Archive for the ‘Men & Wedding Planning’ Category

Wedding Planning for Men – What Terrifies Them!

July 22nd, 2010 1 Comment
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Ha Ha this is the inside track advice on what terrifies your man when he thinks of the wedding. Take heed to this advice so that you can stay one step ahead and help him out!

What Terrifies Men About Weddings

On first inspection you’d probably think a wedding would rank somewhere between, “Small Girl With Ice-Cream” and “Parcel Delivery” on your average bloke’s internal list of terrifying situations to be confronted with. But when you start to break it down the Big Day contains a number of situations that rank wayyyyy higher on the Terrifying-O-Meter; perhaps even somewhere between “Rooney Broken Bone” and “Getting Things Caught In Zips.” So what is it that’s giving your groom, best man or father of the bride a nasty case of wedding nerves?

Walking Down The Aisle

Sounds stupid doesn’t it? The bride’s the one who has to do the aisle-walking dressed in the big frock and pokey shoes and yet the father of the bride is the one who’s sweating over it. Why? Well mostly because it’s his big moment. All those eyes turn towards him, he has to stick to that weird slow-walk rhythm and he knows that at the end of the aisle he has to hand his daughter over to some spotty oik he’s only met twelve times.

How to combat: Practice makes perfect on the walk and try and have the big, “You know I’ll always love you Dad” talk a month or so before, not in the car on the way to the church.

Saying His Vows Right

I do, just two little words that give men more problems than nearly any other. In this case though it’s not the weight of the ceremony or the pressures of commitment that petrify him, it’s the sheer bloody simplicity. Someone says the words and you just have to repeat them, that’s easy! Exactly, so you’d be really stupid if you messed them up wouldn’t you?

How to combat: Get hold of the text of the wedding ceremony you’ll be using and go through it a few weeks before. You can even practice if you like. Then it’s up to the registrar or vicar to put you at your ease. Fortunately, they’re nearly all very good at their job and if you schedule in a meeting a few weeks before then they’ll help put you at your ease.

Wedding Speeches

This one is perhaps the most understandable. After all, writing a wedding speech is difficult enough when you consider the formalities and the etiquette you need to observe and that’s before you factor in that it’s supposed to be eloquently emotional (the groom/father of the bride) or effortlessly entertaining (best man). Twin that with most people’s natural hatred of public speaking and you’ve got the perfect storm of fear.

How to combat: If they’re struggling to write it send them to a professional speechwriter like Burn The Toast for help with their speeches for weddings . Alternatively, move the speeches to before the dinner, restrict everyone to toasts only or cancel them altogether.

Commitment

Ahhh, where would the romantic comedy genre be without this old trope, that secretly men fear the idea of living with a woman more than they fear sharks, or fire, or sharks on fire? It’s almost unheard of for men to actually act anything like the male characters from Friends. The closest most men will ever get to the commitment question is when one of their more laddish mates says, “You know that means you can only sleep with one woman for the rest of your life?” A question that’s easy to contend with because the friend in question last had sex in 2001.

How To Combat: Ignore it. He’s bought the ring and gone down on one knee, he’s not about to flit now.

Confetti

It’s evil stuff.

How to combat: Fire.

I loved this blog today, thanks Andrew, you are a star.!

Staggered is the UK’s leading men’s wedding website and the perfect place to find proposal ideas, stag do pranks and  stag do ideas, mens wedding suits and wedding speeches. We can even tell you about lolcat proposals.

Until next time, happy planning.

Wedding Planning for Men – Win new suits

July 15th, 2010 No Comments
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Here is a great chance to win your man the suits for your wedding, pass this on to him and good luck!

Fancy winning the suits for the wedding?

We’ve teamed up with men’s wedding website Staggered, the National Wedding Show, Moss Bros and Moss Bespoke to offer you the chance to win some rather special men’s wedding prizes. What are they? How about:

Three men will win:

  • A pair of tickets to the National Wedding Show at London’s Earls Court (1st – 3rd October 2010)
  • A Moss Bespoke Suit from newly launched ‘Moss Bespoke store’
  • The opportunity to be made over as part of the How To Look Good Show hosted by Caryn Franklin

Three men will win:

  • A pair of tickets to the National Wedding Show at the Birmingham NEC (8-10th October)
  • Hire of a Moss Bros Suit for groom plus one (that’s the best man sorted too then)
  • The opportunity to be made over as part of the How To Look Good Show hosted by Caryn Franklin

HOW TO ENTER

The winners will be chosen from the people subscribed to the Staggered daily email so put your email in here and keep an eye on your inbox at the beginning of August. For more information and terms and conditions have a look here. Good luck!

