Wedding Checklist

Planning your wedding can be complicated.  To streamline the process for you, we have included this easy to use planning checklist.  To make it even easier, you can log into your free Kiss the Bride account and check off your list and save it online.  Everything is right there at your fingertips… login here http://kissthebride.com.au/Couples/LogIn/

There are 73 steps in our list.  It seems a lot… but your wedding day is an important day you don’t want to leave anything to chance.   Kiss the Bride also has a seating planner and a budgeting planner than can assist you plan your wedding.  All these tools are conveniently located in your free account…

Have we missed something?  Or maybe you have a suggestion??  Leave your thoughts in the comments box below…

Getting Engaged
1.  Announce your engagement and engagement party.
2.  Decide on a wedding budget.
3.  Decide on your wedding destination, will it be close to home or elsewhere.
4.  Decide on your wedding date.
5.  Book your wedding planner if you intend to use one.

When you have set a Wedding date…
6.  Choose and book a venue for your ceremony and reception.
7.  Choose your bridesmaids and groomsmen.
8.  Start searching for your wedding dress and bridesmaid dresses.
9.  Book photographer and videographer.
10.  Start choosing wedding invitations.
11.  Get some quotes for wedding cars.
12.  Start thinking about your guest list. (more…)

What are Your Married Name Options?

It’s not always easy for know what your legal options are for your new name after you are married. There can be conflicting information from different companies and not all companies have the same requirements. The supporting documents you will need provide will depend on what you chose for you new name. We’ve summarized the five options you have for your new name after marriage, and what documentation you would typically need as evidence of your new name.

1. Swap your surname with your spouse’s surname

It may comes as a surprise that 85% of women still chose to take their husband’s name with the majority dropping their maiden name altogether. Companies will accept your Australian marriage certificate as evidence of your new name.

2. Take a double barrelled surname

A double barrelled surname is using both your surname and your husband’s surname together. Traditionally the husband’s name would appear last, but you can arrange it in any order or according to what sounds best.

While the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages may ask you to register a double barrelled surname via an official change of name, you will find most companies will be happy to change your documentation over using just your full marriage certificate, including the passport office. They will let you space or hyphenate your new double barrelled surname, and you can then use this documentation to change over subsequent accounts.

3. Use both your maiden name and married name

If you have a reputation within your industry you may decide to retain your maiden name at work while changing over your personal documentation into your new name. This is entirely legal and becoming more common. You would simply use your marriage certificate to change your personal identification and accounts into your new name, and leave any accounts relating to your work unchanged. It is important that your ID is under the one name, so ensure your passport, driver’s license, Medicare and insurance policies are consistent.

4. Take a different name entirely

An emerging trend is the surname mashup, where part of each partners name is combined into a new name. Or you may decide to take a new name altogether. Both scenarios require a legal name change. This process is handled via the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages in your home state. You may find it easier for the husband to change his name before the wedding, then the bride can assume his new surname after marriage

5. Leave your name as it currently is and take no action.

Once you know what name you will take, the next step is to notify all the companies where you have an account or membership. If you only have a few companies to notify you can call each company and ask their procedure and if they have a name change request form. For the busy bride with 6 or more companies to notify a name change kit may be more suitable.

Name change kits in their basic form are guides with step by step instructions on how to change your name and they usually include a checklist, name change template and some custom forms.

One of the more recent products on the market is a personalised, online name change kit from www.easynamechange.com.au. The site is simple to use; log in and select all the organisations where you have an account or membership, then for $25 your customised name change pack is emailed to you. All you really need to do is sign, add supporting documents where indicated and post.

Other name change kits typically cost $10 and provide you with the instructions and most common government forms so you can manage the process yourself. The basic kits are great for those on a budget or where five companies or less need to be updated.

There is no timeframe where you have to change your name.

For the super organised this can take place a few weeks after the honeymoon, but most brides take a few months to transition over to a new name. For the more unorganised you can take comfort in the fact that some brides we know have taken eight years to change their name.

Written by Genevieve Dennis,Founder, Easy Name Change
www.easynamechange.com.au

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20% discount for Kiss the Bride members. Simply enter coupon code KTB20 on registration and receive a $24.95 personalised kit for just $19.95

Kiss the Bride Wedding Directory

Skinny ties are back in!

Last fashionable in the late 70’s and early 80’s the skinny tie is back in! Think Reservoir Dogs and the ska revival era – thin black ties with black suits and white shirts. Ska record company “2 Tone” used this look to great effect as their record label logo.

We are starting to see mainstream designers moving towards thinner ties on the catwalks and now in the shops. Thankfully thin jacket lapels are still in the fashion closet but thin ties are definitely back in vogue.

Thin ties are defined as between 4.5cm – 7cm width at the tie’s widest point and can be made from any material. Fashionable in the past were leather and tweed but now the trend is plain colours in satin. Black satin is popular and for a retro look the tie should be tied loosely at the neck with the top button undone. Leonardo Di Caprio was seen recently looking smoldering at the Golden Globe Awards wearing a thin black satin tie, white shirt with a black tuxedo.

Thin ties have one certain advantage apart from their cutting edge look. A thin tie creates the illusion of length so they suit taller men but also have the advantage of making shorter men look taller. They can be worn with a suit, a casual jacket, a vest or even a cardigan. And they look great simply tied loosely with a plain white shirt.

