The Guide to All Things of Fashion | Forever-taylor.net

Archive for July, 2010

Your wedding day is undoubtedly one of the most important days of your life, but it can also be one of the most expensive. For the bride perhaps the most important item on the shopping list will be her wedding dress and with an increasing number of high quality but relatively cheap wedding dresses on the market today it is possible to have the dress of your dreams without breaking the bank.

For many people a wedding dress should be a traditional full length white gown, symbolizing the bride’s pure heart and innocence, complete with veil and train first popularized by Queen Victoria when she broke with the royal custom of marrying in silver and chose a white gown for her marriage to Prince Albert. This started a craze which continues today with many brides choosing white or a variation of white such as cream, eggshell or ivory.

Today however we see two major shifts taking place when it comes to weddings.

The first is a return to pre-Victorian days when brides married in simpler dresses of just about any color that took their fancy, except for black which was associated with mourning and red which was worn only by “ladies of the night”. This also means often dispensing with the veil, which is said to symbolize virginity, and the train which is very much a trapping of royal weddings and emulates the peacock, which was formerly seen an a royal bird.

The second is a move away from the church wedding towards weddings held in a wide variety of venues, including the increasingly popular beach wedding.

As a result not only do brides now have a much wider choice of color for their wedding dress but, more importantly, dispensing with the veil and train and the need for a full length dress now means that brides can choose from a range of far more simple wedding dresses. For the cost conscious this is great as informal wedding dresses are also considerably cheaper than the full traditional white wedding outfit.

One other important point here is that the move away from the full white wedding gown also means that it is no longer necessary to purchase your dress from a specialist bridal outfitter who, not surprisingly, will charge a premium simply for the service that is provided or for the name or brand that you are buying. It’s a bit like a pair of running shoes – you can buy two virtually identical pairs of shoes and pay ten times more for one pair than for the other simply because it carries a brand name.

There has never been a better time to shop for your wedding dress and the choice available to you today in terms of color, style and supplier is vast. It’s no longer that difficult to find reasonably cheap wedding dresses and still end up looking like a million dollars in the dress of your dreams.

Diamond certificates from independent organizations such as the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) provide a diamond grading report, that gives you valuable information about the 4 C’s that were taken into consideration when the diamond was priced. It’s important that you use an outside source for diamond certificates, instead of the jeweler who is selling the diamond you are interested in, because the jeweler wants to make money on the sale of the diamonds, the certificates may be slightly biased and you could be paying more than the market value of the diamond.

Reasons to have Diamond Certificates

When you go to a jewelry store, or consider making a purchase from an online retailer, the jewelry that has diamond certificates tends to sell for several hundred dollars more than diamonds that are graded the same that are without certificates. This is because the jeweler recognizes that they typically grade their diamonds one level better than an independent grading organization, like the Gemological Institute of America. The GIA is more conservative when grading diamonds because they do not gain anything from diamond sales.

Pay the Right Price for your Diamond

Diamonds are valued according to their quality based on a grading system that makes use of the 4 C’s. You should receive diamond certificates (also called grading reports) from independent companies rather than a jeweler, to insure that your getting an unbiased reporting of the value of the diamond. Otherwise, you could be paying much more for your diamond than what the diamond is actually worth.

Protecting Your Investment

Diamonds are not the same kind of investment as buying stocks and bonds, but having diamond certificates gives you a better investment than just having the diamond. Diamond certificates make it easier to sell a diamond in the future, because you have documentation of how much the diamond is worth and why it was valued that amount. In fact, if you attempt to sell diamonds without having diamond certificates, most dealers will not buy from you and you would end up having a certificate drawn up anyway, so you may as well have a certificate grading report created at the time of purchase, for your current protection as well as future possibilities for selling.

Increased Security during Cleanings and Repairs

Many people hesitate to bring their jewelry into the jeweler’s when they’re in need of repair services or cleaning. It makes people wonder how they’ll know for sure that they’ve received the same diamond back that they brought in. It is an extremely rare occurrence for a jeweler to purposely switch diamonds, however it could happen unintentionally. Diamond certificates act as an additional security measure in this case. They are like fingerprints stored in police databases; they contain all the data needed to match the person to the fingerprints, and diamond certificates have enough information on the diamond to match the diamond with the certificate and the owner.

It is your wedding time and you are trudging all around endless shops on the weekends and not getting what you want. You shall easily find the perfect tie for your outfit if you consider some simple things.

Always consider that tie or cravats what is going to suit however ties are cheaper but cravats shall look great. Think about bow ties and cummerbunds, match of the wedding color scheme, buy or hire and how you are going to take care and clean.

1. Ties or cravats
Although cravats are more popular for formal wedding, they are more expensive than the ties and are not worn in daily routine. A good quality silk neck tie will also be a nice choice if it matches with your outfit.

2. Cummerbunds or bow tie
Some of you may prefer bow ties instead of neck ties that also come in various colors and styles. Bow ties can be self tied or pre tied but the range of pre tied ones is far more than the self tied. Many bow ties come with matching cummerbunds and could be ideal match for your wedding dress.

3. Matching color scheme
If your wedding color scheme is “standard” color, you can choose a close match ties or cravats that are widely available.

4. To hire or buy
In formal weddings, suits and other items can be hired or purchased whereby if you hire the item, you can save a considerable amount of money especially in the case of suits. In neck ties, it could be more difficult because the shop could have a limited number of ties or cravats. The most popular wedding neck ties come in plain polyester satin or silk fabric that you can hire at $10 -$15 for a fair good value.

5. Clean and take care of your ties
Once you have bought your ties, make sure that they are not creased or crumpled. For this, lay them flat or hang on a tie rack. While you try them, you should completely undo nay knots and hang up the tie for couple of days so that the lines from the knot clear. If on the day of wedding something spills on the tie just dab it with a dry cloth so that it soaks up as much as possible. If it is something like fruit juice or gravy let it dry and then gently dab it with the narrow end of the tie. Silk and polyester fabric reacts differently so this method will help a little. Don’t iron the tie for any reason and never iron it directly instead cover it with a cotton cloth and then iron on a cool setting.