New York Groom Arrested On Wedding Day For Being Too Close To The Bride

Some weddings go off without a hitch, but a Batavia, New York man was arrested on his wedding day for being to close to his bride. Timothy Cole and his wife Elisha were married once before and ran into trouble. They divorced several years ago and the then-Mrs. Cole asked for and received a restraining order that required Mr. Cole to keep his distance from his former wife.

As fate would have it, the couple patched up their differences and remarried in a civil ceremony on August 8, 2008. The Coles were celebrating their renewed nuptials at their home in Batavia, New York. Mr. Cole and one of his guests got into a row and the police were called to the scene.

The sharp officers recognised Mr. Cole from his previous dust-ups with his former-and-new wife and recalled that Mrs. Cole had a restraining order that barred Mr. Cole from being near her. They immediately arrested Mr. Cole and lodged him in the jail for a hearing on a first-degree criminal contempt charge before a judge in Batavia City Court.

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Actress Delays Wedding Until After US Presidential Election

Actress Scarlett Johansson has announced that she has postponed her wedding to Ryan Reynolds until after the US presidential election has taken place. Johansson, 23, who most recently starred in the film The Other Boleyn Girl, will marry on November 22.

Johannson said that she is delaying her wedding because her twin brother Hunter is working on candidate Barack Obama’s campaign. Her fiance, Ryan, is also working on Obama’s campaign and Johansson has decided that planning the wedding in the middle of the presidential campaign is too taxing.

Johansson will marry in a traditional Jewish wedding ceremony in New York City. Reynolds, 32, is a Canadian-born actor and has been seen in a number of television programmes and films. His most visible role was as George Lutz in the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror. He was previously engaged to singer Alanis Morrisette and was also romantically linked with Rachael Leigh Cook. This will be the first marriage for both.

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British Couples Low Key Wedding Draws A Lot Of Interest

A British couple who wanted a low-key wedding got that and more. Catherine Webb and Mark Campbell decided to tie the knot in a low-key ceremony. They assured family and friends that it was not necessary to come to the wedding, the second for each of them. Instead, the couple, who planned to marry while on holiday in Barnstaple, Devon placed an advertisement in the local paper looking for two witnesses for their ceremony.

The response to the advert was overwhelming, especially after the North Devon Journal picked up the story. Within hours of its publication, the couple had dozens of volunteers, including a young brother-and-sister pair who stood in as a bridesmaid and a pageboy. A local Barnstaple florist donated a bridal bouquet and one of the volunteers organised a reception following the ceremony.

In all, fifteen locals attended the wedding and reception for the pair. As for the Campbells, they liked Barnstaple so much that the couple plans to move there.

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After Consideration California County Still Says We Dont To Civil Ceremonies

Ann Barnett, the county clerk of Kern County in California, decided in June to stop performing civil ceremonies for couples who take out a marriage license. The decision coincided with the California State Supreme Court’s ruling that California counties must issue “gender-free” marriage licenses.

Barnett says that Kern County is unprepared to deal with the cost, space and security requirements of conducting an increased number of civil ceremonies and opted to eliminate all civil ceremonies as a result. The County Board of Supervisors considered Barnett’s actions and after a vote, agreed to support Barnett’s decision to bow out of the wedding business.

Prior to Barnett’s decision, Kern County performed about 2,000 civil marriages per year, or an average of about eight ceremonies per day. Kern County is strongly conservative and most voters oppose homosexual weddings. Since state law only requires that the county issue marriage licenses, the county will comply with state law, but will not perform any civil unions for any couples, regardless of their gender.

Opponents argued that the refusal to perform civil weddings would negatively impact minority and low-income couples in the county. In November, California voters will consider a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a union that exists only between one man and one woman. It is not clear whether passage of an amendment would nullify existing legal marriages that don’t conform to that definition, but it would prohibit such unions in the future. Barnett has not said whether the county would perform civil weddings again if the proposal passes.

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Cutting Costs Without Cutting Corners

With the average cost of a wedding spiraling out of control, brides are leaving no stone unturned in their search for cutting costs while still having a memorable and enjoyable wedding.

Wedding planner Mindy Weiss reports in her book The Wedding Book: The Big Book For Your Big Day on some of the best ways to reduce the cost of getting married and having the wedding you want.

