The Royal Wedding Fashion (407 Days to Go)

Because let's face it--this is all that really matters today when it comes to the topic of weddings.  

Already 2 billion people have watched footage.  Yes, 1/3 of the world population.

Kate's dress was of course amazing.  I've been hearing the word "understated" tossed around quite a bit but I'd like to think that the Duchess is merely sensible, classy, and my favorite: timeless.  The simplicity will never cause no one to ever look back and think "What was she thinking?!"  Because if we're all honest with ourselves, that's what we'd say about Princess Diana's poofy shoulders.  But that's something we'd never say of Princess Grace Kelly.  I feel like after half a century we'll have a truely classy princess once again.

As customary, she had a long train, but not so long that it required a troop of girl scouts to carry it--only her sister Pippa.  And of course Pippa looked absolutely lovely too in her thematically matching Alexander McQueen dress. 

I loved the lace bodice that Kate wore in order to meet the Abbey's requirements.  It was subtle and beautiful. Sigh.  And can we talk about the hair?  Half-up, half-down in an effort to exhibit her own style as well as appease her new royal fam.  I don't envy her the sacrifices she has to make for the sake of appearances and tradition.  But she is certainly doing a fantastic job of making the best of it.

Royal Wedding Budget (408 Days to Go)

So with the Royal wedding less than 24 hours away and trying to work out my own wedding budget, it made me wonder what exactly went into the royal budget and how much different it was from the average American wedding cost.  Someone else put together a very, very basic breakdown of cost by comparing the royal wedding, to Chelsea Clinton's wedding, to the average American wedding. 

So for the overview budget, Kate Middleton and Prince William will have spent a whopping $32 million.  To put this into some more perspective, the Clintons dropped only a tenth of that amount on their own "princess" and in America, the typical "Daddy's girl princess" spends approximately $27,000--less than one hundredth of the British royal wedding's cost.  Already, I'm starting to feel like I'm not prepared to spend enough on my own wedding.

Going a little more in depth, next we'll look at the cost of the cake.  Around Pittsburgh, prices tend to run from $1.50 to $3.00 a slice for some really impressive looking and tasting cakes.  So, going with the highest price, and my relatively large guest list (250 people), I'd be looking at paying around $750.  Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor.  This is actually considered over the average price for a wedding cake in the U.S.  So I'll definitely keep looking to find a cake a little cheaper.  The Royals will be dropping somewhere around $80,000.  Divide that amongst the 300 guests and you're looking at $266 slices of cake.  Yikes!  That better be the most incredibly moist and delicious cake ever.

Kate Middleton's dress will cost somewhere in the ballpark of $434,000.  The average American "princess" will spend just a little over $1000.  I personally spent just under $700 on mine (after taxes) and I'm darn proud of that because I managed to get a designer gown.  I can only imagine what the average price will be of the royal wedding knock-off dresses that we can expect to start seeing in troves next month.

An astounding $800,000 will be spent on just the flowers for the big day.  This is just shy of half of what was spent for Chelsea Clinton's wedding.  But the average American bride will spend a little less than $2000 for her flowers.  It makes me wonder what the exact price of Kate's bouquet (which will be left on the tomb of the unknown soldier) will be.  I'm planning to try and spend not a penny more than $100 for my own bouquet if at all possible.

The engagement ring actually falls significantly less than an American celebrity's ring.  Chelsea Clinton's engagement ring cost a whopping $1 million dollars whereas Diana's ring which was passed on to Kate is valued at $136,000.  Still, this is a lot more than the average American's engagement ring which clocks in somewhere around $5000.  Out of respect for Jeff, I won't reveal how much mine is worth.  But for most of us girls, we care more about the thought our men put into the ring than how much it cost.  It means so much to me that Jeff had mine specially designed and kept in mind that I wanted a flat ring.

