a vintage radio flyer? Plus, you know you're up for funny shenanigans when the tiny humans try to get loose during the ceremony!



2. Invitations that WOW

Remember when every wedding invitation looked the same? Let's not go back to that.

3. Color Blocking Photos

It's a way to make your wedding photos really stand out, by having just one color show in a black and white picture. I also love when just the bouquets are in color as a way to showcase your gorgeous flowers!



4. Family Style Dining

It's faster than a buffet, more convenient than a plated meal, there doesn't have to be meal options on an RSVP card that they already aren't going to fill out, and it encourages conversation among the tables during dinner- even if you sit strangers together!

5. Succulents

These hardy, often adorable plants can be used anywhere at a wedding and works well as a subtle accent out a statement main attraction! Plus, you can replant them and use them in your home later! You can't do that with roses!

6. Geodes

A beautiful, rare, and extraordinary phenomenon... Much like true love.

7.  Pets in the wedding

I would have loved the opportunity to use my dogs Copper and Piper as ring bearer and flower girl. ... If only you could go back.



8. Mother/Daughter dances. The grooms her a whole to-do about dancing with their moms. But I want to dance with my mom too! And my daughter!

9. Dessert that isn't cake.

So many tasty treats to choose from! Cake became a little overdone years ago, I want pie and cheesecake!

Everyone wants their wedding to be unique and memorable, but sometimes there's a trend that is so on pointe you have to join in! Here are my favorite wedding trends of all time!

Call me crazy but I love holiday weddings! I mean, holidays are great and weddings great, mixing the two just intensifies the excitement of both! Many vendors charge extra on holidays but I don't, instead grateful for the chance to be a part of the extra special day.

Here are the top holidays couples are married on our around!

Valentine's Day:
This is also Vegas's busiest day for elopements. Valentine's Day is classically a romantic holiday, and what can be more romantic than a wedding?

Christmas:
There's one major advantage to getting married on or around Christmas: you're likely not going to forget your anniversary! Another advantage is churches and chapels are typically already decorated, so no need to worry about that!



New Year's Day or New Year's Eve:
It's a new year and a start of a new life together! Some New Year's couples get married early and party until midnight, some party until midnight and say "I Do" on the first day of the year, or some couples prefer to time it so they are married exactly on the midnight strike! There's really no way to go wrong here!

Halloween:
I've never worked a Halloween wedding and it's the last theme I have on my wedding themed bucket list! Know anyone needing a planner or photographer for Halloween? I'll give a great deal just to cross it off the list!

Thanksgiving:
I myself got married the day after Thanksgiving. The rehearsal dinner was a massive Thanksgiving feast prepared and hosted by my sisters in law for both sides of the family. Plus, rarely do guests purchase wedding gifts until the day of the wedding, imagine the savings!

"I knew I was going to marry my fiance when I meet his kids. We automatically all clicked and felt like a little family and I just knew." -Anna

How many times have you heard that when it's right, you know? Here are some stories that will make you believe.

"She ran over my foot at the grocery store and when I saw her face I couldn't even get mad. I bought a ring that night." -Jerry

"We debated about who would make a better Sith Lord: Obi-Wan Kenobi or Qui Gon Jin" -Samantha

"(My fiance) took me to an aquarium so I could see the sharks (they're my favorite) and he told me that someday he was going to propose to me in this exact spot. He did exactly one year later and now we're getting married tomorrow!" -Simon

"I realized that she's the most wonderful woman in the world and I'd better snatch her up before she figured out that she could do better than me!" -Mark

"I didn't know as much as really hoped." -Hannah

"I heard my dead grandma's voice in my head say "this one right here!" So I married him." -Shannon

"The second I started dreaming up wedding colors I knew I had found the one." -Stephan

"She went on a twenty minute rant about how much she hates weddings and I said "So we're going to Vegas?" as a joke but she got so excited about the idea that I decided to take her. That weekend." -Lee

"I caught another woman checking him out and went a little crazy because he's mine and I didn't want to share." -Leah

"There's a spot on his chest that is molded to fit my head for cutting. I knew then that God made this Mac especially for me. O am truly blessed." -Christina

"I knew I would marry her when she said "I dont want to date anyone unless marriage is on the table from the beginning." I felt the same way, so when we agreed to start dating we were basically engaged from the beginning.* -Milo

"My boyfriend at the time proposed to me and all I could think about was him." -Sarah

"I didn't realize he was the one until after we were already married, which made me feel incredibly lucky." -Candice

"Her daughter came into her room one night and saw us in bed together." "She started calling him Daddy after that and we both knew we could create a perfectly imperfect family." -Misty and Joe

"He hit it off with my Pappy and Mammaw!" -Hannah

Good, bad, or ugly: tends and fads abound in every part of life, especially weddings. While everyone tries to be unique and add their own spin on the wedding day sometimes a trend or two will pop up. Here are my favorite wedding trends of all time.