There will be many men who can go searching through their wardrobes for a crusty, black or red leather 4.5cm tie that somehow avoided a trip to the tip, or to really embrace the trend get out and buy a new satin silk thin tie.

Marc Corley http://www.pernac.com/english.html

Kiss the Bride Wedding Directory

Making your wedding last a lifetime.

Before we proceed, let’s get one thing straight.

I am not going to try to tell you how to make your marriage lasts a lifetime.

Perhaps watching a few episodes of Dr. Phill or maybe a visit to your local marriage guidance counsellor might help you in that area, although, I suspect that it’s really a matter of choosing the right person to marry in the first place and then working very hard to make sure that life’s little corrugations don’t rattle loose the nuts and bolts that hold your relationship together.

As a photographer who has been covering weddings for over 25 years, what I can help you with is a few suggestions on how to make sure that you and your family get the most out of those sentimentally precious and often rather expensive images of your wedding day.

Let’s start from the beginning and look at some of the pros and cons that apply to the different media on which you may choose to have your big day recorded.

The first choice for many couples is “should we have still photography or video or both?”

To answer this question let’s look at what’s going to happen to those images over the coming years.

Still photographs can be pasted into an album, made into a coffee table book or enlarged and framed for permanent display on the walls of your house or your office at work.

On the other hand, there is basically only one way that you can view a video, and generally speaking, this has to be done actively (you put the video on, sit down and watch it), whereas a framed photograph hung on a wall is permanently there for all to see and is viewed passively (without any real effort required) whenever you happen to look in it’s direction.

How many times over the next 20 years are you likely to take the time to sit and watch your wedding video?

Compare this to the number of times that you are likely to get that warm fuzzy feeling from glancing at the still photos decorating the walls of your home as you walk down the hall or enter your lounge room?

You can further increase the value you get from your photos by adding them to the My Pictures folder on your computer and then setting your screen saver to run a slideshow of the images in that folder whenever the computer is inactive.

Another factor worth considering is the likelihood of loss or damage and this possibility applies to both your wedding album and the tape or disks containing your wedding video.

You move house, you have kids, you move house again, you renovate, you move house again!

This sums up the progress of the average relationship over 20 years, but some couples manage to cram it all into about the first five or six.

What happens to the things that were in the bottom drawer of the entertainment unit you used to have at the beginning of this process?

If you’re anything like me then the answer is probably “How the hell would I know!” but I do know where the photos that were hanging on the walls of the hallway in our first house are. We decided they looked better in the study of the new house so that’s where they are now. I still get a buzz from how beautiful my wife looks in the shot of her and her bridesmaids coming down the hill to the ceremony.

I think our wedding album is at the in-law’s and the video is in the back of the cabinet with all the other videos that nobody has watched for the last five years. Now that I think of it, they need to be transferred onto DVDs urgently before the last V.C.R. becomes a museum piece.

Despite having the best intentions I have to admit that, like most of us, I have a very busy life and little, personal things have a way of getting pushed into dusty corners to be forgotten or, worse still, slipping through the cracks and disappearing all together.

Wedding albums, video tapes, Photo Discs and DVDs all need protection from their natural enemies. Things like silver fish, moths, mould and moisture will try to destroy your wedding album while you’re not looking so store it carefully in a cool dry place with a moth ball or two for company.

Heat and magnetic fields generated by electrical equipment will slowly degrade video tape even if it doesn’t get chewed by a dodgy V.C.R. and we all know what a little carelessness can do to a DVD so make back up copies and keep them safely tucked away with your important documents or better still at a trustworthy relatives house. If you are unfortunate enough to suffer a house fire or flood at least you won’t have lost the records of your wedding!

I am starting to sound rather pessimistic here but these things do happen to an alarmingly high percentage of us and it makes good sense to insure against such disasters as well as one can.

Framed prints will fade if they are exposed to direct sunlight and are as vulnerable to moisture damage as any other paper based product so put some careful thought into choosing the right hanging location and use a good professional “preservation” framing service to avoid any of the problems that can arise when the wrong materials and adhesives are used in the process.

If you can comfortably afford both video and still photography at your wedding then you don’t have a problem here. You will have the luxury of both forms of recorded media and the security of knowing that if you don’t like the way you look in your still photos at least you will be able to have some fun watching yourself on the video.

If you have to choose one over the other, I would strongly recommend using a professional for your still photography and encouraging your friends and relatives to bring along their digital video cameras.

I would also suggest that you spend at least as much on having your favourite photos enlarged and framed as you do on the album. These are the Images that will decorate your home and be a daily reminder of your wedding and the commitment you and your partner share with each other.

After the first year or two the album will probably spend most of it’s life gathering dust on one of your book shelves and be lucky if it sees the light of day once a year.

As well as being a photographer I am also a photo restorer and I do quite a lot of work restoring wedding photos that have graced the walls of local family’s houses for a century or more.

I am even a little jealous of people who have such lovely reminders of their family history as I have only a few snap shots of my maternal grandmother and no record at all of any of my other grandparents.

It is worth considering the fact that a well framed wedding photo will not only give you a great deal of daily pleasure over many years but to future generations it really can become a treasured family heirloom.

In my next article I’ll take a look at how to choose a photographer and whether that photographer should be using digital or traditional film cameras.

An article by Nick Jenkin

Photographer: Servicing Geelong, Western Victoria & The Great Ocean Road.

To view some of my work or obtain my contact details go to: www.clicknick.com.au

Kiss the Bride Wedding Directory