Until next time, happy planning.

Wedding Planning for Men – A Guide To Teeth-Whitening

July 8th, 2010
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I have to say that I fell prey to this for our wedding but I was pleased with the results, it was lovely to have shiny pearly whites on our photo’s. Here is the low down of choices and costs.

It’s all well and good for the Americans to poke fun at our standard of dentistry , but when you clap eyes on some of the ultra-bright gnashers they display you wonder whether you wouldn’t sometimes prefer the occasional snaggle-tooth. Ok, maybe not. There’s one thing that we can all agree on though and that’s that stained teeth are a bit grim. If you’re sorting your teeth before your wedding here’s a quick guide to some of the ways you can get pearly whites.

Whitening toothpaste

WHERE: at home

COST: a few quid

TIME: long term

METHOD: It’s as easy as brushing your teeth.

EFFECT: Subtle. It’s just your regular toothpaste but with added chemicals, abrasives and polishing agents, so it provides extra stain removal but won’t actually change the natural colour of your teeth. Even the most effective toothpastes will only lighten teeth by one shade on the chart, so it’s not the option for a quick, pre-wedding fix.

RISKS: Products that include pumice may cause damage to the enamel.

Whitening gel

WHERE: at home

COST: £20ish

TIME: two weeks

METHOD: A gel applied twice a day directly to the teeth. The magic ingredient peroxide ensures decent results.

EFFECT: More noticeable than the toothpaste thanks to the peroxide. Yay peroxide! It is a bit poisonous though. Boo peroxide.

RISKS: Gum irritation. Unsupervised dental fiddling. You wouldn’t do your own fillings, would you?

Whitening strips

WHERE: at home

COST: £30ish

TIME: two weeks

METHOD: Similar to the gel, but more convenient. These thin strips coated with a whitening gel are applied twice daily for 30 minutes a time.

EFFECT: You’ll see results within a few days, and the whitening effect lasts for around four months. Perfect for a pre-wedding pick me up, because she’s stuck with you when your pegs go yellow again.

RISKS: As with the gel.

Tray-based whitening

WHERE: at home

COST: around £90

TIME: Up to four weeks

METHOD: A plastic tray is filled with a whitening solution and fitted around the teeth for a couple of hours a day or overnight.

EFFECT: Pretty good, but still not approaching a professional finish due to restrictions on the chemicals involved in the UK. Kits bought from outside the UK may contain nasties like acids. And if the tray is an ill fit, results may be patchy.

RISKS: The tray won’t be fitted especially for your teeth, so there may be some discomfort. Risk of gum irritation, gum discolouration, blistering in the mouth and sensitive teeth. To minimise the risk, look for the British Dental Health Foundation approved logo on the product.

Professional bleaching

COST: £400

TIME: Up to four weeks

METHOD: Tray-based as above, but less risky. The tray will be made specially from an impression of your teeth and a protective gel or guard will be provided to protect the gums.

EFFECT: Hollywood white. The dentist will be able to use a more powerful bleaching agent for better results.

RISKS: Minimal, thanks to the involvement of the professionals.

Power whitening

COST: £700

TIME: One hour! It’s the quick fix option.

METHOD: A rubber dam is put over the gums, gel is painted on the teeth and lasers are shone on the teeth to activate the chemical. It’s like Star Wars IN YOUR MOUTH!

EFFECT: Hello, Simon Cowell! No, stop, please, I’m going snowblind. In dentist’s terms, it’s up to five or six shades lighter.

RISKS: Sensitive teeth, sore throat, white patches on gums, blinding your bride with your teeth.


Staggered : www.iamstaggered.com] is the UK’s leading men’s wedding website and the perfect place to find proposal ideas, stag do pranks and stag do ideas , mens wedding suits and wedding speeches. We can even tell you about how to shave.

Until next time, happy planning.

Wedding Planning for Men – Geeky Proposal Ideas

July 1st, 2010 2 Comments
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Geeks. They’re everywhere these days. There used to be a time where the only place you could find a geek was at the bottom of a climbing rope, whimpering about how they couldn’t climb because they have sensitive skin on their hands. These days you’re far more likely to find a geek in the office with the sign on the door that says, “Manager”. It’s like the Bible predicted: the geeks will inherit the earth. This explosion of geeks – or geeklosion if you prefer – has had some far-reaching effects on proposal ideas which we think our top three nerdiest proposals proves.