Wedding DJ's get a lot of random and sometimes down right weird requests. Let's hear about some of the worst first dance songs these dedicated professionals have ever had to use.

"Been some years back..."Endless Love". The movie is about stalking and bad relationships." -June, Megasound, Fort Wayne, IN

"Henry the Eighth, what's weird about it was that they were a younger couple, and the song is talking about how this is the bride's eighth marriage." -Ryan, Music Men, Chicago, IL

"White Wedding" seems so obvious, but people really need listen to the words." -Tyler Hawthorne, DJ service, Rushville, IN
(We looked up the words, turns out it's about incest! Who knew?)

"I can tell you the worst stepfather/bride dance. He picked "I loved her first". Her dad was there and was with her the first eight years of her life." -Ron, Magic Moments Entertainment

I started event planning early. I was constantly on dance and party committees in high school leading naturally into being on two different prom planning committees, the themes of which were "Oriental Dreams" a vintage Chinese village theme and "Silver Screen Glory" an art-deco glamorous old Hollywood theme.

Even then I didn't realize that life would lead me to event planning; however, having this experience behind me sure helps! I mean, think about the similarities between a prom and a wedding reception: formal gowns and tuxedos, fancy décor, music and dancing, drunk people (let's not kid ourselves, we all know those kids had alcohol), and awkward pictures.

Each prom committee I served on needed to find a theme, color scheme, venue, catering, a DJ, a photographer, create fancy decorations, come up with song lists for special dances, create programs, we even had to work and rework the budget over and over until we ran out of money! Sounds similar to a wedding reception to me.

Except, not really. If you make a bad choice for prom a bunch of teenagers are mad at the school and probably the teachers. If you make bad choices for a wedding, especially as a wedding planner, you could potentially ruin the best day in someone's life.

That's a lot more pressure.

It sounds glorious, doesn't it? Getting paid to plan parties, I mean. People often show jealousy when I tell them I own my own business. I mean, I get to create my own schedule, I have own office, some days on my job are so tough they involve eating pizza and getting my face painted! Even now, as I'm sitting here writing this, I am sitting at a frozen yogurt shop, simply between meetings and have a few minutes, so I thought I'd type something up real quick.

It's true, I have an office with a work desk, a work chair, and lots of work files, notebooks, and papers but really, my main office is the not-so-little black bag with a laptop, notebooks, binders, pens, and phone(s) carefully packed inside. I tote that portable office everywhere I go, and I go many places. If the ladies at Sweet Events aren't at a meeting, they are in their cars on the way to another meeting, or running another errand.

Why do we travel so much? There are many reasons for this, actually. One of the main reasons is, of course, to meet clients, and take care of anything they may need from us. We have coffee with them to calm their nerves and make sure everything is on track, we go to store after store to pick up this decoration or that, we visit venues and draw out floor plans, we meet caterers for food tastings, so on and so on.

All of our traveling has to do with our clients. The errands listed before were directly related to our clients, but even our other errands are for our client's benefit. Networking meetings are a necessity in our line of work. We need to be sure that the vendors, no matter what services or product they offer are up to (or exceeding) the standard expected by our clients. We need to trust that they know what is needed and expected of them. If we trust them and like them we know to recommend them to future clients. So we're always working for future clients as well!

Officially, yes, we get to pick our own hours, but not really. Weddings and events are often weekend work, eating up prime time for our personal events- not picked by us. Often we are messaged, called, emailed, and even FaceTimed in the middle of the night by brides and clients concerned about one aspect or another that needs to be done-definitely wouldn't pick then to work.

But, then again, our job often involves wine tastings, listening to awesome, local live bands, getting our face painted, dancing to old school toons, and playing with kids. So yeah, it's not easy, but you can definitely say it's the greatest job on earth.

Little known facts about weddings!

The tradition of throwing rice started in China? Children would throw handfuls of rice away from the bride to distract wild chickens from getting in the way of the bride to and from her wedding!

In the beginning, bridal showers would only happen if the father of the bride disapproved of the union and withheld a dowry. If the gifts received from friends and family were enough to pay the dowry the wedding was allowed to commence even without the blessing of the bride’s father.

The first department store to have a bridal registry was Marshall-Fields in Chicago in 1924!

RSVP stands for Repondea S’il Vous Plait, which translates to “please reply” from French.

When you say you "Love you to the moon and back" you’re technically telling someone that you love them 238,855 miles.

Statistically, the lower a couple’s wedding budget the less likely that couple is to divorce.

In Maylasia newlywed couples don’t shower or bathe for a week after the wedding as to not wash away the good luck, fortune, or happiness of the day too soon.

