Wedding Planning

Looking for name change advice or some tips for newlywed life? The MissNowMrs experts have created state-specific name change articles and checklists for you. We’ve chronicled our recommendations for how to travel while changing your name AND how to handle voting during the transition.

We’ve also compiled our best guidance for how to handle difficult sister in laws, holidays as newlyweds, the ever-annoying baby questions, and much more. Why? Because, while we are name change experts, we’re also newlywed wives, moms, and sisters.

We hope our name change advice articles help smooth your transition to your new name, and a whole new phase of life. Congratulations and best wishes from the entire MissNowMrs team!

Top 5 Wedding Flowers

Curious what the the Top 5 Wedding Flowers are for brides across America? We’ve compiled a list of the blooms most frequently found in a bridal bouquet for you. Use this information to follow the current flower trends or to make sure that you are completely unique and avoid using any of them!
1. Roses – Not too surprising as they’re a traditional romantic mainstay that both look nice & smell lovely
2. Tulips – Reminders of spring that come in hundreds of hues certain to compliment any wedding color palette
3. Peonies – These large blooming beauties call to mind English garden parties & add a perfumed note to the air
4. Orchids – Elegant, interesting & usually expensive (unless you’re doing a destination wedding in Hawaii)
5. Calla Lilies – Refined flowers that dress up any bouquet or centerpiece that they’re included in

Are you putting hours of planning into your bouquet or did you create the perfect collection of posies for your Big Day? If so, our October Giveaway of a custom 11″ x 14″ shadowbox floral keepsake (a $460+ value) is perfect for you! Keepsake Floral, the Nation’s leader in special event flower preservation will create a custom-crafted work of art that you will treasure for years to come!

Want to win our outstanding October giveaway? Leave a comment on this, or any of our floral keepsake posts on Mondays this month and you’ll be automatically entered to win! Tell us all about the flowers in your bouquet, if they have special meanings or significance. The randomly selected contest winner will be announced on October 31st!! If we don’t hear back from the winner within 2 weeks, we will randomly select a new winner to make sure someone ends up with this great goodie!

Flower popularity information for our Top 5 Wedding Flowers list was found on EpisodeWedding.com

The Scoop on Weddzilla: What Is It & How Does It Help?

Have you heard of Wedzilla? As bride-to-be or someone helping with the planning process, there is a high likelihood that you will be inundated with wedding information: a flood of ideas, vendors and of course a million sites claiming to help guide a girl through the process. We had a chance to catch up with the folks at Weddzilla and ask them a few questions about what they do and what their benefits are to you. Read on to learn more…

1. What is Weddzilla.com?
Weddzilla.com is the first website in the wedding industry to really integrate the wedding planning process into popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Weddzilla uses the power of community to simplify the wedding planning process for our Nearlyweds. It’s all about connecting them with their perfect vendors and making their wedding planning easy, social, and fun.

2. How is Weddzilla.com changing the game for online wedding planning?
Planning a wedding is supposed to be fun. With a million sites out there focusing on selling brides something, Weddzilla aims to make their planning experience easier. We created each feature with the thought that if it didn’t simplify their planning process, it didn’t make it onto Weddzilla.

3. What is the one feature you would highlight for Nearlyweds to use?
Our Nearlyweds are loving how easy the Weddmark (a visual bookmarking tool) makes makes collecting and organizing inspiration from all over the web.

And of course they love the fact that each new item they Weddmark between now and September 30, 2010 gives them one entry in the “Weddmark Challenge” and a chance to win a $1,000 gift registry from Macy’s!

4. Do you host any Webinars or educational series to help Nearlyweds or Vendors?
Yes! We want to be a resource for brides and vendors alike. Our current educational series focuses on social media. I can’t tell you how many times I have talked with wedding professionals and heard them say “I know that I need to be engaging brides via social media, but I feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.”

5. Tell us about your gurus. How did you pick them? What will they be bringing to the Weddzilla community?
The Weddzilla Gurus are our team of celebrity wedding professionals that will be sharing their awesome expertise and experience with the Weddzilla Community. The Gurus are not only trendsetters in their fields, they’re also trusted names in the wedding industry.

Plus, they all have HUGE personalities and that comes through in their blog posts and interaction with our Weddzilla community. They are all seriously passionate about what they do…it’s inspiring! And it’s why they have all gotten where they are today.

6. What’s on the horizon for Weddzilla? Tell us what we should be looking out for from you guys.
Up first is the Guru Awards …this is going to be really cool. We are all about social media and blogs play a huge role in the wedding community and we can’t wait to award 25 great blogs our Blog Guru 2010 title!

