Spring is a time of rebirth and renewal – a perfect time for the new adventure that a marriage brings. Yet in the race for most popular time of year to get married, spring is a distant third place behind summer and autumn. This is good news if you’re planning a spring wedding, as more top-notch vendors will be available, and you may be able to get discounted rates, especially on sites and travel.

If you’re considering a spring wedding, start off by thinking about your favorite parts of the season. Is it crocuses poking up through snow? Perhaps you’ll want to have a wedding early in the season, and offer the respite of floral abundance and warmth when guests come in from the cold. If it’s the emerging sunshine, choose bright colors and May weather. Here are some ideas to get you started on planning your spring wedding:

When to Have a Spring Wedding:
If you’re getting married in a church, talk to them about their Easter decorations.

You may be able to save money by using theirs. Vendors and sites may be more available in the spring than in the summer, but remember prom; you may need to book limousines and tuxedos extra early.

Spring Wedding Dresses:
Most wedding dresses seem made for a spring wedding. Wedding magazines are full of large skirts that may be too warm for the summer, and sleeveless tops that may be too cold for winter. Look for a versatile dress that can be paired with a wrap if you’re chilly, yet is still light and airy.

Many more brides these days are opting for a hint of color in their wedding dresses – be it a baby blue sash, an allover hint of pink, or light colorful embroidery. These touches will look perfect at a spring wedding.

Attire for the Wedding Party:
When dressing for a spring wedding, keep in mind that the weather can be dodgy. You may have 70 degrees and sunshine, or you may end up with a damp, chilly day. Choose dresses with sleeves on them, give your bridesmaids wraps to wear as their bridesmaid gift, or go for a vintage look with cardigan sweaters.

Spring weddings are full of the classic (and sometimes dreaded) pastel bridesmaid dress. Make things easier on your bridesmaids by allowing them to choose the color or cut of their dress, and you’ll hear far fewer complaints. Or go in a different direction with turquoise or lime green dresses, accompanied by pink bouquets. For a daytime wedding, men look dapper in tan suits, a colored shirts and coordinating ties.

Because of April showers, avoid putting your wedding party in satin shoes, and consider buying them matching large umbrellas, just in case. Don’t worry if it rains; there’s something so romantic about a bride and groom under a big black umbrella, shining and smiling in love.

Spring Wedding Menu Ideas:
Celebrate spring in your menu with fresh young vegetables such as baby carrots, baby asparagus (or regular asparagus), new potatoes, sugar snap peas, and haricots verts. Gently evoke Easter with a chocolate cake with coconut icing. You could also opt for carrot cake with a cream cheese icing. Strawberries, rhubarb, and apricots are delicious at this time of year, and mangos and pomegranates may work as well. Try phyllo dough cups with mousse or custard topped with strawberries.

Decorations:
The preppy pink and green color combination couldn’t be more spring-like, and is perfect for a beautiful, fresh spring wedding. Accent your tables with polka-dot or gingham fabrics and ribbons, and use alternating pink and green chair colors. For a more elegant look, combine celadon green with white, using silver as an accent color. If you’re having an outdoor wedding and a fair amount of children, a may pole does double duty as entertainment and elegant decoration. Instead of rice, consider asking your guests to throw rose petals, or release butterflies.

Spring Wedding Flowers:
Flowers in season include roses, tulips, hyacinth, lilies and Gerber daisies. Multi-colored calla lilies are very popular and look beautiful in a spring arrangement. Combine a dozen with lemon leaf or maiden hair, or create a simple hand tied nosegay.

For centerpieces, subtly evoke the Easter season by using white baskets filled with oasis floral form and an abundance of spring flowers. An inexpensive centerpiece for a garden wedding is a terracotta pot with a spring-moss or ivy covered Styrofoam ball affixed to it. Add small candles around it and/or some rose petals.