#3 Top Geek Proposal Idea – Lolcats

We’ve all enjoyed playing at Lolcats – the viral phenomenon where you write a marginally amusing caption over a picture of a cat and send it to the six friends who still open your emails – but not many of us would have turned our proposal into a Lolcat. That said, not many of us are Jon and Loretta – or indeed their cat.


#2 Back To The Future Edited (Badly)

So you love a woman enough to decide that you want to propose. The real question is – how do you ask her to marry you? Traditionalists would say that you should go down on one knee. Corey Goldfeder would say that you should edit footage of yourself proposing into the classic film Back To The Future and then arrange a screening of your edited film at the local cinema. Who’s to say Corey’s not wrong?

#1 Re-write An Entire Video Game

This one has to top the charts because not only does it include a classic SNES game (Chrono Trigger for anyone who was wondering) but this bloke wrote an entire new level which charted the course of his relationship with his girlfriend and culminated with a proposal by the end of level baddie. That’s bordering on weird, but still, y’know, lovely.


Heard of any crazier or geekier proposal ideas? Let Staggered know! drop us an email to info@iamstaggered.com or stick it in the comments…

More from Staggered next Thursday.

Happy Planning


Wedding Planning for Men – The Ties That Bind

June 16th, 2010 No Comments
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Thank goodness I don’t have to do this everyday but if I did these are great videos to help, thank you boys. Over to Staggered.

Ties. Actually, let’s narrow things down a bit: wedding ties. Actually, I’m in a digressive mood so let’s start not with ties but with handfasting. Did you know that in different cultures (notably European and pagan cultures) the idea of marriage was represented not just with tiny Shepherds Pie canapés and exorbitantly expensive dresses but by tying the hands of the bride and groom together. Cool, huh?

Often each of the guests was asked to secure a cord around the couples’ joined hands to symbolise not just their togetherness, but the guests’ complicity in joining them together. I think that’s lovely, and just think, if you’re really angry with how much you’ve had to pay for your hotel you could tie your cord really tight, constrict the blood flow in their hands and laugh as their hands dropped off. That’ll teach them to not block book the local Travelodge. Anyway, if you’re interested, here’s a handfasting ceremony you might like to try out when you’ve got five minutes spare.

Ok, I’m done digressing. Wedding ties and specifically how to tie them is one of the things that as a groom you’ll probably not think of until the morning of the wedding. At which point knowing how to tie a cravat, or execute the perfect Four In Hand will make you the coolest Mother Hubbard in the room. So here presented via the wonder of YouTube is exactly that. By the way, if you’re stuck for ideas about wedding ties then you really need to go and see Swagger & Swoon, amazing service and a very high quality product for a bloody reasonable price.

How To Tie a Cravat

How To Tie A Windsor Knot

How To Tie A Bow Tie

One final piece of digressive trivia for you – did you know that mathematically speaking there are 85 ways to tie a tie? The mind boggles.

Have you heard of Staggered ? It’s the UK’s leading men’s wedding website and the perfect place to find proposal ideas , stag do pranks and, mens wedding suits and wedding speeches . We can even tell you about bacon tuxedos.

Until next week.

Wedding Planning for Men – Materials for Wedding Rings

June 10th, 2010 No Comments
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What Materials Should You use For Your Wedding Ring?

There was an almighty kerfuffle over at Staggered recently over Laura Johnson’s excellent article on choosing which precious metal to select for your ring. From the reaction it seems that blokes are almighty metal snobs and have thought long and hard about what to put on their fingers – perhaps the point is that as the only piece of jewellery many of us wear it’s something we put a lot of time and thought into. Either that or we’ve all seen Lord of the Rings wayyyy too many times. To bring you up to speed we thought it might be nice to look at some of the less-well known ring materials.

Wood

Yes, really. This is an option for the green-minded groom. Either on its own or combined with other precious metals (such as gold or platinum) polished wood can be crafted into a striking wedding band. The downsides are it’s far more vulnerable to damage and destruction than a metal ring, it has no intrinsic value and is more difficult to keep clean.

What’s the damage (based on a standard 4mm N sized band)? For a white gold ring with an oak inlay – £481.55

Palladium

As a member of the platinum family, it shares many of the same properties as its prestigious relative. It’s bright white, very hard and a fraction of the cost of platinum. The other main difference is that it’s much lighter in weight. Depending on your personal taste this can be an advantage or a disadvantage.

