Thursday, August 12, 2010

“Down the Aisle With the Help of Pocket Wedding Planners - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette” plus 2 more

“Down the Aisle With the Help of Pocket Wedding Planners - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette” plus 2 more

Down the Aisle With the Help of Pocket Wedding Planners - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Posted: 11 Aug 2010 10:55 PM PDT

Wedding planners are great for couples who have the money to hire a professional.

Those with more modest budgets can only hope to come up with 50 or 150 free hours to take care of things themselves, and pray the resulting stress doesn't yield recriminations all honeymoon long.

Mobile apps like Brides Wedding Genius (free, for Apple devices), iWedding Deluxe ($10, for Apple devices) and Wedding Plan-It ($3, for Android) won't make professional wedding planners fear for their paychecks. But owners of smartphones, iPads and iPods will find that one of these apps will substantially reduce wedding stress, and maybe even save a few bucks as well.

Brides Wedding Genius, which will be introduced Thursday, is the newest member of this lineup, and in many ways it is the most promising, given its pedigree. Brides magazine has covered the wedding industry since 1934, and it is published by Condé Nast, which has a good track record in mobile apps (Epicurious and Wired magazine's iPad app are among them).

The Wedding Genius does fairly well in balancing comprehensiveness and simplicity. It is nicely laid out and easy on the eye, with magazine-quality photos throughout.

The "Guides" section features ideas for gowns and bridesmaids' dresses, jewelry and travel. Users can touch a button and store their favorite ideas in an "Inspiration Folder," which can also store photos from other sources.

Although I was married in the era before smartphones, I could easily imagine my wife using this app to flick through dress ideas while she waited in line at the bank or the grocery.

The app's best feature is a Task Tracker that, for an extra $3, presents couples with a planning calendar based on their wedding date, and a fairly easy way to e-mail tasks, ideas and status updates to others, and allow them to update their progress. Four months before the wedding, the app suggests completing a plan for the rehearsal dinner; one week before, the app suggests the bride break in her shoes, and so on.

Unlike many other apps, Wedding Genius offers tips for each task. (Scuff shoe soles with sandpaper, for instance, or choose flowers that won't wilt quickly in the wedding's expected weather conditions.)

Wedding Genius was built in conjunction with NearbyNow, a company that offers business and entertainment suggestions based on location, and NearbyNow's participation in this app gives it an advantage. Where other apps set a deadline for buying the dress, Wedding Genius can offer a list of suggested vendors that carry a featured dress, and help users reserve the dress at a nearby store and make an appointment to try it on.

Wedding Genius will also help users find jewelers for featured items, and it says that in the future, it expects to suggest vendors in other categories as well.

Thankfully, the app doesn't assume that couples will plan their weddings exclusively on their phones. The Digital Wedding Binder feature includes a personalized page on Bridesweddinggenius.com that lets users sync the app's data and share tasks and news with whomever they choose.

There is one caveat. I tested Wedding Genius on a device the company provided, before it appeared in the App Store. The software was slow when I tried it -- a problem I attributed to its not-ready-for-prime-time status. But people leery about adopting something that's not tried and true might want to wait a week to see if the iTunes reviewers unearth flaws worth fixing in an update.

IWedding Deluxe ($10 for Apple devices), another iPhone planner, while good, offers fewer features than Brides Wedding Genius.

Brides Wedding Genius is unabashedly pitched at brides, while iWedding Deluxe is more inclusive. Open the app and it asks for the user's gender and the gender of the betrothed. It then asks for a budget and wedding date.

From there, users can opt for a highly detailed planner, or a more basic approach. The app can provide cost estimates, or users may enter them. Unlike Wedding Genius, though, iWedding offers no guidance in choosing vendors.

Android users have no option quite as refined as Wedding Genius, but Wedding PlanIt is still fairly good. The app lets users populate a guest list with contacts from the phone, and post photos linked to a wedding vendor, among other things. Whether users will want to track the guest list on a phone, instead of on a bigger Web page, as with Wedding Genius, is another question.

Android users who want to spend less -- as in, nothing -- will still find something worthwhile. Wedding PlanIt has a free version that has the same features of the paid alternative but with ads, while Wedding Countdown, another free app, is a down-to-the-second countdown to marital bliss.

BlackBerry, as usual, has many fewer options. Wedding Organizer ($3), which made its debut in late May, is at least comparable to Wedding PlanIt in that it offers 17 categories of tasks and suggestions for prioritizing their completion.

The app is less elegantly designed than, say, the Brides Wedding Genius, and the photography is decidedly less impressive. And the app has no user reviews to help avoid possible hiccups.But given the dearth of choice for BlackBerry users, it should be a welcome option.

Of course, some people may find that no amount of technological help, mobile or not, will alleviate the stress of planning a wedding.

Unfortunately -- unbelievably -- no app yet exists to help guide couples through a pleasurable and stress-free elopement.

I'd give it a week.

