It is often the little touches that make weddings and other special events memorable for the guests. Sometimes it is the use of color or the activities, but sometimes it can be the little things like the place card holders. They don’t see to be very important, but they can make a difference as to how a table looks and what people remember about the place settings. If you can find something really remarkable, people won’t be soon to forget, and they may even take some of your ideas and use them for their own events later on down the road.

Place card holders are used to show each guest where they are seated. They can be very simple, or they can be a special touch. That might be up to the budget, as having special place card holders will add money to the expense of any event. These are things that can be purchased in the required number, or they can be made. If you can find what you need in a store, there is no need to go to a lot of trouble. However, if you want something really cool, you may have to put some thought and time into it.

Some like to get place card holders that people can take home with them. These are often little frames that can hold the card inside. The frame can then be used again for whatever the guest may want. Some come with little clips for the cards, and they may be things like butterflies, smilie faces, or any other type of popular party or wedding theme. In some cases, you may have to tell your guests that these are for them, as most won’t think they can take them home.

If you want to make your own place card holders, you can get really creative. If you know someone who makes candles, ask them if they can make candles with the place cards right the candle. They would be visible under a thin layer of wax, and could be taken home. If you are having a winter wedding, you could get Styrofoam balls. They can be sprayed with sparkling white snow from a can, and then you can put a slit in the side of each one to hold the card in place. When you use your imagination, you can think of unique place card holders that your guests will never forget.

Planning a wedding can be a monumental undertaking. There are just so many small details to tend to including choosing a dress, picking a florist and ensuring you choose a venue that will accommodate all your friends and family. In addition, you need to decide on a dinner menu, and where everyone will be seated. The seating arrangements can actually be incredibly stressful because you want to be certain that everyone knows where their assigned seat is. An easy and inexpensive way to do this is with place card holders. You can purchase them in many different styles, so you’re certain to find one that fits in with the theme of your wedding.

Elegant, evening weddings are increasing in popularity. Getting married outside at dusk can be incredibly romantic. The reception for a celebration like this typically includes a late dinner. Using silver place card holders on white tablecloths with silver trimmed dinnerware would look beautiful. If you are concerned with the cost of genuine silver place card holders consider using silver plated ones. These are just as striking to look at and much easier on the budget.

If your marriage is planned for the afternoon at a friend’s home, you’ll want to forego the silver holders for something more casual. Plastic colored place card holders work well in this instance. If your wedding colors are blue and white, choose holders that are a slightly different blue than the attendant’s dresses. If you’ve opted for a barbeque or picnic, consider using folded cardstock paper to indicate where people should sit. This may seem too informal, but you really do want the accessories to match the tone of the wedding.

Most brides and grooms opt to give their guests a small take home treat at the end of the celebration. It’s viewed as a keepsake to help them remember the special day. Place card holders can double as keepsakes, especially the handmade versions. If you have a crafty aunt or grandmother who wants to contribute to the wedding, ask them to help you make place holders. They can be as simple as tiny photo frames embellished with sea shells for a wedding at the beach. Once the day is over the guests can remove their name from the frame and use it to place a picture of the happy couple or anyone they choose. Items like this, those that serve a dual purpose, help to bring the overall cost of the wedding down.

Your imagination is really the most important thing when it comes to choosing all your wedding accessories. Get creative, have fun and most of all enjoy the special day with all your guests.

There are a great many things you can do to decorate for your wedding. What you do might depend on how much time you have. Weddings take a lot of planning and a lot of time, and now that more and more couples are both working outside the home, time for things like that is slashed in half at best. Friends and family are often helpful, but so is deciding to go with simple yet elegant wedding pieces for tables at the reception. If you don’t have a florist working on this for you, you can make your own simple centerpieces by investing in some floating candle bowls for each of your tables.

Floating candle bowls have gained in popularity in the last decade, but not everyone uses them. Many like to have flowers, and though these are beautiful, they can be awfully expensive. The great thing about floating candle bowls is that they don’t have to cost a lot but can still look great. You just have to know where to shop. Some can be found for as little as a dollar or less per bowl. It will depend on what you want though, as some of the larger ones cost more. Shop around and find a price and a look that you are comfortable with for your big day.

