Venue: Pippin Hill Farm and Vineyard

Event Planning: Amore Events

Floral Design: Sugar Magnolias

Hair and Makeup: Moxie

Dress: Angelo Lambrou

Shoes: Badgley Mischka

Jewels: Designed by Bride

“So we build from here with love the foundation
In a world of tears, one consolation
Now you’re here there’s a full brass band
Playin’ in me like a wonderland
And if you left I would be two foot small
And every tear would be a water fall
Soundless boundless I surround you
I didn’t know I was looking for love until I found you…”

 -Karen Ramirez (Looking for Love)

We’re all about breaking the mold! Here are some more ideas for making your wedding personal and anything-but-ordinary. And in case you missed it, check out Part 1!

Amore Events by Cody

Photo credit: Joe Foley Photography

Favors: While some couples are choosing to ditch favors entirely, this can be a really fun place to show your unique style and interests. Instead of offering a physical object with your names on it, consider leaving a note regarding a donation to a charity in the name of your guests. If you assign seating, consider personalizing some of the gifts; one gift for your male guests, one for the ladies.

Bouquet Toss: Instead of calling out your single lady friends, or worse, having just one or two friends approach the dance floor, consider presenting your bouquet to a special guest… the couple who has been married the longest, an engaged friend, parents, a newlywed or someone celebrating an anniversary around the same time.

Photo Credit: Ethan Yang Photography

Bridal Party Gifts: While a nice piece of jewelry or cufflinks is always appreciated by the members of the bridal party, this is a great place to stray from tradition. Personalize gifts by getting each member what you know they’d like best… a book for one, a golf club for another. These are the people who know and love you best; give them a gift you know they’ll love too!

Photo credit: David Hartcorn Photography

Toasts: These aren’t just for best men and maid-of-honors anymore. Consider switching it up; having a sibling or another close, well-spoken friend give a toast. Or, why not honor your guests by toasting them yourselves?

The Veil: Fashion has offered up so many hair accessories in recent years that a traditional veil isn’t always the route brides like to choose. Blushers are a fading style. Instead, consider a chic headband, fresh flowers, hair clips, or embrace the British fascinator trend.

Eric Kelley Photography

Ceremony Programs: Programs can be so fun for a number of reasons:

1) You can design them yourself to make them your own.

2) You can print them yourself to save some money.

3) You can add in some trivia about the two of you.

4) You can give shout outs to your family, bridal party, and anyone else!

Here are a couple of our favorites:

Photo Credit: Frank Crocker Photography

Photo Credit: Jack Looney Photography

The post A Twist on Tradition [Part 2] appeared first on Charlottesville Wedding Blog.

Nassau Hall; Princeton University; Princeton, NJ (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This seemed to be the spring for craziness on the college newsfeed. If you happen to follow loads of college stories, you’ve likely seen one or two of these, but just in case…

Find a husband.

One of Princeton’s first female attendees, Susan Patton, class of ’77, participated in a Women and Leadership conference on campus and, in the breakout discussion afterwards, saw current Princetonian “girls glazed over at preliminary comments about our professional accomplishments and the importance of networking,” yet who “asked about the value of our friendship, about our husbands and children.”

Ms. Patton took this opportunity to write a letter to the editor of the Daily Princetonian, Advice for the young women of Princeton: the daughters I never had. In short, “Find a husband on campus before you graduate.”

My older son had the good judgment and great fortune to marry a classmate of his, but he could have married anyone. My younger son is a junior and the universe of women he can marry is limitless. Men regularly marry women who are younger, less intelligent, less educated. It’s amazing how forgiving men can be about a woman’s lack of erudition, if she is exceptionally pretty. Smart women can’t (shouldn’t) marry men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal. As Princeton women, we have almost priced ourselves out of the market. Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again — you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you.

Really.

My favorite response, by Maureen O’Connor in NY Magazine, Princeton Mom to All Female Students: ‘Find a Husband’, includes this,

What an excruciatingly retro understanding of relationships she has. If men are happy with bimbos, but women aren’t happy with “men who aren’t at least their intellectual equal,” then the conclusion is that a successful heterosexual relationship requires the man to be smarter than the woman. This is the same logic used by teen girls who feign stupidity to attract dates for the homecoming dance.

Suzy Lee Weiss.

SLW on the Today Show.

There are any number of steps a high school student can take in response to college application rejections, and if one’s older sister used to develop features for the Wall Street Journal, the student can even get an essay to leap into the college admission zeitgeist of the moment.

First, the essay: To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me

Second, the media tour: Rejected high school senior: colleges lied to me

Note:  it’s easy to spot a well-coached media guest when her very first response is not to the question asked, but to thank the interviewer for inviting her on.

Third, cue the backlash: simply Google her name and dip in.

One of my favorite admissions bloggers (Jon Boeckenstedt, DePaul) followed up his initial post about Weiss with this one: Let’s agree to knock it off, already, reminding us,

In short, it reads like it was written by a 17-year old kid whose cerebral cortex is not yet fully developed. Which, I’ll remind you, is perfectly normal.

Yet, I really liked this response from Seth Taylor, who blogs as Dad Overboard, An Open Letter to my 11-Year-Old Daugher in the Hope that She Never Becomes Suzy Lee Weiss.

1)  No one in this world owes you anything.  Sure, I think you’re smart, creative, talented, and unique. I think you’re a sparkling unicorn in a world of plain ol’ ponies, and I think any Smarty-Pants college would be lucky to have you. But if you ever, ever feel entitled to something just because you really want it, think again.

And this, a bit of a poem posted by Christoper Lee-Rodriguez on his NothingIsNeverGood Tumblr:

Your rejection from opportunity
Has blinded you from the millions of opportunity
Already in front of you

Mocking applicant essays.

Penn had to let go one of their admission officers, according to The Daily Pennsylvanian, in Former admissions officer mocked applicant essays:

In the posts, which were made available through a collection of Facebook screenshots sent anonymously to Dean of Admissions Eric Furda and The Daily Pennsylvanian on Dec. 3, Foley mocked a number of student essays she had come across in her work.

. . .

In another excerpt, she quoted an essay in which an applicant had described the experience of overcoming his fear of using the bathroom outdoors while camping in the wilderness.

“Another gem,” Foley wrote of the student’s topic choice.

As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Ed, here,

Surely it’s not uncommon for admissions officers, who may read thousands of such essays, to poke some gentle fun in the privacy of a cubicle or a bar booth. However, copies of Ms. Foley’s excerpts, along with her snide comments, made it as far as the College Confidential Web site, where students find and share information about institutions they may apply to.

Which brings me to finally share a blog that could help provide a reality check for students and parents across the land. Admissions Problems offers admissions officers an online outlet to poke some gentle fun — without calling attention to specific students or mocking specific their essays. See, especially, the tagline:

NO, YOUR KID ISN’T SPECIAL AT ALL, ACTUALLY…

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