Tiered wedding cakes started as a game played in Europe. If the couple could successfully kiss over the cake without knocking it over, the number of tiers the cake had would be the number of children the couple would  have together. 

The idea of wedding and party favors started in the 18th century among upper class hosts. They were usually simple sugar cubes which were considered highly treasured in that time. Over time the content has changed but still usually involves candy or sweets in some way. Today favors can serve as a token or reminder of the event from photo frames, candles, pens, coasters, or even kitchen or bar utensils. 

A pearl engagement ring is said to be bad luck because its shape echoes that of a tear. 

The marriage of Sheik Rashid Bin Saeed Al Maktoum’s son to Princess Salama in Dubai in May 1981. The price tag? $44 million. 

The longest-married couple on record is Herbert and Zelmyra Fisher. They were married for 86 years, 9 months, and 16 days, until the she passed away in 2011. Their marriage advice? “Remember marriage is not a contest – never keep a score. God has put the two of you together on the same team to win.”

Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve are the two busiest “marriage” days in Las Vegas – elopement central!

Seventeen tons of gold are made into wedding rings each year in the United States!

Wedding magazines and blogs all over the United States and the internet are giving advice on how to budget your wedding, from what to splurge on to "ways to save!" Some of this advice is great, like simply asking your vendors for a lower price because they're out of your budget but you really connect with their work (the worst they could do is say no!), However, some advice that might sound good on the surface can actually completely ruin your wedding. There are reasons there are professionals in certain fields to help carry out your wedding day. Here are some stories from real brides who went cheap and regretted it. 1. I didn't hire a DJ for my reception and instead asked my brother to do the music for my wedding: He said he would rent the proper equipment so he could be our DJ if he could use us as a reference and maybe become a DJ as a side gig after. The day of, he brought a laptop computer, a few Bluetooth speakers, and the only thing he rented was a microphone! He didn't have any music on his laptop and instead told our guests that if they wanted to hear something they had to request it. He would then download that song so there would be a few minutes of silence between songs. Plus he downloaded them illegally so half of them either had ads or cut out halfway. If that wasn't bad enough he got stage fright so he couldn't MC the reception, instead any announcements had to be made by me... The bride. -Amy, Warsaw, IN 2. I let my husband's family cater the wedding. They tried to take over everything about my wedding! They insisted that decorations be just so because they were catering, they said that pie would go over better than cake so they served dozens of pies, handing them out to each guest, leaving my cake completely untouched. My brand new mother in law even interrupted the DJ when he was announcing that we were going to cut the cake to tell my guests to eat the pie first! -Rachel, Van Wert, OH 3. I hired a cheap photographer because I didn't have a big budget, even though pictures were the most important thing to me. There were, like, three pictures i liked. If I had it to do over again I would have hired someone better. -Leah, Fort Wayne, IN 4. I should have spent money on a party bus or limo like I wanted. A lot of our bridal party was from out of town and got lost on the way to the reception. - Ashley, Fort Wayne, IN 5. My aunt said she would coordinate my wedding for me to help me save some money. She did help me set up the reception, but I ended up doing most of the work and MISSED my hair appointment. She also forgot where she put the money I gave her to pay the cake decorator and we didn't have any cake at our reception! Plus, she was too busy mingling with her sisters at the reception to do anything she said she would do. Hindsight being 20/20, should have paid someone who knew what they were doing. Erica- Fort Wayne, IN

Spring is almost here! Which means, our favorite time of year is just around the corner: wedding season! After months of waiting for the cold to pass, the snow has melted, the grass has turned green, and the ice has thawed away revealing the crystal blue waters that had previously laid hidden underneath. As the flowers poke through the earth and show their optimistic buds, wedding venues swing open their doors to let the fresh Spring breeze wisp away the frigid air still lingering from the long weeks before.

Spring is the most popular season for weddings. The first warm days remind excited brides and grooms that their big day will soon be here. Before they know it, they will be walking down the aisle, saying "I do", and beginning a whole new chapter with the love of their lives, only this time, they'll be starting it together!

Spring weddings open the door for a wide variety of event design and styling. Spring themes, of all themes, truly stand the test of time. Some ideas that will never go out of styles are "Tea Party", "Wild Flowers", "Fairytale", and "Paris". These themes blend beautifully with the fresh feeling of warmth and joy that comes with the season! At the same time, Spring is such a lovely time of year, some brides completely opt out of having a theme at all! They decide  instead to elaborate on the colors already in play. A rainbow of pastel colors show off the natural beauty and feeling that comes with the season! Simple white table cloths topped with a spread of sweet, colorful flowers will add an air of peace and joy throughout the happy couple's big day!

Perhaps this is why Spring is the most popular of all four seasons. The fresh, new life blend perfectly with the fresh, new start of a marriage. Happy Spring and Wedding Season, everyone!