Every bride wants to feel like a princess on her wedding day. Quite a few of them want to feel like a more posh, professional, grown-up version of their favorite fairy tale characters, but these classic stories from childhood often continue to play a part in shaping our ideas about romance long after we’ve outgrown our pigtails.

A friend of a friend recently put herself on the waiting list to get married at Disneyland, an undertaking that involves a “fairy godplanner,” flowers, food, makeup artists, photographers, music–the whole wedding experience, including a horse-drawn carriage and a castle (naturally). The entire event takes at least one year to plan and execute with the help of Disney’s staff of planners and wedding professionals. If you grew up loving Ariel, Belle, Cinderella and Snow White, Disney Weddings seem like a fun way to capture a little bit of their magic for your big day.

But, what makes this particular fairy tale wedding story so amusing to me is that the Cinderella in question has no Prince Charming in sight. With slightly over one year until her scheduled wedding day, she is still (optimistically) single.

For those of you who actually have someone to meet you at the end of the aisle, busting your budget on a full-blown Disney extravaganza isn’t the only way to incorporate a little fairy tale magic into your celebration. Their website offers a variety of alternatives, including a charming Mad Hatter Tea Party Brunch or an Electric Parade Rehearsal Dinner. You can also add whimsical touches to your ceremony with these fun, princess-worthy designs from Wedding Paper Divas.

There’s something about the color yellow that evokes bright, sunny, summer days. Thread this happy hue throughout your wedding for a fun, modern look that will brighten up a spring or summer wedding, be sweet in autumn and golden in winter. Here’s some lovely yellow shades that we hope will inspire your yellow wedding this or next season.

pictures from top left: dress and earrings from Anthropologie,

candy buffet from Mel’s Brainstorms,

Desert Bloom cake from Brides.com

There was a lot of things that happened that I wish I knew about before the wedding and there were also things that I did know that really saved the day. Read on for tips to make your big day extraordinary!

1) Create an Emergency Kit. One thing I’m glad I remembered to do was put together a kit containing sewing materials, tape, lipstick, powder, tissue and Tylenol just in case. I put the entire thing together in a plastic container and gave it to my coordinator to hold on to. Although fortunately I didn’t need to sew anything on that day, my husband was the best man at a wedding where the button on his rented tux fell off right before the ceremony. Lucky for the resources of his friend, a paper clip saved the day!

2) Get organized! Another thing I’m happy I did was get organized a few weeks before the wedding. The week of the wedding was so hectic I’m happy that I did everything early. I gathered things like checks for my hair stylist and makeup artist, my perfume, earrings and our wedding rings into one large plastic bag so that I wouldn’t have to scramble around looking for it that day.

3) Go over the details of your wedding day with everyone involved. I’m sad to say that this important detail was overlooked for our wedding. Although we had at different points of time met with our vendors and friends, we didn’t thoroughly go over everything right before the wedding. Emails and phone calls are easily forgotten so it’s best to meet with everyone, sit them down, and make sure they take detailed notes about what’s important to you.

4) Talk to your family before the wedding day. Getting married is emotional for everyone involved. I was lucky that my dad made me sit down with him the night before the wedding to talk about how he felt and what it meant to him that I was getting married. Although I was tired and anxious about the next day, I think that it was an important discussion that made the wedding day even more special for him and for me.

5) Make memories and savor moments with your new husband. The day went by so fast! I tried to take everything in but it was hard. The one thing that I treasured were the times I spent with my husband. Whether it was when we took pictures or when we danced, those are the moments I truly love and remember about my wedding day.

What are wedding announcements? Thank goodness for them since they help make those who you weren’t able to invite part of your wedding. There were so many uninvited guests who generously gave my husband and I gifts and I wanted to do something for them (besides sending them a thank you) and everyone else who couldn’t make it to the wedding or who weren’t invited.

Here’s the 411 on wedding announcements. They were traditionally sent by parents and usually up to a year after the wedding. Today couples also send them. Announcements are kind of like the announcements you see in the newspaper except you are sending it to specific family and friends. You shouldn’t expect a gift but of course if you receive one make sure you send a thank you.

