(ARA) – From flowers to guest lists, engaged couples spend months planning the perfect wedding. After the vows are said and the reception is complete, most newlyweds are ready to relax. But there are several steps newlyweds should take before their happily ever after can begin.

“Settling into life as a married couple takes some work,” says Lindsey Leesmann, a recent newlywed and contributor to YesYouCanOnline.info. “If you’re taking your husband’s last name, you must complete the name change in several places. You also have to discuss managing money as a couple and learn how to live together.”

Leesmann offers the following to-do list for newlyweds changing their last names:

Obtain a copy of your marriage license

If you stated you’d be changing your last name when purchasing your marriage license, you’ll receive a copy of the license in the mail. This license should be taken to each location on your path toward a new last name.

Go online

Next, acquire a new Social Security card and update your passport. Complete Form SS-5 and take it to the local Social Security office to obtain a new card. The form can be found on the Social Security Administration’s Web site (www.ssa.gov). Your passport can be changed by completing Form DS-5504, found at www.travel.state.gov.

Drive to the DMV

The next stop for newlyweds is the local Department of Motor Vehicles. Each state is different, so make sure to bring all the items required to get your name changed and renew your driver’s license.

Check in at your bank

Most banks simply need a copy of the marriage license and the account holder’s signature to approve a name change. Some may also require your spouse to be present.

Drop by the post office

To change your name at the post office, just pick up a change of address envelope, fill it out and mail it back.

Once the name change is complete, newlyweds can focus on managing money as a couple.

“Money is often a tricky topic for new couples,” says Sam Goller, award-winning author of “Yes, You Can�- Achieve Financial Harmony.” “But it’s important to start communicating about money at the beginning of your marriage.”

Goller offers the following suggestions for newlyweds working to manage their finances as a couple:

Determine priorities

Prior to creating a financial plan, talk about your histories with money and what’s most important to each of you when it comes to money.

Find missing dollars

You have to understand your spending habits before you can spend money in a way that helps meet your goals. Consider keeping a spending journal to find out where your money really goes.

Choose a system that works for you

You may prefer to sit down each month as a couple to pay bills and develop a monthly budget. Or maybe one of you is better at handling expenses and prefers to do it alone. Find a system that works with your needs.

“The key to managing money as a couple is to never stop talking,” says Goller. “With shared determination, a plan and open communication, newlyweds have the power to improve their financial position both now and well into retirement.”

For more information on managing money as a couple, visit www.YesYouCanOnline.info.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

Wal-Mart, Target and others offering everything from dresses to rings

After Jennifer Brock and her fiance decided to get married, they began a predictable hunt for the perfect engagement ring.

They found their quarry in an unexpected place: a discount club store.

“We looked at some of the regular jewelry stores and we just really didn’t see anything that we really liked, or if we did it was very expensive,” Brock said.

Then, while shopping at Sam’s Club, Brock, 30, just happened to look over the jewelry counter.

“I saw my ring and was like, ‘I love it,’” she said.

For years, brides and grooms have been hearing about the daunting — and rising — price of an average American wedding. Now some are striking back, snubbing high-end florists, bridal boutiques and even jewelers in favor of bigger bargains at places like Target, Costco and Wal-Mart.

The big-box discounters are expanding their wedding-related offerings and promotions as well, in the hopes of luring brides, already comfortable with registering for gifts at the giant retailers, to also consider buying anything from a dress to a cake.

The moves come as the average cost of a wedding has reached $27,852, according to a study by Conde Nast Bridal Media.

Target, already known for its “cheap chic” suits, T-shirts and other items, began offering wedding dresses on its Web site this year for as little as $89.99. That’s a far cry from the thousands of dollars brides routinely spend on the single-use gowns.

Minneapolis-based Target also is offering discounted wedding shoes, veils, gloves, flower girl baskets, guest books and other wedding accessories. Company officials say they have been pleased with sales so far.

“We’re seeing the recognition from our guests that high fashion doesn’t have to mean high price,” spokeswoman Amy von Walter said.

But while wedding dresses are being sold on Target’s Web site, there are no current plans to bring the line into the company’s stores, von Walter said.

“When you look at our stores, I’m not sure that we felt that was the appropriate venue for our wedding line,” she said.

