Modern Bride Magazine

Within the next year or so there may be a wedding in our lives. My son, who is in his early thirties, and his girlfriend are talking about an October, 2006 wedding. Since his fiancee doesn't have family that can help plan a big wedding (and all Italian weddings are big even if you only have a hundred people) I've been recruited to help plan and execute many of the details. I've already perused many websites and other than make a guest list, reserving a hall needs to be next. We are looking at a medium sized wedding list and banquet hall for about 200 guests at this point.

Last week I came across the magazine, "Modern Bride". What I found most interesting (and hopefully helpful) was that it was a Michigan edition. The cover boasted titles such as, "100 Great Sites Near You” "The Best Real Weddings” and "Michigan Hot List". On the cover was also a picture of a beautiful bride. These state orientated issues of Modern Bride are produced for Fall/Winter and Spring/Summer. They offer subscriptions to Modern Bride but the special kinds of issues are found on newsstands.

What I found inside the cover was many helpful articles, but not very many local ones. Still, it is worth buying your state edition if you find it because during all this planning time, anything local is helpful. And, there are many more generic articles that can be helpful as well, no matter where you live.

The Magazine

Some of the features:

Regular Features include Letters to the Editor, a Hot List (of new ideas for different parts of the planning, and Aisle File which gives new ideas for the actual wedding ceremony. Each of these is about one page in length and I didn't find any of them very helpful because they were basically snippets of information.

Real Weddings
Real Weddings show pictures and do interviews with people who have recently had a wedding. It's always fun and helpful to read about real life experiences of those just through the process of planning and having a wedding. There were about ten of these and they were from Michigan. At the end of the section, the magazine tells you what to do if you are interested in being showcased in an upcoming issue of Modern Bride.

The other local section was the "100 Great Sites Near You."
I found this to be great! They charted out the state by county and graphed it. It named possibilities for halls and hotels for each county and checked if it had the following: On Site Catering? Ceremony Site? Range of Prices given in a number of $$ signs, Outdoor facilities? Maximum Room Capacity, Guest Overnight Accommodations? Website and person to contact information.

This section is a good one to pull out of the magazine and either call, visit, or check out their websites if they have one for more detail. It's great to use as a reference source.

The other sections that the magazine is broken into is what all Modern Bride Magazines are broken into and has general information that relates to brides and grooms everywhere.

Reception Ideas: This section had quite a few pages profiling an electric blue color with white to use for reception tables. Even the cake had this bright cobalt blue used in its design. Guess this justifies the Modern Bride magazine title. Really bright blue flowers on every table didn't float my personal boat but definitely was a different look.

Picking Menu Items was in this section and the article named many variations on the tried and true menu fare (mostly by having different sauces) and named a few expensive other items that could be served.

Outfitting The Groom had no pictures of grooms in tuxedos but did offer tips for putting together a total look for the bridegroom with reminders of extra things to carry for emergencies with their outfits.

Captured On Film was an article composed of antidotes of funny things that has happened at weddings. There were only a couple of pictures but most were described in words.

Budget Planning had good advice about steps to take to keep wedding budgets under control. They gave snippets of information such as never inviting a guest orally. This sometimes happens when a bride or groom meet up with someone they haven't seen in awhile and ask them to the wedding then feel compelled later to add them to the list. They also listed out what percentage each wedding item should use of the budget. While I found the reception percent rather low (38%) it was still listed as the biggest part so accurate in that way.

Elements was a section that was devoted in this issue to transportation. There were some good ideas of how to save money and of different kinds of transportation (other than the standard limo). In this section, they also talked about favors given to guests and giving attendant gifts. Most brides give their attendants jewelry according to this article.

Honeymoons
There were honeymoon articles and advertisements throughout the magazine. I imagine in my jaded mind, that these places spend a lot of money in advertisement in a magazine like this one. There was a feature article on Anguilla. At the end of the magazine there is a complete listing of honeymoon destinations with contact information.

Fashion and Beauty
No groom stuff here. All about makeup and hair care for the special day. There was about ten wedding gowns featured and none were less than $3000.00.

The advertisements are fun to look at and all pertain to weddings. These include engagement rings, wedding rings, bridal dresses, veils, honeymoons, halls, stores that have gift registries, instant cameras for tables, jewelry gifts and flowers. While a few of these were local, 90% of the ads were national.

As for setting an example of good value for low prices, forget it. The articles often listed the cost of things and it was expensive. So, too, the advertisements were all advertising very expensive items. But, from looking at all of these things, and using imagination, the core ideas are available to our checkbooks.

The magazine sells for $4.99 an issue at the newsstand. This is one magazine that brides (very little guy stuff here) may want to subscribe to but I, as a wedding pocketbook and planner, found little except the few local pieces to be helpful or new and think that one issue is enough.