What’s the damage? £142.98

Tungsten

Yes, it’s what light bulb filaments are made from but it can also be made into a very hard, durable and scratch-resistant ring. It’s not quite as glamorous as the other metals, but it will retain the same appearance for years. However, be warned, tungsten is difficult to resize and in an emergency situation the only way to remove a tungsten ring hastily is to break it (or remove the whole finger!)

What’s the damage? £62.22

Haribo

A flexible (quite literally) and versatile option. Haribo rings come in so many colour combinations that even the most flamboyant groom would find it hard to grumble. Cheap and sweet, rings made from Haribo jelly can be stretched to fit any finger. The downside – temptation. Eating your wedding ring could be the first step towards divorce!

What’s the damage? £1

Have you heard of Staggered ? It’s the UK’s leading men’s wedding website and the perfect place to find proposal ideas, stag do pranks and  stag do ideas, mens wedding suits and wedding speeches . We can even tell you about bacon tuxedos.


Until next Thursday,

Wedding Planning for Men – Competition

June 3rd, 2010 No Comments
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This week the lovely chaps from Staggered are running a great competition. Check it out.

Free Competition: Win Champagne, Tailored Suits And Bespoke Wedding Rings

They say that three is the magic number and so it proves, as we’ve teamed up with Staggered, the UK’s leading men’s wedding website to bring you not one, not two, but three incredible wedding competitions.

Not only could you win all of the champagne at your wedding, but an incredible Hemingway tailored suit worth £500 AND as if that wasn’t enough you can also get bespoke wedding rings worth £600.

All you have to do to enter this incredible 3-in-1 competition is head over to the entry page on Staggered and keep your fingers crossed! Good luck!

Terms and conditions apply – see site for more details.

Good luck and until next Thursday, happy planning.


Wedding Planning for Men – How to Enjoy Your Wedding Day

May 27th, 2010 No Comments
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What a stupid title – it’s obvious how you enjoy your wedding day! After all, if you can’t enjoy your wedding day, you’re in a pretty bad shape for the rest of the days, aren’t you? Well, yes. In theory. In theory on your wedding day you get to see all of your friends and family, you get to dance badly, you get to look great, you get to eat food and drink that you’ve specially selected to reflect your tastes and, best of all – you get to stand in front of all those important people and declare how much you love your other half – what’s not to enjoy?

In fact, there are various reasons that the reality of the day doesn’t match up to the theory and you end up feeling short-changed. Perhaps foremost among the day ruiners are wedding nerves. This could be because of a fear that something will go wrong, or a fear that you’ll forget something. In this case it’s the expectation of perfection that causes the problems. The simplest solution to this is to get comfortable with the fact that your Perfect Day won’t be perfect. Someone will get too drunk, someone’s confetti will fall out of the box in a clump, someone will be blinking on one of the photos. But all of that’s ok – perfect is unattainable – what you’re going to have is a So-Good-It-Was-Practically-Perfect Day.

Another element that our readers often comment on is that wedding planning is a fraught business with the occasional argument along the way. These arguments if they’re not dealt with can build up into a resentment which smudges the big day too. A useful exercise to try before the wedding is to forgive and forget all of those arguments. You don’t need to do anything in particular, just accept that whatever went before has gone and now is the time to enjoy what you’ve got. If you couldn’t persuade the mother-of-the-bride to accept your idea of a football terrace-style chant for the walking out of the church music (“Whose the woman in the white?”) then rather than souring the day by harbouring that grudge, just let it go.

Fortunately in 99% of cases the wedding day is amazing. You’ve spent so long planning it that when it actually happens it all seems weirdly calm (that’s because you put the work in beforehand). Nearly every bride and groom get that wedding day buzz which can only come from people you love sending you positive vibes. It’s a special feeling. One practical tip to help you enjoy the day: everyone wants to speak to you on your wedding day – after all the bride and groom (and the beer) are the main attraction – it’s really useful to arrange to meet up with your bride at certain points throughout the day to share a moment/beer/kiss together. That way you don’t get to the end of your day not having said two words to each other – there’s plenty of time for those sorts of days when you’re married.

Staggered is the UK’s leading men’s wedding website offering help and advice to groomsbest men and fathers of the bride. Whether it’s mens wedding suits, stag-do-ideas or perhaps some help with engagement rings and proposals, men involved in weddings need to look at www.iamstaggered.com

Until next Thursday.

Wedding Planning for Men – Funny Ha Ha

May 13th, 2010 No Comments
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Here is this weeks dose of Staggered!