Rival Wal-Mart is pushing lower-cost wedding invitations at newly built “celebration centers” in many of its stores. Over the past six months alone the company has increased the space in its stores devoted to wedding-themed items, spokeswoman Tara Raddohl said. Wal-Mart wedding cakes also are a popular choice, she said.

“When we look at the whole category, we’ve had tremendous growth over the past year and a half,” Raddohl said.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer recently hosted seven weddings in its stores as part of a promotion for July 7, 2007, considered by some brides to be an especially lucky day. The events included wedding cake, party food and other items from Wal-Mart. Raddohl said it was too early to say whether the 07/07/07 promotion would help boost sales of wedding items.

Costco Wholesale Corp., the membership club known for selling everything from bulk office supplies to big packages of lunch meat, also has gotten into the wedding business. It offers wedding flowers, including bridal bouquets and corsages, as well as keepsake items such as guest books and engagement rings. The company’s Web site even lists a destination wedding package that includes a nine-night stay and comes complete with a Tahitian wedding ceremony, starting at  $4,080 per person. The Issaquah, Wash.-based company did not return calls seeking comment.

At Sam’s Club, a unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., senior diamond buyer Tina Corley said the company has seen double-digit percentage growth in its engagement ring business every year since launching the effort six years ago.

The average sales price for a Sam’s Club engagement ring is about $3,000, Corley said, although the company did sell a $185,000 ring to a couple in Kentucky.

The average overall cost of an engagement ring is about $4,435, according to Conde Nast Bridal Media.

Corley said many couples who buy engagement rings from Sam’s are preparing to celebrate a second or third marriage. That translates into a savvier shopper, but also a shopper with more buying power.

“They’re going to step up from that first marriage,” she said.

Experienced brides and grooms also may be more practical about seeking out bargains. In addition to buying the ring, more couples are coming to Sam’s for cake, champagne, wine or other reception items, such as chocolate dessert fountains, officials say. Sam’s has periodically promoted its wedding offerings in magazines and elsewhere, spokeswoman Susan Koehler said.

Couples look to save on wedding expenses through creative cost-cutting

SIOUX RAPIDS, Iowa — 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.

More bang for the buck
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.”

Thinking outside the box
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.”

In Iowa, 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.”

source content : http://www.msnbc.msn.com

Fancy holding a wedding during the numbingly cold winter in the Scottish countryside?

MY YOUNGEST niece is making plans for her wedding in my native Scotland next year. Now, I’m not an expert on weddings but several questions sprung to mind when I was first informed of this event a few weeks ago.

Like, why does it take 15 months to organise a wedding? Perhaps an heir to a throne might need more than a year to finalise his wedding plans, what with all the foreign dignitaries to invite, and the gilded wedding coach that needs to be commissioned, and the ingredients for an exotic feast that need to be tracked down. But a family wedding in rural Scotland hardly requires planning on a vast scale.

In the small village where my niece lives, there is one church and one small hotel. So the venues for both the wedding service and the reception require no decision-making.

As for entertainment for the reception, the village boasts an ageing rocker wannabe with a loose set of dentures who plays guitar and sings. If my niece doesn’t want this live act, she can opt for the travelling DJ, a man who ekes out a living travelling from village to village playing his music at weddings, birthdays and Christmas celebrations. I can’t imagine that he’s booked out for the next 15 months. Indeed, I can’t think of any aspect of my niece’s wedding that would require an extensive planning period.

In 15 months, if I put my mind to it, I could make my own hand-stitched wedding dress, bake and ice a 20-tier wedding cake, hand write several thousand wedding invitations, get pregnant, give birth, have a huge argument with my fiancé, break up with him, find another boyfriend, propose to him and change one of the names on several thousand wedding invitations.

My next question? Why would anyone want to get married in the middle of winter in the middle of the Scottish countryside? The days are short and numbingly cold.

To be able to withstand the cold in a wedding dress, my niece will probably have to bulk out her silhouette with thermal underwear. But if she were to hold her nuptials just four months earlier, she would be able to display her svelte figure on a day when there would be at least a 20% chance of the sun peeking out from behind the clouds.

