For better or for worse…: Trends in weddings change often, from locales to attire and everything in between
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- Published on Tuesday, 01 January 2013 08:38
- Written by Paul Gordon
Summer is generally considered the most popular season for weddings, with more occurring in June and July than any other month.
The weather is warm, the colors are bright, the pictures sunny and magnificent.
But no wedding of any size is put together overnight, whether it’s done by the bride and her mother and friends or by wedding planners. The real work for a wedding begins when it is cold, gray and bitter outside, often with snow covering the venues where a few months later those pictures will be taken.
January and February are often the busiest months for wedding planning and there is a good reason for that, expects will tell you.
“We are so busy right after the holidays. January is the start of the bridal booking season,” Sara O’Shea, a local wedding planner and owner of So Chic Events. “The reason is because 60 percent of all engagements happen from Thanksgiving to Christmas. So when the holidays end, we have all these new brides-to-be and they can’t wait to get started on the planning.”
“This is their big day so they want to make sure everything is perfect. Therefore, so do we,” said Lisa Ragan, local wedding planner and owner of Happily Ever After Weddings. “The sooner the planning starts, the better.”
Wedding planners? In Peoria? You bet, and there are several in the area. Once thought of a luxury only found in big cities or even in the movies, using wedding planners is definitely an upward trend in central Illinois. Then again, the wedding industry is one in which trends are important and in almost constant flux.
Using professional planners
Nobody sees that more than wedding planners and in the last two or three years using professional planners has grown substantially, O’Shea and Ragan both said. For better or for worse, they agree the industry may have been influenced at least in part by the 2003 movie “The Wedding Planner.”
“There is no question more brides are using wedding planners than ever before,” said O’Shea, who started working in the bridal industry while in college and has been a wedding planner for five years. “I think more people are getting accustomed to it. But still only 10 percent to 15 percent of all weddings are planned by professionals. People still think it is something more for the big cities or that it is too expensive.”
Ragan, who has been in business more than five years, said she is finding that more couples want to use a professional planner when they live outside the town or area where the wedding will take place. “It is much easier for a couple that lives say, in Chicago but the wedding will be in Peoria, to use a wedding planner who can take care of everything for them leading to the big day,” she said.
One of the biggest, and yet unwritten, services a wedding planner can provide is comfort, Ragan added. “We provide what we call sanity checks, or least present the persona of one. Sometimes it is also the parents who need it. This is their one big day, perhaps the biggest day of their entire life, and everything about it can be overwhelming. We ease that as much as we can,” she said.
Many items are factored into the cost of using a wedding planner and the prices weren’t something they are much willing to talk about except with a client. There are packages available that brides and grooms can peruse and decide upon and each of those packages can then be further customized.
In most cases the wedding planner will be at the bride’s side from start to finish, including on the wedding day. They can be seen attaching ribbons to church pews, fixing floral arrangements near the altar, zipping up the wedding gown or aligning the train as the bride starts down the aisle.
Wedding planners obviously work weekends. “We enjoy it or we wouldn’t do it. And seeing everything come together is so special when it makes the bride happy,” Ragan said.
From their vantage point, therefore, wedding planners see the latest trends and indeed, must stay atop of them. Those include everything from attire to colors to flowers to wedding locales.
Rustic is in as fewer seek church weddings
The good old fashioned church wedding remains the most popular choice with couples today, the planners said. But a big trend has been toward outdoor weddings or even indoor ceremonies with settings that are more common and rustic.
“Barns or old rustic, wooden buildings or areas are popular now, even when the attire is still formal. And we’re seeing a lot of growth in using vineyards for weddings, at least around here,” O’Shea said, noting that Kickapoo Creek Winery and Mackinaw Winery are among the most popular in this region, largely because they can be a one-stop shop in hosting the ceremony and the reception and doing the catering themselves.
Another popular place, she said, is The Waterhouse in downtown Peoria, a converted warehouse space. “A place like that is a neutral palette, so to speak. Couples can do glam or shabby chic and that is the type of place that is becoming popular,” O’Shea said.
Couples, she added, “are becoming more open to doing something other than a church wedding which, if there are mixing religions as more and more do these days, something other than a church offers more common ground for the families.”
Ragan said those types of settings can allow a wedding planner to be more creative but at the same time be challenging if the intention is to have the wedding and reception at the same place.
That challenge becomes bigger when couples ask her to plan their destination weddings. A destination wedding is usually in a more exotic locale, such as Hawaii or the Bahamas, where the bride and groom invite family to more or less join them not just for the wedding, but also the honeymoon.