Also on the horizon is an iPhone app for Nearlyweds…if you thought the Weddmark was cool..wait till you see the iPhone app…Its going to be addicitive!

We have a whole bunch of new site features coming soon like the Ideabook, a new twist on the store, and we will also be introducing our “Wedding Helpers” soon which allow our Nearlyweds to really get social and get their family, friends, and bridal party involved in the planning process.

Have you checked out Weddzilla recently? We’d love to hear your feedback on their site and services!

A Men’s Website For Wedding Planning and Beyond..

Isn’t it about time for a men’s website for wedding planning? Weddings are and forever will be identified as “the bride’s big day.” And why shouldn’t they be? Most women have been dreaming of putting on the white dress, walking down the aisle and having that first kiss since they were little girls. However, while we can’t say that men fantasize about the big day nearly as much, they do care. A lot.

Two years ago, two brothers and their soon-to-be brother in law asked themselves an important question: why isn’t there a comprehensive online wedding planning resource for guys? Surely there was a need for this type of resource as most men don’t know the first thing about wedding planning.

That idea ultimately became TheManRegistry.com
What can grooms (and brides) do at TheManRegistry.com?
1. Supplement their standard wedding registries with gifts from a groom registry complete with over 3,000 unique man-gifts.
2. Shop the web’s top groomsmen gifts shop for ideas on how to say “thanks” to the Best Man and groomsmen.
3. Research local wedding guides, how-to articles and read a groom blog with daily tips and ideas on how to get the most out of the wedding planning experience.

Even if you’re a newlywed, The Man Registry has something for you. You can create a gift registry for your birthday, Christmas or even Father’s Day. Or, if you’ve got a guy to shop for, The Man Registry has ideas on gifts for every type of guy.

What are your thoughts on a men’s website for wedding planning? Is it smart, necessary, or not so much? We’d love to hear from you in a comment.

Newlywed Wedding Clutter Turned into Cash!

Wedding clutter turned into cash…. it’s a real thing! It’s hard to imagine throwing away certain items that one had purchased for one’s wedding, but the idea of selling these items to a future Bride-to-be sounds much more appealing! Now more than ever, we’re all looking to conserve money on certain things, especially when planning for an oh-so fabulous wedding! So, I have the perfect site to share with you! Whether you’re a newlywed and are not sure what to do with some of your accessories and hand-made bows, or whether you’re in the planning stages of your wedding, you’ve got to check out Bravo Bride

Bravo Bride is the largest online marketplace for all wedding items! Some of the items you will find featured on Bravo Bride are: designer used wedding dresses, jewelry, accessories, ceremony and reception items, as well as wedding favors. Here’s how it works… You may register for an account with Bravo Bride (it’s free!) and up-load pictures of the items you wish to sell– at your listing price! If you are the Bride-to-be and there are still a few items on your planning checklist, register for an account and browse around! One of the cool features on BravoBride, is that the buyers and sellers can interact with one another to ask questions about the item and to discuss payment and shipping transactions! When planning my own wedding, I was always keeping an eye out for something unique and searching for new, creative ideas and that’s just what you’re going to find with the selection of items found on BravoBride.

When you sell or shop on BravoBride, you’re not just giving or getting the wedding items you need at a great price, but you’re also making the Earth-friendly choice to re-use. So if you’re now celebrating your one year anniversary and you still find yourself tripping over that tiara box in your spare bedroom, why not offer it to another Bride, and earn some extra spending cash at the same time?! If your thought-process is anything like mine, that extra spending money equals a new pair of shoes!

How have you turned your wedding clutter into cash? We’d love to hear your creative ideas in a comment below!

My Wedding Workbook, Easy and Fun Wedding Planning

Have you heard about My Wedding Workbook? Many engaged couples get a little intimidated when they begin to tackle planning a wedding, and that’s understandable. Most weddings are big events with lots of little details, and very few couples have ever planned an event of this magnitude. However, don’t get discouraged, because there are many tools and resources like MissNowMrs.com that can help you clear these hurdles with ease.

My Wedding Workbook is another helpful online tool that has some of the most comprehensive and best integrated online wedding planning and communications tools we’ve seen. Here are just some of the things you can manage through My Wedding Workbook: wedding budgets, guest lists, RSVPs, task calendars (every wedding-related detail/event from the engagement party through the ceremony and reception). The best part is that it’s online, so you don’t have to download or install anything (and it’s all in ONE convenient place! Simply register on their web site and then login to use their tools: http://www.myweddingworkbook.com/. Another great thing about their tools is that they all work together so that you never have to double enter any information.

Their basic wedding planning tools are completely FREE, so there’s no risk in trying it out. And, in April 2010, they will be launching an entire suite with new tools and features. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?!