What you want to do with your floating candle bowls will be up to you. Most want a floating candle, obviously, but the type is up to you. When shopping for this type of candle, get some that are sure to float - you would be surprised to see how many won’t float or tip over - and get some that are long burning so they aren’t burned out within an hour. Shorter burning candles will not last, and you’ll end up with a blob of wax bobbing around in your floating candle bowls. That’s not the look you are going for.

Some like to use colored water to add a touch to floating candle bowls, and some like to add ribbon or even have the bowls etched. It will greatly depend on the bowls of course. You don’t want to get something that will easily tip, especially if you have children at your wedding, but you do want something that you like. Though you can find floating candle bowls that are made just for that purpose, you can certainly use any glass you like, but be sure to ask if they can take the heat of a candle without cracking or shattering. Most can, very easily, but the last thing you want is to surprise your guests with shattering centerpieces.

Eco-Chic - The modern South Carolina wedding is a joyous, extravagant and increasingly consumerist occasion. It costs $27,500 on average, includes about 160 guests, and involves more than 40 different professionals.

In her just-published book One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding (Penguin Press), New York journalist Rebecca Mead investigates the modern U.S. wedding and the multibillion-dollar industry it has spawned. The whole purpose of this growing industry, she says, is to encourage brides to become obsessive, extravagant, self-centred creatures.

But for renegade couples who want to buck the consumerist trend, there’s a growing selection of environmentally friendly options. Here are a few green-wedding ideas from Eco-Chic Weddings (Hatherleigh Press), by Emily Elizabeth Anderson.

- The rings: The production of a single gold ring can generate 20 tonnes of mine waste, Anderson writes. Diamonds often originate from areas in sub-Saharan Africa where the profits from their sale are used to fund guerrilla military activity. Opt instead for faux diamonds, such as the synthetic stone Moissanite, which looks real, but costs a fraction of a diamond’s price. Choose recycled gold. Have your engagement ring serve as a wedding band as well.

- The gown: A typical wedding dress can take 15 metres of fabric or more. Often, it’s made in China using child labour and/or environmentally harmful chemicals. And it usually costs more than $1,000. Instead, buy a gown made by a local designer. Choose a dress you can wear more than once. Consider a recycled or rented dress.

- The bridal registry: Create a registry to cut down on unwanted gifts you’ll never use. Better still, register with companies that encourage sustainable and fair trade practices. Or be totally selfless and ask for charitable alternatives to gifts.

- Bonbonnieres: Admit it — nobody ever uses those tacky little wedding favours. Dispense with the bonbonniere altogether and make a donation on the guests’ behalf.

- The invitations: Some stationers recommend the so-called “wedding wardrobe,” which might include up to 10 different pieces for a single invitation. Consider a simpler invitation, perhaps using tree-free or chlorine-free papers, or artisanal paper and include a “please recycle” note on the back. Or go digital and send e-vites.

- Flowers: The toxic chemicals used on flower farms in Central and South America poison the soil and groundwater. Choose organic flowers. Or find locally grown flowers in season.

- The menu: It is humanly impossible to eat everything at most weddings these days. Sushi, smoked salmon, tapas for cocktails, a pasta first course, soup, salad, the main meal, followed by dessert, then a sweet table. It’s way too much for even the biggest gourmand, and tons of it ends up in the dumpster after the party’s over. Simplify the menu.

- The honeymoon: The average amount spent on a honeymoon is $3,700, and almost two-thirds of those trips are to foreign locales. Investigate green hotels. Go to the website greenhotels.com to see if a hotel or resort supports organizations that pay fair wages and follow good environmental practices. Check blueflag.org or greenglobe.org, two sites with environmental information about international destinations that promote sustainable development.

It wasn’t your typical rehearsal dinner, but it was everything Liz Jones and Josh Dilworth hoped it would be — authentic, casual and relatively cheap.

