Is Your Wedding Going to the Dogs?

Not so long ago it would have seemed absurd to envision a wedding with a pet as a member of the party. But with more and more people treating their pets as children or members of the family it is not too far of a stretch to envision this newest matrimonial trend. Many celebrities have included their pets in their day of wedded bliss - Gwen Stefani, Adam Sandler, and Tori Spelling, just to name a few.
If this sort of thing appeals to you and you are considering including your pet in your wedding party here are a few things to put on your check list of to-dos.

You will want to check with your venue host and see if there are any stipulations that bar pets. You don’t want to include your pet in your ceremony only to find out at the last minute that they are not allowed on the premises.

Check with the members of your wedding party to see if everyone is comfortable with pets or suffers from any allergy issues. Also make sure that there will be a friend or family member who will be willing to pet sit during the ceremony if the pet is to be “seated” during the vows.

Make sure your pet is comfortable with crowds and can obey simple commands. You might also want to test out any accessories you plan on adorning your pet with before the ceremony to make sure he or she is comfortable wearing them.

Be sure that your pet is fed a light meal and is walked before the ceremony. You do not want your pet to be pre-occupied with hunger or to have an unfortunate accident in front of family and friends on such an important day.

Be sure to include your pet in the festivities after the ceremony. Make sure that he or she has a place of honor and prominence near the couple at the reception and that there are special treats on hand for your pet. If your caterer will not provide a special treat for your pet check with local shops that cater animal fare and see if they will prepare something special.

Guest List Planners

A wedding is meant to be joyous and memorable event and, while planning a wedding can be both fun and exciting, it can also be a source of great stress and mental fatigue. There are many useful tools available that can help a bride-to-be ease that stress and one of them is guest list planner.

Simply put a guest list planner is an organized list that stores all of your guest’s names, addresses, and phone numbers alphabetically. But a list planner can be so much more and can be used to keep track of more than the number of people attending your wedding.

For example, you can keep track of meal preferences, RSVP’s, and gifts received. Once the gifts have all been unwrapped and the honeymoon is over you will have a list of who gave what gifts and have their name and address all compiled in one handy list. This will make writing those obligatory thank you notes so much easier.

There are many different kinds of guest list planners available to download on the Internet or you can customize your own to suit your needs. Which ever way you go it will be sure to help cut down on some of the stress of planning your wedding.