As you can probably imagine it’s pretty much out-and-out hilarity in the offices of the UK’s leading men’s wedding website (that’s Staggered in case you were wondering). It’s an almost constant lol-a-thon. Rarely a day goes by without someone turning up to work in a mankini and novelty boobs! And loads of times we’ll just pick someone from the team at random to strip and tie to a lamppost on an industrial estate with a sign saying, “Kick me!” on them! We spend a massive amount of time in employment tribunals dealing with harassment claims, but it’s totally worth it for the laughs. Good times.

It’s probably this never-ending laughter that made Dave Spikey want to join Staggered. After all, you’d have to wonder if a British Comedy Award winner, Royal Television Society winner and BAFTA-nominated comedian would need the kudos that writing for a men’s wedding website brings. Anyway, Sir Spikey’s arrival has cemented our vague plans that this week is joke week on Staggered. So if you’re looking for thousands of wedding jokes, 30 top stag do pranks or the inevitable mother in law jokes then head on over to Staggered.

In the meantime here are five wedding jokes that might raise a smile, even if you’re currently tied to a lamp post on an industrial estate.

  • If your wedding doesn’t work out just remember, men are like buses, they have spare tires and smell funny.
  • A businessman boarded a plane to find, sitting next to him, an elegant woman wearing the largest, most stunning diamond ring he had ever seen. He asked her about it. “This is the Klopman diamond,” she said. “It is beautiful, but there is a terrible curse that goes with it.” “What’s the curse?” the man asked. “Mr. Klopman.”
  • Grooms, once you get married remember that when you have a discussion with your future wife, always remember to get the last two words in: “Yes dear.”
  • After a quarrel, a wife said to her husband, “You know, I was a fool when I married you.” The husband replied, “Yes, dear, but I was in love and didn’t notice it.”
  • Why does it take 1 million sperm to fertilize one egg? They won’t stop to ask directions!

Staggered is the UK’s leading men’s wedding website offering help and advice to groomsbest men and fathers of the bride. Whether it’s mens wedding suits, stag-do-ideas or perhaps some help with engagement rings and proposals, men involved in weddings need to look at www.iamstaggered.com

Until next Thursday.

Wedding Planning For Men – Say Cheese!

April 29th, 2010
rule

Here is another gem from the Staggered crew! Is this a mans perspective? Not sure I agree with but its worth bearing in mind if this is what men think. This is why its always good to talk about exactly what you want from your wedding day.

This week for my sins I’ve been looking at a huge number of wedding photos. My eyes are strained from looking at nearly 5,000 mid-blink grooms and their I-Have-One-Expression-And-I’ll-Use-It-In-Every-Picture Brides (thanks Posh).

From this I have selected five wedding photographs that are popular now but in 20 years will be so painfully embarrassing that you’ll actually hope that your house burns down so that your wedding album goes up in smoke.

5 – The groom and groomsmen holding the bride horizontally. No bride, no matter how beautiful can pull off beauty at 180 degrees. The men look like they’re desperate not to grab her by the boobs and the bride looks like she’s smiling whilst being sick in her mouth.

4 – The bridesmaids doing something cute with the bride. Why do the bridesmaids never do anything cute with the groom? Perhaps the groom rubbing noses with the bridesmaid would be considered weird. However, brides + bridesmaids + cutesy pose = too much cute = not cute (hereafter known as The Staggered Formula).

3The massed group shot. Ok, these pictures are usually fun to have, if only so you can put it on the wall and cross off everyone who dies with biro. But these should be banned because it takes at least an hour to establish the shot and the photographer needs at least three nervous breakdowns to keep people from wandering back to the free Buck’s Fizz and, you know, having fun.

2 – People jumping. What gives? What makes otherwise sensible photographers ask people to jump up in the air? No one looks good when they’re airborne and let’s be honest it makes most of us look a little frumpy, which isn’t what you’re paying your money for.

1 – Not so much a pose but still the number one most embarrassing wedding photo nonetheless (we had it for our wedding so I’m clearly a gross hypocrite). It’s the black and white shot with one detail picked out in colour. You know the ones I mean. Essentially, the scene is in black and white but one detail is left in colour, courtesy of the photographers mastery of photoshop. It’s usually a flower but others I’ve seen have been the bridesmaids (weird, looked like The Shining) and – the wedding car, I kid you not. Please, no more.

Staggered is the UK’s leading men’s wedding website offering help and advice to groomsbest men and fathers of the bride. Whether it’s mens wedding suits, stag-do-ideas or perhaps some help with engagement rings and proposals, men involved in weddings need to look at www.iamstaggered.com

Until next Thursday.