Guests by the dozens gathered in a barn on the Jones family farm for a simple picnic-style meal. Afterward, they played croquet, horseshoes and badminton, shadowed by towering grain silos and within earshot of lowing cattle.

When the sun set, they returned to the barn for an “open mic” that included guitar-playing, poems and the bride’s 5-year-old nephew singing “You Are My Sunshine.”

Her father also offered a little advice to the guests, many of them East Coast city folk from the groom’s side of the family.

“If you’re watching out here in the cornfield tonight and it gets a little later, you’ll see some guys come out of there and ask, ‘Is this heaven?” Curt Jones said, grinning. “And you say, ‘No, it’s Iowa.”‘

Turns out, it was heaven, indeed, for a young couple looking to save some cash.

They might have have opted for a wedding in Austin, Texas, where Jones attends graduate school and Dilworth works in public relations. But while they’d been saving for a few years — with a working budget of $10,000 — they knew they’d get more for their money in northwestern Iowa, where she’d always enjoyed taking friends after she’d left home for college.

“It also meant we could say to people, ‘If you can get here, it’ll be cheap for you while you’re here,”‘ Jones said.

She and Dilworth, both 28, married on a recent Sunday morning outside a state park lodge on the shores of West Okoboji Lake, just north of the farm. Renting the lodge for the entire day cost all of $200. Brunch for 130 guests, done by a local resident who caters on the side, was $11 a head.

Looking for ways to save on wedding expenses is an increasingly common scenario for young couples, faced with hefty student loans, credit card debt, a tough job market and ever-increasing living expenses. Many couples are choosing lower-cost locations, as Jones and Dilworth did, or planning smaller “destination” weddings away from home for family and their closest friends.

Teddy Lenderman, an author and longtime wedding consultant in Terre Haute, Ind., has noted the growing concerns about wedding costs among her clients.

“We just work at compromising and spending those wedding bucks where we can get the most impact,” said Lenderman, author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to a Perfect Wedding.”

The average cost of a wedding is just under $29,000, according to the Wedding Report Inc., which tracks trends in the industry.

But these days, Lenderman says, couples are more likely to haggle with wedding vendors. Still others are buying wedding supplies from online discount merchants and other wholesalers. And couples are doing a lot more of the work themselves, with the help of family members and friends.

The whole notion of planning a low-cost wedding can be stressful. Beth Hoops, a 23-year-old recent college graduate in St. Louis, says even thinking about it causes her “panic attacks.”

“For me, the economy might have a devastating effect on the type of wedding I have,” said Hoops, who’s already worried about paying off $50,000 in student loans. She and her 27-year-old fiance Steve, who works for the federal government, are considering flying off for a smaller wedding.

“I know I can’t afford a blowout here at home, and I don’t want to be embarrassed,” Hoops said. “According to society standards, weddings are supposed to be glamorous and expensive.”

But others say it doesn’t have to be that way.

Susan von Seggern, a bride from Los Angeles who got married in July at her parents’ home in suburban Rochester, N.Y., says she and her husband John had to cut costs because they are starting an organic gardening business together.

Their parents helped pay for the wedding. But they also found ways to save, including getting help from friends who did the wedding photography and her makeup and helped design her dress — all for free or at cost, as a wedding gift.

“I feel great about it. I saved money and involved the people I love in a meaningful way,” von Seggern says. “And really, when you are the bride and getting ready to walk down the aisle, you are so preoccupied you barely notice the details around you.”

There’s also a chance to get creative. Rather than having the caterer do dessert, the von Seggerns ordered cookies and brownies from the bakery at a Wegmans supermarket, which she calls “a Rochester legend.”

Jones and Dilworth also decided to forgo the wedding cake.

Instead, they arranged for Kate Shaw, a resident of the nearby town of Spirit Lake, to arrive in her 1967 vintage Ford ice cream truck to offer frozen treats to the couple’s gleeful guests. That cost $200.

After that, the wedding-goers changed clothes so they could swim and play more games, Wiffle ball included.

