Maid/Matron of Honor Duties
 

First of all, congrats on your wedding!! :)

I'm glad this topic came up, because one of my best friends (& a sister I pledged with) is getting married this fall. I'm in the bridal party, though not the maid of honor. That honor fell onto another good friend of ours (and another sister :)).

The maid of honor is very conscious about doing everything she's "suppossed" to do in her position. And was just asking me if I knew of any books or anything that would give her ideas.

So, for those of you who are married or about to be married, anything that really stands out that the maid of honor (or entire bridal party) did?

I'd love to help her make our friend's wedding extra-rockin'-cool!

Thanks!!

My maid of honor is organizing my showers and is helping me sort out shower guest lists and my wedding guest list. She is keeping in touch with the other bridesmaids and keeping them on track...she is in Baton Rouge though, so it's a long distance job! She gets to come to Houston occasionally though!

Congrats!
 

Congrats on your engagement! I sell wedding invitations, so if you have any questions about it you can PM me to ask:)

RedHotChiO

Do you guys post on the knot message boards? What are your names there? I've become addicted to those boards since getting engaged.

Anyway, I'm getting married in May and have done pretty much everything that can be done right now. We just have to wait for bridesmaid dresses and ivitations to come in.

About the wedding cakes and general cost of everything: It really depends on where you are. My cakes are going to serve 300 people and are only costing about $500 for the wedding cake and the grooms cake.

Congratulations on all who are getting married this year, and to those recently married. Best of fortune on a successful union.

Last week, I was officially invited to step in for a bridesmaid that couldn't fulfill her obligations. The Bride only has two female attendants though, so I'm very busy trying to pull together a lot of activities in a short amount of time (wedding's early May)....

At any rate, I have about 25 wedding oriented web sites, along with my Martha Stewart Book of Weddings, that I've saved into my favorites folder. A few I've used in the past few days:
www.theknot.com
www.superweddings.com
www.bridesmaidaid.com

If you know of any good wedding etiquette sites, please pass them along, because we're doing a few things differently than the traditional "big wedding/reception after wedding", so I'm assisting her in fine tuning. Any support groups for the dear bridesmaids/maids of honor would be great too! We are really the workhorses of this gig! :D

I do agree that the cake/sheet cake situation depends on location. Here in California, my coworker didn't notice too much of a price difference between the tiered cake only and a smaller tiered cake and sheets to cut in the back. Maybe they're hip to it out this way--or maybe it was the bakeries she selected!

And boy are you all right about the dress sizes...I wear an 8 (sometimes a 6) and tried on the sized 10 bridesmaid's gown. It fit...if you like the corseted look! I'm sure they could have found a better way to make a bridesmaid feel fat and dumpy than that! ;)

The shoes are bought though...and they're cute dressy strappy sandals that I can wear again!

it's not just bridesmaid's dresses that are made smaller!!!! When I went to try on my wedding dress, I was sized and told I needed to buy a size 18 dress cause of my large chest (I normally wore a 16). Well, when I eventually ordered it, the company wanted to charge me another $20 cause of "extra material" needed for the larger size! I said screw that and ordered a size 16 in the hopes I'd lose enough weight!
Well, between the time i ordered it and the time it came I lost so much weight that the size 16 was too big!!!:) Actually on my wedding day my dress also ended up being a bit too large cause I didn't eat much the week of my wedding!:)
On a side note...I just thought I'd mention my proud accomplishment of losing 35 lbs for my wedding day (and still losing!!!!) I went from a size 16 to a size 12...my goal is a size 10 so I'm almost there!!!:D

I went to a friends wedding a week ago and she forgot to bring her bouquet with when she walked down the aisle - we had to pass it up to her via the bridesmaids - but several people said they didn't notice:D

I got asked to be in my friend's (a former roomie and AXO sis) wedding tonight, so I am excited!!

Sisterplum, I noticed in your pictures that you had lost a lot of weight. You looked so good! That is definitely something to be proud of! Anyone who hasn't looked at her pics definitely should.

dxsaigirl thank you so much! As you can probably tell, I'm very proud of my weight loss! So is my husband as he met me when I was beginning to gain weight! Now it's almost all off and I feel great!!!:)
One of the best feelings of my life is everytime I see someone who hasn't seen me in a while and they say "Wow! You look great!":D I went to Art's company Christmas party and wore this amazing dress! I hadn't seen any of his co-workers or bosses in at least 6 months...Art's boss and 2 recruiters (he's a computer consultant) all came up to me individually and complimented me on how great I looked!:D:D Hee hee!
So thank you for mentioning that darlin...it made my night!!!!:D:D

Oh, I'm so jealous of you all who are planning weddings! I had *so* much fun planning mine!!

The one general thing I will say because nobody has said it so far -- just remember that it is *your* day. Of course I'm not suggesting that being a snotty brat is a good idea, but I always hate hearing about people who do things at their weddings to make other people happy even though it's not what they want to do. For example, I have a few good friends who had ultra religious ceremonies to please their families, even though they didn't really believe in it. It's great to make others happy (although that's not what a wedding is about) but when you start out your wedding by saying things that you don't believe or don't mean, I think you are setting yourself up for failure. One friend who did this is already divorced, and I'm not saying that the ceremony is the cause, but I think it's important to go into a marriage saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

I was blessed with supportive, wonderful parents who happily wrote checks and either agreed with what I wanted to do or came around eventually, and inlaws who didn't have much to say about anything. Our wedding was (very) unconventional in many respects, so it was great to have the support of my (wonderful) parents.

Okay -- as far as websites -- what I found most helpful and interesting was looking at websites made by actual couples who had gotten married or were planning their weddings. For example, I liked www.tnj.net a lot -- the "our wedding" part is really nice. I would search yahoo for things like "our wedding" and browse the results. I found some of the wedding guides to be rather cheesy, although I did like the magazines, especially Martha Stewart. We found our cake idea and I found my dress in Bride's.

Whatever you do, relax and have fun. After all the work planning the wedding and doing everything the way I wanted it to be done (I really planned every little detail, but not to the point where I was psycho), our actual wedding day itself was the most fun day of my life. There were a few minor mishaps (we didn't have enough wine, so the caterers had to go out and get more) but overall it was as perfect as I could have wanted.

Oh -- a quick side note -- I don't know what, if anything you are wearing on your head, but you may want to wear it around a while first. I wore a tiara, and the thing was digging into the side of my head all night and it hurt. Had I worn it more first, I would have been able to stretch it out a little so it wouldn't have hurt so much.

Good luck!!! You will have SO much fun!