Engagement

BEST WEDDING PLANNING BOOKS! We cooked up a good one…

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Our recommendations for the best wedding books are not traditional. They’re more about keeping you and your partner in crime on the same page. (Page! Get it? hah!) You’ve got to stay in close emotional touch with the person you’re marrying!  Here’s a book to help you do just that.

How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman is designed to get you into the kitchen – together!  Mark, longtime food writer for the New York Times and Gourmet Magazine explains ingredients, techniques and cooking terms in no-nonsense language.   Time in the kitchen is an ideal way to remember how much you love to be together without worrying about place cards and ceremony details. Pick a dish and create something delicious together.

Be well, and love well.

-Dinah

Related articles

The language of wedding planning for gay couples: bride and groom?

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Congratulations to all who got engaged on New Year’s Eve! All over the country there are happy couples now planning weddings that were a mere twinkle in the eye (or jewelry box) a week ago. For so long it’s been a transition from happy pair to bride and groom.  But with the dawn of marriage equality, (cue the heavenly chorus) people of all orientations are popping the question, and the old language just doesn’t fit. So we in the wedding industry need to be conscious.  So much marketing is aimed at “brides,” it can be exclusionary.  We want to be open and helpful to wedding planning for gay couples, too. So I’ve come up with a new term to use in the blog: “to-be-weds.”  Applicable to any couple or individual, it invokes the excitement of the wedding, and the special status of the celebrant.  I don’t think I can cut out “bride” entirely, but my New Year’s resolution is to try and be as inclusive as possible as we move forward in 2014.

Jerry & David - such a happy couple!
Jerry & David – such a happy couple!

You can help!  Are you a My Little Flower Shop newlywed? Send us your wedding photographs for use on our website and blog!  We love all photographs, but are especially building our collection of same sex weddings. All the photographs, regardless of the content, help inspire wedding planning for gay couples all across the country, and the world.

Happy New Year to all, to-be-weds, newlyweds, and all readers.

Live well, and love well.

Dinah

Holiday Proposals!

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Did you know that a large number of engagements happen during the holidays? The majority happen between now and Valentine’s Day. I’m not sure which came first, the romantic holiday ideas or the jewelry industry push, but you will see diamond commercials galore, romantic comedies about girls getting engaged, it’s enough to make a girl waiting for a ring go out of her mind.

So what if your guy wants to wait until spring? (As mine did) well, all you can do is grit your teeth, and wait out the marketing blitz. And I recommend skipping the rom com – our year it was Amy Adams in Leap Year- my husband still has not forgiven me. Enjoy your courtship, and have faith. Diamonds will come when they will come.

Be well and love well.

-Dinah