“It’s very much a find-your-own adventure wedding,” said Dilworth, who now shares the last name Jones-Dilworth with his wife. “We went into it knowing we didn’t have a lot of money to spend, but it came out even better than we thought.”

There were friends and family who were unable to travel to relatively remote Iowa, some because of the high cost of airfare. But once there, Zach Dilworth, the groom’s 22-year-old brother, said he needed only “about 40 bucks” for the entire weekend.

“They’ve shown me that a wedding doesn’t really have to be expensive — and it’s still all there,” he said. “That’s what Josh and Liz are about — using what you have. They’re very resourceful.”

Among other things, the couple decided to e-mail their wedding invitations instead of mailing paper ones. They designed and printed their own wedding programs and had centerpieces that consisted of simple table runners, small Texas cacti and old photos of themselves and their loved ones.

Altogether, they and their parents spent about $9,300 on the wedding weekend, including the dress and tux, several meals for guests, and compostable forks, plates and napkins, made partly from corn. That’s still a lot of money, they say — but thousands less than many of their friends’ weddings.

And even with a smaller price tag, their guests still raved.

“I can’t imagine anything better than this,” Liz’s uncle, Sohrab Gandomi, said as he gave the groom a hug at the reception. “It’s just wonderful.”

Keep all your relationships with the family and friends at your wedding polished and shining like new silver by giving them a wedding favor that you know they will truly love. Silver wedding favors add a distinct touch of elegance to any wedding reception, whatever theme you have chosen. Silver wedding favors will be appreciated by everybody for their sparkle and shine and the glow that they give off.
Here are a couple examples of silver wedding favors that you can use at your wedding reception to impress the guests that you care so much about.

Silver Plated Ornaments

Silver Ornaments are very easy to find around Christmas. I personally like to pick them up the day after Christmas. You having a silver wedding next year hit the Christmas sales. Stores like Target will organize all the silver ornaments together. Consider buying different ornaments from the same Christmas ornament line. It will look like you hand selected each wedding favor for the guest, while adding a unified look to your reception.

Stainless Steal Cookie Cutter

If ornaments don’t float your boat. Consider cookie cutters. If you are on a tight budget, pick your cookie cutters out in the cooking section of a major store. Bridal companies do sale cookie cutters, but they also can charge a high price tag. Occasionally you will see bridal cookie cutters in Oriental trading. The cookie cutters are not as high a quality has the ones you will find the cooking section, but the price is right.

One couple said they found out the hard way that nearly half of the wedding bookings have now been canceled.

Michael Divver and Jenny Reese said that they wanted to get married in Baltimore because they love the city.

But the problems started mounting when they read a posting on a popular wedding Web site that informed them their caterer, Wickeys catering, had gone out of business.

“Plans have been made. People are flying in. We hope we can find a way to make it happen,” Divver said.

They said that by the time they read the posting, they had already paid a $4,000 deposit to Tek Cuisine, Inc., the Wickeys group. That money covered the venue at Preston Hall, party rentals, catering and the bar tab for their November wedding.

“I called them and they said that they were holding off on telling people,” Reese said.

Wickeys representatives told her that her deposit wouldn’t be returned. WBAL-TV called Wickeys corporate officers in York, Pa., and was told that the company had gone out of the business on June 30.

The company said that it was trying to reach all of their customers individually and that they would not be returning deposits.

“We never expected this. We are scrambling right now to see whet we can do,” Reese said.

Not only does the couple stand to lose their deposit but they now have to reprint $700 worth of save-the-date cards and invitations.

They also have to find a new location, caterer, as well as rebook seven different vendors for their 150 person wedding.

The couple said that Wickeys offered up another catering company out of Pennsylvania and that they would credit their deposit.

But the couple said they still haven’t seen any paperwork.

A Montreal couple who invited guests to their wedding reception at Le St. Amable restaurant in Old Montreal next week are scrambling to cope with an unexpected change in plans.

Five Montreal-area restaurants owned by the same numbered corporation, including Le St. Amable and La Marée, in the old city, have gone bankrupt.

