5 Ways The Internet Saved My Wedding

As, THE Chocolate Bride said, when you talk to your mother or other older family members about the wedding planning they experienced, it is vastly different. When I spoke to my mother about hers, she admitted that she and my grandmother basically ran to a department store one Saturday afternoon and grabbed a dress. Everything else they pulled into the wedding was done in-person with one-on-one meetings and contracts which were limited to a ten mile radius of the south side of Chicago She laughed as she told me that everything was wrapped up quickly that very same day and that they finished their glorious wedding shopping day with a mother-daughter trip to Red Lobster. When I got engaged in 2004, she thought it would be the same. She carted me around to some of the places she'd known about back in 1980 when she got married, but to her shock(duh, ma), most of the places had closed or didn't even sell wedding items anymore. Her biggest shock however, was how much things had started to cost! So there I was, my mother being the only real person working on this wedding with me, and in one Saturday afternoon her entire roladex of ideas had been expelled. What was a new-millenium bride to do?

I turned on the computer. Here are 5 ways the internet saved my wedding.

Personalized Wedding websites! - YAY for the creators of this concept! With a few lines of inserted text, you could tell your friends, family and even the world about your and your fiance and all the details you wanted to share about your upcoming day. Not only that, but after the wedding, you could showcase pictures and highlights of the day. What bride doesn't love that!

Weddding Information and Message Boards - I AM BIASED. I know this. However, I'm gonna say it anyway, CHOCOLATEBRIDES.COM made me the eternal bride I am today. LOL When you start planning your wedding, you need a place where you can throw out all your best (and worst) ideas without talking your bridal party and fiance to death. Not only does CB provide just that place, but they do it without prejudice of budget, skin color(yes we have white chocolate), sexual preference, wedding location, or style concepts. There are a ton of wedding message boards out there, but NONE compare to CB.

EBAY - With courage bestowed on me by members of ChocolateBrides.com, I pulled together about 45% of my wedding through Ebay. I even found that if I did a search for my colors or theme, I could sometimes find "lots" or bulk packages of things that fit my wedding! Flower petals, flowergirl tiaras, heck even flowergirl DRESSES can be found on Ebay. AT EXCEPTIONAL PRICES! A truly savvy ebay-er can even find their wedding rings and dress on the auction site. And while I'm on the subject Scaredy Pants, NO Ebay is not only an auction site. There are countless listings that you can "Buy Now". If you haven't caught on to the Ebay craze, get with it!

Google.com - Through google, I think I put my fingers on just about every wedding related website I could, simply by typing in the exact item I was looking for! It sounds silly, but there are loads of small or home-based businesses who ONLY rely on search engines like Google to give them the light of day. (I even stumbled onto ChocolateBrides by googling) Now come on, everyone googles, right?

Being Myself - Before I began cruising the net searching for ideas, I believed that all weddings had to be alike. We ALL have to wear the same kinds of dresses, with the same kind of flowers, at the same location, in the same month. The internet exposed me to so many different concepts and directions that I hardly believe I would have been a happy bride without it. Decorations, jewelry, attire, invitations, etc all came to my wedding through the world wide web. I can't wait to see how its going to continue to influence and inspire brides for years to come!

My mom was wary of my choosing the internet as my wedding planner, but in the end, she was only glad that in a few taps of the keys and some crafty phone-calls, she was able to have the same blessed planning Saturday with me, as she had with her own mom. And you know what, we still had Red Lobster at the end of the day.

Me and my Mommie - July 2, 2005