Consider tying your bouquet with polka-dot or striped ribbon in a bright or pastel color, adding a bit of unexpected pattern and freshness.

Spring Wedding Favors:
Give favors of seed packets or bulbs, with thanks for supporting the growth of your love. Consider giving birdhouses – you can usually find these inexpensively at a dollar store or craft store. Around Easter, send your guests home with a chocolate Easter bunny, a ceramic Easter egg, or a birds nests (either from the craft store or made from chocolate and/or coconut) filled with robin’s egg candies.

From Nina Callaway

If you and your fiancé haven’t yet chosen a date to wed, then consider the upcoming holidays for your nuptials. Your “to do” list seems ever-growing with Christmas parties to attend and gifts to purchase, so the Holiday Season may not seem like the ideal time for you to plan your wedding.

On the contrary… you should take advantage of this special time. The first reason is that more of your family members are likely to attend. Chances are you were going to spend a few days with them anyway. People have already asked for time off from work, so the extra day or two isn’t going to hurt them financially. They were probably already planning on giving you a gift, so maybe it will actually be something you have on your registry or a practical item that you need to start your new life together as husband and wife.

Another great reason is that the decorations are already intact. What a beautiful time of year – with festive lights; romantic red and green colors; poinsettias; and lovely music. If you use the decorations that are already in place instead of spending hundreds of extra dollars on lavish “wedding décor”, your wedding budget will be drastically reduced. Aside from that, your yearly anniversary will bring back charming memories of the holiday season.

Fancy gowns and cocktail dresses are plentiful at nice department stores for easy choices for the bridesmaids. Men will already be buying suits to dress for special events. You won’t have to worry about fittings or finding just the right outfit to wear.

Photographically-speaking, the holidays always provide dramatic images that stand out. The Christmas lights really pop off the picture. People’s faces always look happy. Indeed, the holidays are a magical time of year. Many will look forward to your wedding as another excuse to deviate from their diets or to meet up with friends they haven’t seen for awhile.

Plenty of reception facilities offer discounts for off-nights. Saturdays are always the most expensive. Consider a Friday or Sunday. Or the week after Christmas when many people already have time off from work and school. What a perfect excuse to keep the party going for an extra week. Your wedding day… and it could be coming right up!

If you think it’s just too soon to plan such a big event, just remember some of the most fun you’ve had in your life were the events which were spontaneous.

By Anne Violette, a freelance writer and professional

In the movies, everyone seems to get married in June. But a winter wedding can be terribly glamorous, cinematic and magical. With the right elements, your winter wedding will be a wonderland.

Attire for Your Winter Wedding
Think about you and your sweetie in the elegant look of old Hollywood; the groom in tails, and the bride in a white long silk dress with a white fur or faux fur wrap. Evoke the season with “ice” –diamond or diamond-like jewelry. 90% of wedding dresses are strapless or sleeveless, but that’s not so practical for a bride who wants to take pictures outside, or needs to walk any distance. Look for wraps, shrugs, and capes, or dramatic coats. I’ve always loved the look of a bride in a white dress and a large red shawl, huddled against her groom who has a red boutonnière.

And don’t forget your bridesmaids! An attractive wrap to wear on the day of your wedding and beyond makes a great bridesmaid present.

Where to Have a Winter Wedding
Look for an inn with a fireplace for an intimate winter wedding. For a larger affair, you may be able to use a historic mansion or private club that will still have intimate warmth. Unless you’re getting married in a state that will have guaranteed snow during your wedding date, avoid a room that has a large picture window. You may imagine drifts of beautiful snow, and end up with a grey rainy day. Be sure to ask what seasonal decorations they use – you’ll save money as many sites are already heavily decorated. Also, check to make sure your site will be adequately heated during the winter months; old churches can be especially drafty.