It is expected, however, that the two landmark restaurants on Place Jacques Cartier will re-open soon under new names - but not in time for the wedding.

We’re out our deposit, so now we have to come up with a Plan B,” the disgruntled groom, who identified himself as John, told The Gazette.

“We were told everything would be fine, but it looks as if we can’t count on that. It’s a headache we don’t need one week before the wedding.”

The restaurants closed without warning last weekend, and a sign posted on the door suggested management had encountered “certain technical problems” in its kitchens.

Other customers, like Narcisse Dubois, who had booked Le St. Amable for a party, were telephoned and told the restaurant was closed because of a gas leak.

In truth, Éric Luksenberg, who owns Chez Éric, Homard Fou, La Marée, Le St. Amable and Gestion de Restaurants Chez Éric et Compagnies, is expected to appear in court for the bankruptcy hearings today and tomorrow.

Luksenberg is the former president of the Regroupement des Commerçants, which represents businesses in Old Montreal.

The adjoining historic buildings that house both restaurants, the Marie-Amable house and the Maison del Vecchio, were recently sold. The new owner confirmed that “the restaurants have been leased to Luksenberg’s son, and hopefully he will be able to reopen.”

Both restaurants have been popular with tourists for more than 40 years.

Le St. Amable is in a house that was built in 1815 for Marie-Amable Foretier, who married prominent lawyer and 19th century politician Denis-Benjamin Viger. It was declared a historic property in 1966.

The Maison del Vecchio opened as an inn in 1897 and was restored as a centennial project by Canadian Industries Ltd. in 1966.

Carpenter certainly had a fairytale wedding, what with her dressed as Cinderella, the groom as Prince Charming and the vicar as the Bishop from Disney’s cartoon.

The 29-year-old bride walked down the aisle with her dad 49, all decked up in the attire of lovable movie ogre Shrek.

Groom Lee Scothern, 36, who took his vows as Prince Charming, changed into an Evel Knievel costume and rode into the reception aboard a motorbike.

The cast for the fairytale wedding also included the couple’s seven-year-old son Finlay, who came as pantomime character Buttons and their daughter Summer, five, was dressed as Peter Pan’s fairy pal Tinkerbell.

And almost all the 300 guests came to the wedding in fancy dress costumes including Ali G, Zorro, Dracula, a nun, and Roman gladiators.

With a chauffeur dressed as a ginger-bread man, Sam had her brides-maids dressed as Disney princess characters.

“We just thought it would be fun and it turned out really well. The outfits were just amazing,” The Sun quoted student nurse Sam, a saying.

And the wedding was not only about costumes, as Sam and Lee even used their big day as a fund-raiser. They made 400 pounds for toys at Sheffield Children’s Hospital where Finlay has had limb construction.

A love ballad by an American country music group has topped a poll of tunes requested by newly married couples.

“Amazed”, released in 1999 by Lonestar, beat off such strong competition as Bryan Adams and James Blunt taking 35 per cent of requests, according to the Performing Rights Society.

The results are based on figures from wedding DJs in a UK-Disco.com survey.

A number one hit in both the US Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Country Songs, it failed to reach the UK top 20 when released nine years ago.

It was played 14.6 million times in the UK last year, including radio and TV broadcasts.

Number two was Everything I Do, which spent a record 16 consecutive weeks at number one in the UK singles chart, came second, having been played 6.3 million times, followed by Robbie Williams hit Angels.

Ellis Rich, chair of the PRS, responsible for ensuring composers, songwriters and music publishers are paid royalties when their songs are used, said: “Weddings tend to be more memorable when a couple include a special song.”

James Blunt made it into the chart at four with You’re Beautiful, while Aerosmith’s Don’t Want to Miss a Thing came in five.

Shania Twain was the only artist to appear twice in the top ten - with Still The One, at six, and From This Moment On, at nine.

Filling up the rest of the top ten was Truly, Madly, Deeply by Savage Garden, Have I Told You Lately by Van Morrison and Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You.