Being entirely selfish, I hope my niece comes to her senses way before I have to go out and buy my own thermal underwear. After living in Malaysia for 26 years, my blood is much thinner than it used to be. Heck, even a rainy day in Penang has me shivering, never mind the rigours of a full-blown Scottish winter.

I’m also concerned about being confined to one place with all of my relatives at one time. I love my family dearly, but collectively the individual members can be a handful at times. The last time I attended a family gathering of any magnitude (a BBQ at my second sister’s house atop a windswept hill some years back) the various personalities came out to play in a somewhat colourful way.

The sun made a welcome appearance that afternoon, causing the younger family members to strip down to their swimsuits. Older aunts and uncles could be seen removing cardigans and pullovers, while my mother sat on a patio chair, her face tilted towards the sun, hoping to add some colour to her pale Celtic complexion. As for me, I huddled all the more into the cosy confines of my ski jacket.

After a glass of wine, though, I began to warm up, and so did everyone else old enough to drink.

“How could she have gone into the church with her cleavage on display like that?” said an aunt, referring to an absent relative’s appearance at a recent wedding.

“And on such an occasion, too,” said another aunt. “When you look at the photos, you don’t even notice the bride, all you see are those enormous ? well, you know.”

“Personally, I didn’t see anything wrong with it,” said an uncle – a remark that earned him a dark scowl from his wife.

The conversation then turned to children and manners, and I ducked into the kitchen to get another bottle of wine.

A few minutes later, just as I was topping up my glass, my mother came in to get some bread.

“You’re not going to have more wine, are you?” she asked.

“Well, I think that’s the general idea,” I said as I headed back outdoors. I was just in time to catch the tail end of a heated conversation between one of my sisters and her teenage daughter.

Only 463 days to go. I can hardly wait.

By: Mary Schneider

(ARA) – Your great-grandmother probably had just one treasured wedding portrait, and your own mother likely captured memories of her special day in an old-fashioned photo album. You, however, are getting married in the Internet age, which means you’ll be able to preserve a virtually limitless number of images from the biggest day of your life.

Here are four ways to digitally preserve your wedding photos:

1. Digital Devices

From digital picture frames to smart phones that allow you to store images on a micro SD memory card, digital devices mean you can keep – and carry with you – favorite wedding photos. Some digital frames limit the number of images you can store, while others are compatible with SD memory cards, meaning you can store, view and swap out thousands of images. You can also use your MP3 player, laptop, PDA and some mobile phones to store images.

2. Your PC or Laptop

Many wedding photographers now offer services to put your wedding photos on a disc so that you can transfer images to your PC or laptop. Most developing services, like those found in pharmacies or department stores, also offer the option to put your images on a disc. This storage method makes it easy to transfer images to your PC or laptop, where you can use editing software to create collages, crop, color-adjust and otherwise manipulate your images.

3. Photo-sharing Web Sites

Many photo-sharing Web sites now offer ample storage for all your wedding photo needs. PhotosYourWay.com, for example, a new innovator in photo-sharing, offers 7GB of free storage, enough to store thousands of images. Photo-sharing Web sites also allow you to spice up your photo presentation with effects like captioning, cropping, editing, borders and more. You can present your images in a slide-show format, and even share images with a specific group of family or friends, or designate them viewable by anyone interested in wedding images. One caveat – photo-sharing sites are only for original, amateur works, not the copyrighted images you receive from your professional wedding photographer.

PhotosYourWay also offers the opportunity to get paid for your original, amateur wedding images. When you upload your images, simply select the option that makes them available for purchase by photo houses, advertising agencies, publishers and anyone else who needs fresh wedding images on a regular basis. The Web site acts as a broker for the images, sharing a percentage of the sale price with the member who posted the photo. It’s possible to make up to $300 for exclusive rights to one of your images.

5. Your Own Wedding Web Site

Many couples are now opting to design their own Web sites prior to the wedding. Pre-wedding day, the sites can be great resources to communicate important information to guests and for making faraway loved ones feel like a part of your wedding preparations. After your big day, the site can be used to share anecdotes and images from the honeymoon, update friends and family on where you’ll be living as newlyweds, and even for posting personal thank-you messages for especially thoughtful gifts.

Courtesy of ARAcontent