Planning the Menu
You can have all of your favorite food but add some winter touches like a squash dish, or warm pumpkin soup. Consider serving eggnog, spiced wine, or hot chocolate (alcoholic or non-) as special treats. Look for an all-white cake, decorated with snowflake patterns, silver embellishments, or sugar sculptures. Ask your caterer about using a decorative snow globe as a cake topper

Winter Wedding Flowers
Decide whether you want to go for a silver and white elegant look, or celebrate the season with reds and greens. For those who like silver, look for dusty miller, silver-dollar eucalyptus, and baby blue eucalyptus, mixed with white flowers such as roses, football mums, crocus, lilies and stephanotis. If you’re looking for a brighter bouquet, consider red roses with holly and pine-tree greenery. In season flowers such as tulips, roses, and ornamental berries generally will be less expensive choices. (Talk to your florist, as your region may have different availability)

The Décor for Your Winter Wedding
Decorate your tables with simple and inexpensive white poinsettias, or fill the room with light by arranging pillar candles on a bed of pine branches At the after-Christmas sales, stock up on strands of small white lights, then string them decoratively around doorways, over tables and on archways. Bright red cranberries in a bowl surrounding floating candles make an easy and inexpensive centerpiece. Look at this article for other simple holiday centerpieces.. Or, decorate a pre-made gingerbread house for each table, and center it on a bed of greenery with candles around it.

Favors
If you and most of your guests celebrate Christmas, an ornament makes a perfect favor. An inexpensive homemade favor is a pretty tin of spiced hot chocolate mix or hot cocoa mix with marshmallows. Also consider a snow globe, with a bride and groom inside, or a holiday cookie cutter with a cookie recipe attached that says your names, wedding date, and “truly cut out for each other”.

Special touches

• Have the bride and groom travel by horse and carriage to the reception, complete with a fur throw to keep them warm of course!
• Decorate the reception with miniature and life-size Christmas trees.
• Commission an ice sculpture to decorate the reception hall
• Use a crystal bouquet for that extra wintery feel. As a bonus, you’ll get to keep your your bouquet forever.
• Greet your guests with warm coffee or hot chocolate as soon as they come in the ceremony or reception site.

From Nina Callaway

When planning a destination wedding, a lot of ambiance is communicated through the selection of favors. Later, these same mementos serve to remind the guests of the fun and splendor of the reception. Favors can do more than just communicate gratitude – in many ways, they are the souvenir of the reception, the reminder given to guests to commemorate their time at your festivities. As such, the favor assumes a special importance, and should be selected with consideration and care by the bride and wedding planner alike.

But that’s not to say the favors can’t be fun, either. Recently, I attended a reception in which the happy couple gave away coffee and tea as favors, as part of their Victorian-themed wedding. The beverages were tastefully packaged in small boxes and tied with ribbon, equivalent to the kind found in the best luxury hotels. The message they wanted to convey with the favor was simple, the groom told me later: we thank you for your time tonight, he said. Tomorrow morning, please allow the moment of good taste and relaxation found with these English-influenced beverages to bring you a moment of sophistication before starting your journey home. The gift was simple, elegant, and not at all expensive per unit, he explained, but the enjoyment afforded was momentous.

Similarly, some couples headed for tropical honeymoons have given small pouches of cocktail mixes as favors. These single-serving mixers offered the basic ingredients for margaritas, cosmopolitans, and pina coladas to each guest, to evoke the couples’ destination. In a way, the bride said, the guests could join them for a drink at their getaway, at least “in spirit.” While the pouches did not include alcohol, they still brought to mind the excitement and romance of leisurely cocktails sipped in exotic destinations.

Finally, destination wedding favors can also reinforce the design motif. When holding an Asian-themed wedding, for example, having tiny mint tins or tea bags personalized for each guest gives a touch of Eastern hospitality while accenting the reception’s central theme. They, too, are inexpensive and can be purchased in bulk quantities to reduce cost.

My Wedding Favors.com has a complete selection of the items described above, with personalization available on some items. Their complete list of products can be found on their website.