Next up are the wedding favors.  There's no exact price that's been listed, but the customized scarves that will be given out to the guests are made by a company, Centrex of Ludhiana, India, that at the high end makes scarves valued at 300 pounds (~$500).  Since these are custom scarves which will be offered in three different color schemes, I feel like this is probably a safe bet on the pricing.  Considering that most American brides aim to spend as little as possible on their favors, I'd say that this is at least a hundred times more than the average favor price.  In fact, I'm having my mom crochet small seashells as favors for minimal cost (before the manual labor of course) and having a photobooth with the money saved on favors.

But all of these costs broken down don't even come close to the cost on the British economy.  The royal wedding will more or less shut down the country for a day.  Estimates have been made that the national holiday could cost the economy $10 billion (which is the low estimate; the high estimate being $50 billion). Impressive considering that the average American wedding does nothing but boost local economies by putting vendors and their employees to work.  That and our guests are so wide spread throughout the region and businesses that even if they need to take a day or two off to attend the wedding (or merely recover from their hangover) it would do no great harm to the economy.  Granted, they have also calculated how much the wedding will help the economy with a surplus of around $1.5 billion from the sales of memorabilia.

So the next time that you and your family or fiance get into a fight over the wedding budget, try and keep in mind that it could be worse--or better depending on how you want to think about it. 

Designing Your Own Coat of Arms (415 Days to Go)

Kate Middleton's
Coat of Arms Courtesy of
the College of Arms

Just in time for the wedding, Kate Middleton received a customized Coat of Arms in order for her to be properly heralded in as the new princess of England.  Heraldry is an ancient tradition in England, dating back to the 12th century as a means of identifying knights as they rode into either battle or tournaments.  Here in America, we're most likely to recognize a coat of arms from A Knight's Tale or the Tudors.  But that doesn't mean that we Americans don't have some roots in English or Celtic traditions.

I myself am 3/4 Irish, my fiance is 3/4 Scottish.  So after reading about Kate Middleton's new coat of arms, I was intrigued.

The coat of arms is passed down through the male descendants.  What this quickly informs me is that I do not possess a coat of arms and neither does Jeff since it is our father's side of the families that are of different heritages.  Essentially, my maiden name is passed down from a very distant English and his surname is from a very recent Italian heritage.  But, a coat of arms can be newly acquired for those of professional or educational standings that merit a coat.  Most of the more recently awarded coat of arms from the College of Arms were to professors.

But there are many Irish-Americans, Scotch-Americans and Brit-Americans out there who probably don't have the means to acquire a formal coat of arms like Kate Middleton.  But that doesn't mean that you couldn't design one that is meaningful to you and your future spouse to use as a way to share both heritage and your personalities at the wedding.

So, if you're going to make your own coat of arms for you and your future spouse, to be handed down to your male heirs, you'll first need to understand the anatomy of the coat of arms and crest.  The one pictured to the right is from the College of Arms and does a fantastic job of showing all the possible parts to be included.  As you can already tell, Kate Middleton's coat of arms is pretty simplistic by comparison.  This is partially due to the fact that she is a woman and thus she would have no helm or crest--just the blue ribbon mantling to represent that she is a single woman.

The crest is typically an animal of some kind and varies from birds and dogs to goats and unicorns.  There are pretty much no limitations on the possibilities for a crest.   

The actual coat of arms is the shield and this can take on any variety of different patterns.  There doesn't have to an animal on the shield, as you can see above on Kate Middleton's they use the acorn to represent the trees surrounding the family's home: the Oak.  They also make use of the chevron in order to create a bold swatch of color.  For Kate Middleton, this represents her mother's maiden name: Goldsmith.

The motto scroll typically bears either a short phrase or a set of words that are symbolic to the family.  Marrying a marine?  Consider "Semper Fi".  Perhaps you would want to use your alma mater's motto?  For me it would be "Spiritus Est Qui Vivificat".  Again, there is no right or wrong choice.

The supporters, like the crest, are typically animals, but do not have to be.  I have seen coats of arms that were born up by olive branches or varying trees.  It's all about choosing something that is significant to you.