Quick Calls

Android, iPhone and iPod Touch users can use the new Vonage Mobile app to make free calls to Facebook friends who also have the app. The service works over Wi-Fi and cellular networks, and the app need not be active to receive calls. ... MeetMoi Now, a free new Android app, tracks your location and the location of other singles who use the app, and sends you a message when you're within a mile of one another. (Like Vonage Mobile, meetMoi Now also runs in the background.)

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

First published on August 12, 2010 at 2:00 am

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Your Summer wedding in St. Louis: Tips for staying cool, beautiful and feeling like a princess - Examiner

Posted: 06 Aug 2010 04:27 PM PDT

When planning a Summer wedding, one of the biggest challenges is to look and feel beautiful despite the horrible heat and humidity in St. Louis.

After you spent so much time picking out the perfect wedding gown, the most beautiful jewelry and experimenting with how to wear your hair, the last thing you want on your wedding day is to feel like a smeared, sticky, sweaty mess. 

While extreme temperatures present challenges, you can still have a beautiful day using the following tips and a little careful planning:

  • Go light on the makeup. Heavy makeup is more likely to smear as the day heats up. Tinted moisturizer and colored lip gloss can add color to your face, without caking on lots of creamy foundation.
  • If you like the look, wear your hair up in a sleek style, to avoid frizz. For flowing hairstyles, make sure you wash and condition with anti-humidity products and use a firm hold hair spray. A hair straightening gel can also help keep the frizz at bay.
  • Wrap the stems of your bouquet with a paper towel. This will help your hands stay dry and also give you an emergency quick fix if you need to gently dab your forehead or face.
  • Bring along a hand held, battery operated fan, so that if you're taking pictures outside or even just climbing into a hot car on the way to the reception, you can keep your face cool until you're able to enjoy air conditioning.
  • Keep a few small sponges in a Ziploc bag and a sample size deodorant in your purse. Sponges can be used to dab wetness from your underarms or chest, so that you don't run the risk of having tissue residue on your skin.
  • Keep a small bottle of talcum powder on hand. Sprinkling a little powder under the waistband of your panty hose or into your shoes, can give you a reprieve from feeling sticky.
  • Place a small overnight bag in the ladies' restroom at your reception hall. If you are warm from dancing or greeting the crowd, a quick shot from the cool feature on your blow dryer can ward off wet hair around your neck and set your makeup as well.
  • Stock up on over the counter migraine pills, Excedrin and Ibuprofen to ward off any heat-related headaches that may threaten to ruin your day. In addition, be sure to eat at least small, protein-rich snacks throughout the day and drink plenty of water.


St. Louis Target stores carry a good selection of anti-humidity hair products such as the John Frieda brand, as well as sample size deodorants. You can also pick up a small hair dryer, sponges and Ziploc bags while you're there.

For a wonderful way to keep your makeup looking set, without adding the pore-enlarging effect of powder, try Evercolor Poreless Face Defender by Mally Beauty.

With a little extra initiative and making sure your schedule isn't too rushed, you can have a beautiful wedding, even in the midst of the Summer heat. 

 

 

If you would like tips for making all your special occasions memorable, please subscribe for free to the St. Louis Special Occasions Examiner.

 

  


 

  

 

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(photo source: Morguefile.com)

 

 

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Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky wedding details -- could the price tag be $5 million - Examiner

Posted: 07 Aug 2010 09:48 PM PDT

Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton will be getting married this weekend in Rinebeck, New York to her fiance' Marc Mezvinsky.

As one of the most popular people to grow up in the White House, details surrounding the ceremony are bound to be on everyone's minds. Wedding planners have estimated that the nuptials could cost as much as $5 million, according to the New York Daily News.

Some of the details being reported by the new and wires services about the event are:

$750,000 for catering, $11,000 for the cake, $250,000 for the bride's jewelry, air-conditioned tents, complete with glass walls -- estimated rental cost, $600, 000, a half a million in flowers well as wine as a party favor from Clinton Vineyards (which has no relation to the presidential family).

Security is naturally tight, where the bride's parents, former President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton have been to have beefed up protection for the weekend. The Federal Aviation Administration has issued a no-fly zone over the area from 3 p.m. Saturday to 3:30 a.m. Sunday as an extra precaution. 

Details surrounding which dress Chelsea has chosen, but it looks like famed designer Vera Wang, will be the chosen dress for the bride to be, Appearing on TODAY Wednesday, WWD writer Rosemary Feitelberg said that it looks like Wang will be the chosen designer for the wedding of the century.

"All signs seem to point to Vera [Wang] at this point, and we've also been told she's doing the bridesmaids' dresses and the flower girls' dresses," Women's Wear Daily writer Rosemary Feitelberg said in a "Today Show"appearance this week regarding the wedding.

Chelsea met Marc over 14 years ago and the couple attended Stanford University together.  The pair announced their engagement in November.

Stay tuned for more details and reports as they come in.

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