Join Powerbrides! It is like Facebook for weddings!

Husband and wife team create powerbrides.com, The Premier Social Networking site for brides-to-be and wedding professionals. It has been called the “Facebook” of wedding planning by many of its active members.

Powerbrides offers easy-to-use INTERACTIVE marketing through social networking.  It is the first site of its kind for brides to connect and chat with friends, family, and other brides-to-be, to share ideas, ask questions, post pictures, consult with on staff bridal experts, and win free bridal products.

“With social networking being the wave of the future for all businesses, CEO and Founder of powerbrides.com, Rick DeAngelo states: It’s a win/win for everyone, brides and wedding professionals.  Brides can easily reach out and connect to wedding professionals as well as exchange information with other brides-to-be in the powerbrides community and wedding professionals are able to stay current and connected with their young and tech savvy market.”

Leslie DeAngelo adds, “When a woman becomes engaged, she relishes in her new found status of bride-to-be. Immediately, she wants to start connecting and communicating with other brides about “all things wedding.” Simply put, brides love sharing information with other brides about being a bride.”

Rick and Leslie DeAngelo are also the founders of VOWS Bridal Outlet, the first designer bridal outlet in the country as well as of the multi-award winning wedding gown website, bridepower.com. In 2001, they realized the power of the Internet and the transformation that was coming to the wedding industry. With almost 20 years in the bridal industry, they are confident that Powerbrides will revolutionize the way wedding planning is done on the web. 

Tutera is the host of a show called My Fair Wedding, and what he does is selects a bride from a group that write to him and plans the entire wedding for that bride. He’s not someone who goes for simplicity, which is probably what makes him popular. His intention is to create the dream wedding for his client, and part of the show’s charm, so to speak, is that he only has 3 weeks to put the entire thing together. You wouldn’t want to do this for real, but for TV, doing everything at a fast pace makes the show.

Of course planning weddings is nothing new to Tutera. He’s been doing this for over 20 years, to the extent that he sets the standard for other wedding planners in the types of services and supplies that he can offer. Many wedding planners have contacts they like to work with, and can bring some supplies to the table such as arches and the like. Tutera goes much further by also offering jewelry, furniture, photography, wedding cakes, save the date cards, and even flowers. Seems like the only thing he doesn’t offer is limousine service, but of course that’s something he’d take care of arranging when planning a wedding.

Tutera is known as an expert in his field, and he’s also written a book on the subject called the Big White Book of Weddings, a How-to Guide For the Savvy Bride. While promoting the book, he was quoted as saying that it’s important to add elements that distinguish your (wedding) from all the rest. “.Tell the history of who you are as a bride and groom. It gives guests the opportunity to go for a ride with you.”

Q. Is there anything you can’t help a wedding couple with?

A. There’s nothing we can’t help with. In our boutique, for example, we even have wedding dresses that brides can either purchase or rent, and we can get our hands on pretty much anything a bride might want to wear. We have invitations and any other paper products that might be needed. We have arches and all types of decorations as well. We don’t have bridesmaids dresses or tuxedos, but we can put them on order for the wedding party.

Q. Can you handle two weddings on the same day?

A. Our boutique has enough people where, if there’s no wedding that’s going to be larger than normal, we can actually handle 3 weddings at once. We have people who have been trained to help out if we need extra hands and we trust every one of them. We’re lucky that we don’t have to make the food or drive the limos; all we have to do is supervise everything that goes on most of the time.

Q. Do you have favorites you like to work with in all areas?

A. We have multiple favorites, which works out well because there are so many weddings as certain times of the year that it’s hard to guarantee that you’d be able to work with specific people every week. We have a list of photographers, florists, reception halls, caterers… you name it we have them listed. We have a ratings system as well that helps us make sure we get the right person to an event. For instance, some photographers have teams of people that will help them cover a large wedding, so we would contact them as opposed to an individual photographer. Some caterers make everything in their homes, which works fine for many weddings, but a large wedding would need caterers that can put out a lot of food. Every once in awhile we get special food requests, so we also have a few gourmet and exotic food caterers on the list as well.

image credit: italianlakeswedding.com

Q. It must be something working with wedding couples of all types. What do you believe many of them expect in working with you?

