From bridesmaid dresses and wedding cakes to mass catering and honeymoon plans, a wedding is a feat of organisational acumen. If you’re looking for ways to give your forthcoming wedding a thoroughly modern edge, we’ve put together a quick list of our favourite strategies:

1.     Bridesmaid Dresses – Whether you’re shopping from a department store or a made-to-measure service, don’t be tempted to create a uniform look. By allowing your ladies a little more creative freedom, not only will you add greater interest to your wedding photos, you will also give them the luxury of feeling more comfortable in their nuptial attire. Instead of choosing a single design, settle on a particular colour palate and encourage them to find their own dresses and report back to you when they hit gold. You could even point them in the right direction by naming a shop that you like – Coast have a particularly good range for example, then leave them to choose their favourite bridesmaid dress.

2.     Wedding Cakes and Desserts – Not everyone likes a traditional wedding cake and there are a vast range of adorable alternatives on offer. One particularly contemporary and trendy approach is to ditch the traditional, tiered creation and instead go for a cute and delightfully kitsch stack of cupcakes. Choose a couple of contrasting flavours and icing designs and you’ll have something to please everyone. Alternatively, if you’re not a big fan of cake, do something altogether more rebellious and splash out on a fabulous wedding cheeseboard instead. Or for the third, and most appealing, option, if the wedding budget will stretch to the extravagance, spoil yourself and your lucky wedding guests by doing both.

3.      Honeymoon Plans – You don’t have to go for the three weeks in Barbados immediately after your big day. In fact, it’s worth bearing in mind that after the exhaustion of the day itself a twelve hour plane journey might not be your ideal next move. You could instead choose to plan a relaxing break on a slightly smaller scale – a trip to Tuscany, for example, or a week in the Loire valley – with the intention of booking that globe-trotting expedition to the other side of the planet in the year or two following the wedding itself.

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