O’Shea said destination weddings are more popular but are still a small percentage of weddings that are performed because it isn’t always easy for the families and friends to make it to the destination.
Ragan agreed but said she’ll accept a request to plan one, and she’ll go along. “I’ve done a few and have traveled to the destination. It’s work, but it’s fun,” she said.
Attire mostly formal, regardless of venue
Brides are not afraid to still wear formal gowns with long trains even for outdoor and/or rustic wedding venues, said Rachel Kress, owner of Cloud Nine Bridal Boutique and Fine Paper in Peoria.
“Outdoor weddings are amazing because the sky is the limit in terms of decor, colors, etc. They of course are also a bit tricky because of weather issues,” Kress said.
“Elegance definitely works with a rustic outdoor setting. In fact, I love it when a bride selects an off-the-charts elegant and classic gown and then mixes in pieces of vintage and rustic aspects,” she added.
Kress said her clients still want elegance “with maybe a bit of ‘pop’ to their dress. This is where adding an amazing sash or unique headpiece comes in. A gown can still be elegant and classic but with a twist of something fabulous. Trains are definitely still popular and photograph wonderfully.”
With attire remaining more formal than casual, off-white colors such as ivory or champagne are the top choices for wedding gowns, Kress said. She did acknowledge some brides are choosing gowns of darker colors but added “we still tend to stick with the traditional ivory gown in our boutique. Ivory is timeless and classic. If a bride would like to wear a colored gown, we suggest putting on a unique reception dress or rehearsal dinner dress.”
Kress said one reason she believes elegance remains the top choice of brides is because they have dreamed of it since childhood. When asked about gown styles, she said many still choose the gown of those dreams. “Most of the gowns sold in Cloud Nine are a fit-to-flare silhouette, however, many brides still want that fairy tale dress with a larger skirt. It’s something that a girl has always dreamed of, getting married in a ball gown,” she said.
When it comes to color, planners said that usually is accomplished with bridesmaids dresses or in accessories.
O’Shea said last year everything was a shade of purple, either in the dresses or accessories. “I’ve noticed lately the colors are more neutral while in the previous few years there was more boldness,” she said.
One growing trend Kress noticed with her clients at Cloud Nine is in the styles of bridesmaids dresses. “It’s an even split between bridesmaids wearing the same style and then those that wear different styles but the same color. That is definitely becoming a trend and I foresee it staying as a trend for many years to come,” she said.
Kress, who started Cloud Nine to give brides the kind of experience she found only in Chicago or St. Louis when planning her own wedding — including starting appointments with a glass of champagne — said prices of gowns vary with design and designer, but mostly with the material used and the labor that goes into making the gown.
“Yes, gowns are priced by the fabrics used, location where the dress is made and by designer. Most of our gowns are made here, in the USA, and are hand-made. This requires a lot of physical labor and the fabrics used are all imported from Europe. To me, there is something special about having your bridal gown, the most important piece of clothing you’ll ever wear, made by hand in the USA,” she said.
Accessories a place for color
Accessories and flowers are often the tools used for adding color to a ceremony, said Valeri Wilson, senior floral designer at LeFleur in Washington. “We see a lot of bold colors and textures, deep and dramatic, whether its in garden style or whimsical bouquets,” she said.
Some brides like to add bling or feathers or broaches to add color, often having those items incorporated into their floral arrangements, Wilson said. “Elegance is coming back in flowers. I like that because I can be more creative with my styling,” she said.
Brides also are asking more for variety in floral arrangements for receptions, including centerpieces on the tables, said Lynnette Hacker, owner of Georgette’s Flowers in Peoria.
“We give them at least three different arrangements that way, which I love because we can be creative and it isn’t cookie-cutter,” she said.
To find inspiration for what they want, more brides are turning to the fairly new website Pinterest, which is an online pin board of varied interests that enables its members to share ideas, O’Shea said.
“Pinterest has changed our industry considerably,” she said. “It has become more or less an inspiration board for brides to be. They read it like they used to read the bride magazines to get ideas on everything,” she said.
With each client she will start a Pinterest board and she and the client can share ideas by pinning things they see or read on the Internet to that board. “They can see my ideas and I can see theirs and that can save a lot of time and headache,” she said.
Kress at Cloud Nine said magazines and the Internet have made a difference in her business, as well — to a degree, at least.
“Brides typically have flipped through magazines or have looked on the internet, but until a bride physically tries a dress on, anything can happen. Most of the time, when a bride selects her gown, it is something that she never thought to try on. That is the best part of our job,” she said.
