I’m not an expert on planning a wedding, I only did it once, but I did do it with a lot of love and intention. [See the article I submitted and had published that says as much here: Wedding Graduates: Deena & Ben]
Here’s a list of my favorite wedding-y sites and why:
- A Practical Wedding: they published my article! Also, it’s where REAL women talk about real wedding issues and let you have a glimpse into their lives, messy stuff and all. The people who write, read and comment on that site are an amazingly open and supportive community of practical gals.
- Offbeat Bride, Altar Your Thinking. When you’re tired of the Wedding Industrial Complex (WIC) being shoved down your throat a you want to see busty gals in rockabilly wedding outfits, this is the your anti-David’s Bridal mental palate cleanser. You can read about anything from nerdy Star Wars themed weddings, to druids who married at RenFest, to a gay couple who had beautiful church weddings with a potluck reception. There’s some of everything that’s anywhere on the non-normative spectrum.
- Wedding Bee: follow individual brides as they go through the last 8 months of wedding planning and then do lots of wedding recaps. There are a wide range of women who blog for this site ranging from classic Southern Belles who have big white dresses and church weddings to tattooed ladies who get married on Army bases.
- Style Me Pretty: a fairly normative wedding blog that focuses on the garden chic aesthetic and has lots of crafty influences. The weddings featured here are mostly high end and too styled for my taste, but it does have lots of great inspirations.
Other than theses blogs, I recommend that you find vendors in your area who’s websites don’t annoy you and subscribe to their blog on your favorite RSS reader -I like Google Reader, it’s easy. (You don’t want to work with a vendor who annoys you before you’ve even met them!) Organize your subscriptions by LOCAL VENDOR and WEDDING BLOG and maybe a third category of REAL BRIDES for when you start finding personal blogs to follow (find them by clicking on the profile of commenters you like on the blogs listed above).
You may have noticed that I didn’t list The Knot. I think it’s designed to induce anxiety (too many to-do and check lists) and competitive cattiness (see the forums), plus who wants to look at all the homogenous weddings when you can look at creative ones!?
Did I miss anything? Please, comment and add any sites that you like(d) that I missed!
Ducksandbooks: A Newly Mawwied Lady's Blog 