They are perfect for us because we had a small wedding and it also works if you had a big wedding but still had a lot of people you couldn’t invite. They’re also great professionally to alert business associates and colleagues to the change in your last name.

Wedding Paper Divas has a wedding announcement I think I might send.

Sweet Matrimony

Although I haven’t gotten all my pictures yet, I did get a sneak preview. And because I wanted to give those who couldn’t make it a wedding picture, I was overjoyed that Wedding Paper Divas has a line of photo cards to select from. Since then, I’ve been playing around with all of their beautiful, modern photo cards to see which one I might send. The fun part of it is that you can customize any photo card, not just the thank you ones. The card that I ended up choosing, however, surprised me. Because the picture I chose had so much details on it, I found that a simple card worked best and decided on the Contemporary Solid Thank You Cards: Willow. Here is the result.

A big trend this season is including scents as an important part of your wedding day. You’ve got your other senses covered such as the look and feel of your wedding but how about smell? My friend, for example, gave me a bottle of perfume to be worn on my wedding day. Why might you ask? Well scientists learned that scents trigger emotional memories and using scents could effect the mood of the wedding as well as help the bride and groom and their guests remember the day. This way whenever I spray on a spritz of Orange Blossom, I’ll be reminded of my wedding day.

Besides your normal scents from floral centerpieces, fragrant candles, or flowers that can be placed on guests’ tables, there is a company that can custom create various aromas to add texture to your wedding. One company called Scentevents has created a scent machine that can recreate a variety of aromas such as flowers, wedding cake, chocolate or champagne and scent areas up to 2,000 square feet. Talk about having a sweet wedding!

One of the most personal weddings I’ve ever been to was one of my friends who really made it her own. She took her mother’s wedding dress and had it altered and designed to suit her. And even though her wedding was 6 years ago, I still remember seeing her and her husband drive away in a cool, vintage car.

For our wedding, we decided not to do anything special about our transportation. Since we had no wedding party and our ceremony and reception was at the same site, I just road to the ceremony with my friends and my mom. My husband drove to the site himself. While it seemed practical and economical for us to do so, I still think having a sweet vehicle like theirs adds a little romance and excitement to the day.

If you want to echo this classic, vintage style, choose invitations consistent with this theme. The results will be a seamless look that begins with invitations and ends with your wedding day.

When I began thinking about the whole wedding planning process, I knew that I wanted to have a wedding website. Especially since the majority of our guests were making a big trip to get here, I thought it would be nice to provide them with detailed information about our special day. There was a ton of websites out there to choose from but my fiance and I were looking for something specific. We wanted a site that allowed us to play music and show pictures and of course one that wasn’t extremely expensive. We finally settled on a site called MyMemoryPage.com.

Because we paid for the service up to a year, I had the idea of transforming our wedding website into a thank you website for guests. That way those who didn’t attend could get a sneak peek of our wedding through photos and the music that was played.

Months later, I heard about another website called Mywedding.com. I wish I heard about it before because while I love our website, this one allows you to coordinate Wedding Paper Divas invitations with their fabulous website layouts and it’s free! Here’s an example of what I mean.

I know I’ve written about orange before but it is the color of the season. And this wedding season, it’s making an appearance in everything from the flowers to the bridesmaids dresses. Orange is even making a splash in the fashion industry coloring up one of my favorite stores, Anthropologie this season. Take a look at some of their line which would be absolutely divine for an orange wedding!

One year of site searching, flower finding, invitations, dresses and planning is finally coming to an end. And what a year it’s been! Hard to believe but my wedding is this week. In the last few weeks, I’ve had to overcome the worst-a two week cold, sleepless nights from an obnoxious upstairs neighbor and ant bites from an outdoor wedding leaving marks where my wedding dress won’t cover. But with all of that, I’ve stayed sane and believe that all of the stress, worries and late nights will be well worth it very soon. Good luck to all you brides out there whose wedding is also close approaching. I will be signing off for a little while but will be back to let you guys know all the details of my wedding day!