A. Unfortunately, sometimes what they expect and what the reality is doesn’t match up. They sometimes want you to do everything from getting the church and the reception hall and ordering the bridesmaids dresses and getting the limos and all the other things that make up a wonderful wedding. We can do that part. What they also want is for all of that to come in under certain dollar amounts, and that’s when problems occur.

Q. Can you give us an example?

A. Depending on the area, it can cost anywhere between $20,000 and $50,000 to put a wedding together. We include our flat fee into the estimate so we’re not going to be under any restrictions that keep us from doing everything we can to make the wedding day perfect. Because we like charging a flat fee, sometimes couples believe that fee gets them everything they can think of. Although we have plenty of contacts, it still costs a lot of money to get everything you want. Unless a couple has unlimited resources, they’re just not going to get everything they want.

Q. What’s a typical wedding day like for you?

A. There’s no such thing as a typical day. It all depends on what a client decides they want. We can be a part of only the wedding or we can be a part of the entire day. At a recent wedding, one of us started the morning at 8AM with the bride while someone else was at the church by 10AM. The reception was held in a large field, so we had to set that up as well. We were also responsible for cleaning everything up; we didn’t get finished until around 2AM.

Q. That sounds like a long day. I assume that’s a day where you were responsible for everything across the board?

A. Yes, exactly. We booked everyone and everything except the location of the reception, as the family owned the land. We reached out to our entire network of specialists, which is something wedding planners are lucky to have. Of course, this was also one of those times when the family had enough money for us to get them everything they wanted, as they had over 300 guests coming. Everything was in place a month before the wedding, and lucky for us, nothing went wrong, including the weather.

To see more of this interview, click on part two.

Photo credit: www.weddingflowersvictoria.com

There’s nothing wrong with receptions overall. However, unless people change up the food drastically, most of them are pretty much the same. These days, there are more wedding planners helping couples set up themed weddings.

Basically, a themed wedding is one that looks at either a period in time or an event of some kind and decorates everything around that theme. For instance, many weddings that take place near holidays might adopt the colors associated with that holiday. Red, white and blue might be theme colors for weddings around the Fourth of July, while orange and black might be used as a theme for weddings near Halloween.

But there are other themes that young people seem to like. These days, a couple is apt to have a horror theme, complete with zombies and vampires, including wedding cakes designed with horror colors and images and a wedding cake topper of the same ilk. There has also been resurgence in science fiction themed receptions, especially Star Trek and Star Wars themes.

One online company based out of Washington state, called Forever Wed, helps couples determine what kind of theme they’d like, and will ship out everything that will be needed to decorate towards that theme. They also have ready made themes such as the 1920′s, Cinderella, Fairy Tale, Irish, Japanese, Romeo and Juliet, and Under The Sea.

What will it take if you decided to do a theme on your own? Truthfully, if you’re going this route it’s probably best to hire a wedding planner to help out. There will be the need for at least a little bit of research. Just because you want zombies doesn’t mean everyone has the same image of what a zombie is. Some people might equate the Mexican images for the Day of the Dead with zombies from many movies, and they’re not quite the same, nor is the significance the same.

There will be the need to determine just how far you’re willing to go. For instance, will the bride and groom dress up as characters, or will just one or the other, or maybe just the wedding party, or maybe no one at all. There was one image I remember viewing where the bride wore a beautiful wedding gown, but the groom and everyone else was dressed up like Klingons. In another, the bride and groom wore wetsuits, as the theme was about being under water snorkeling.

Whatever you decide, make sure that you feel it’s appropriate for all your guests, and plan your invitations accordingly. You might not want kids at your zombie wedding, and you might have to temper some of what you want for other members of the family. Whatever you do, though, have fun with it.

See more:
Black and White Wedding Theme
Themed Reception Ideas
Wedding Reception Tips
Ideas for A Winter Weather Theme