So, if you're in the market to make your own coat of arms and crest, be creative and pick something meaningful to you and your love.  Don't forget to consider your families and their traditions.  But if you need some help, there are some websites that provide basic software for creating a coat of arms.

Ink Well Ideas

Make Your Coat of Arms

Just to give you an idea, I played around with one of the sites and came up with the coat of arms you see to your left.  I picked a Sea-Horse because Jeff is my fish out of water; the white roses for love and faith; the crescent because Jeff is a second child; the trefoil because of my Irish heritage; the snake for wisdom; and the blue and green background for loyalty, specifically in love.  To find out the meanings of other symbols, you should check out Fleur-de-lis Designs.

Pittsburgh's Royal Wedding - Big Ben's Wedding (428 Days to Go)

Ben's Fiance, Ashley Harlan
Source: Sports Grid

So it appears that yesterday "Big Ben" Roethlisberger has finally came out in the open about his engagement to Ashley Harlan of New Castle.  It's been grinding around the rumor mill since January and honestly, I was expecting it to be a bigger topic as soon as the Superbowl was over.  I have a feeling that this will be Pittsburgh's royal wedding of the year, not just because of Big Ben's celebrity, but also because of his infamous past behavior.  It's hard to overlook multiple trips to court to battle rape charges.  And if you're like my fiance, you take the stance that these girls were probably gold digging, however, I'd personally hate to think that one of them might have been legit and it's been overlooked or downplayed because of others abusing the system.  And being a Duquesne girl myself, I've heard quite a few stories about Ben's tours of the South Side where he thought he could buy any girl in the bar with just a good mixed drink and would get pretty angry if he was told "no".

Okay, enough of my poo-pooing on Pittsburgh's royal wedding. 

The details thus far:

Oops, wrong DWTS contestant will be
present at the Consol Energy Center that night.

The date has been set for July 23rd, one week before training camp starts.  Apparently Ashley's crossing her fingers for a continued lock out in order to get her honeymoon.  But seriously, why not book it a week earlier or a month for that matter?  I doubt Ben has any fiscal challenges in booking a venue.  Granted he was turned away from the Consol Energy Center because of a WWE wrestling match.  But again, this strikes me as a timing issue, not a money issue.  Obviously money can't be an issue when you're planning to invite 500 guests.  And I'm pretty sure that when you're inviting all of the "Stillers", you'll have to count some of them two or three times when giving a final head count to the caterer.  So the hunt for a venue continues.

Perhaps they're merely trying to plan the wedding as closely as possible to when they met six years ago at training camp?  That would be romantic.

And if for some reason you feel inclined to buy Big Ben and Ashley a wedding present, you can either make a donation to Ben's charity (the Ronald McDonald House) or buy something off of Ms. Harlan's bridal shower registries.  Apparently there are several amongst the local department stores.  Already, strangers have started to mail in the gifts sans an invite to the shower.  I wish random people would send me gifts.  Especially since I can't afford the stuff and she certainly will be capable of it after July 23rd.  I mean in all seriousness, why would you buy a celebrity a wedding present?  They don't need our charity.  It should be the other way around.  If you have that much money, you should be looking up random people's wedding registries and be buying them a wok or a waffle maker.  And this really does strike me as odd because I'm fairly certain the average British citizen wouldn't dream of buying Kate Middleton a new set of silverware if they weren't invited to the wedding.

Another curiosity, they won't be living together until after the wedding. No wonder Ashley's hoping for a lock out to extend the honeymoon!  Ben is claiming it's for religious reasons which is somewhat understandable, especially here in Western PA, but it's also a little shocking considering his past history.  Perhaps it is more for her religious qualms than his, but it seems rare in this modern age to not live with your future hubby or wife before the wedding. Hopefully Ashley and Ben won't spend their first night of marriage arguing over who gets which side of the bed!  I guess we'll find out when Ben's dragging his feet to training camp.

Sources:

Post-Gazette