The single largest expense for a traditional wedding is the food and drink costs, so tactics aimed at reducing the catering bill are going over well. First, reduce the number of guests on your guest list. If you wouldn’t invite a prospective guest to your home for dinner, then don’t invite them to your wedding. Acquaintances, work mates and far-flung relatives can run up your wedding costs quickly. Resist the temptation by trimming these folks from your guest list.

While you’re reducing your food costs, reduce the alcohol costs as well. If you want to go non-alcoholic, you can serve a variety of beverages for your guests. If you can’t do without a toast, let guest toast with whatever they’re drinking instead of popping the corks on expensive champagne. Also limit the bar to a few choice drinks and you’ll save a bundle.

Choosing a beautiful setting for your wedding will reduce your decoration costs. If a site is naturally pleasing, there’s little need to add decorations, flowers and other adornments.

Print your own invitations using do-it-yourself invitation kits, available through Kardella. You’ll save money on the printing costs, you can control the number on invitations you print, and the DIY kits look beautiful!

Finally, instead of splashing out on expensive table centerpieces, write notes to your guests instead. Include photographs of you and your spouse and let your guests know how much you appreciate their presence at your wedding.

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Gavin Newsom And Actress Jennifer Siebel Tie The Knot

Gavin Newsome, the controversial mayor of San Francisco, California and a candidate in California’s gubernatorial election, has married actress Jennifer Siebel in a private ceremony at Siebel’s family ranch in Montana. Newsom gained notoriety for performing gay weddings in San Francisco, a move that sparked a firestorm of controversy and led to a recent California State Supreme Court ruling that authorized homosexual marriage in the state.

Newsom and Siebel have been dating since October 2006. The couple welcomed about 250 guests to the Siebel family ranch in Bitterroot, Montana. The bride wore a strapless full-length wedding gown. The groom wore a tan-coloured suit. This is the first wedding for Siebel who has appeared in several television programmes and films, including Life, Rent, Numb3ers, and Something’s Gotta Give. She has also finished production on three films slated for release later this year. This is the first marriage for Siebel, 34. Mr. Newsom, 40, was married previously to legal analyst Kimberly Guilfoil. The couple divorced in early 2006. The Newsoms plan to honeymoon in Africa.

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Brides Looking For Sparkle Add Fireworks To The Wedding Budget

According to the American Pyrotechnics Association, their membership is being asked to produce more fireworks shows related to weddings, birthdays and other celebrations. Fireworks require the permission of the venue and a permit from local authorities. Provided that both are granted, brides can expect to spend about $1,000 per minute on a dedicated fireworks show.

To take advantage of the interest, some fireworks vendors are setting up display booths at bridal shows. For the vendors, weddings and other special events provide the opportunity for year-round revenues, whereas relatively few holiday and municipal displays take place each year. For brides, the cost of hosting a fireworks display can vary, depending upon the length of the show. Vendors say that even a five- or six-minute show can seem like a half-hour.

The cost of the displays doesn’t seem to deter some brides, who are looking for that special and unique touch for their wedding receptions. For some wedding planners, the venue that doesn’t permit fireworks can be a deal-breaker, and venues report being asked more frequently if they’re amenable to nighttime fireworks displays.

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Couple Ties A Star Wars themed Knot At Comic Convention

A couple from Yuma, Arizona in the United States took advantage of the annual Comic-Con event to stage a Star Wars-themed wedding. Thomas and Tenille Kuhlman married last year in a civil ceremony, but that didn’t stop the couple from going forward with their plans for a Mandelorian wedding. Mandelorians, of course, are a fictional warrior race that appears in the Star Wars movies.

The Star Wars fan club, of which the Kuhlmans are members, gathered at Comic-Con to see the couple wed, since many of the close-knit group of friends could not attend the ceremony last year.

The bride and groom were both dressed in armor designed to resemble the Mandelorian costumes worn in the movies. The guests also dressed the part, wearing armor, jet packs, boots, helmets, metal collars, dart launchers and other gear. A few Jedi knights and super heroes joined the crowd and Elvis was also spotted among the guests, who formed a “light sabre” arch as the couple moved toward the altar for the ceremony.

The couple exchanged vows in the wilting summer heat and then headed to a Mandelorian-themed reception with their guests.

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Couple Renews Wedding Vows On 75th Anniversary

Mamerta and Sabas Cabale renewed their wedding vows in a big way at St. Aidan’s Church in Rooty hill this week. The couple, who eloped when Mamerta was just 14 years old, staged a traditional wedding with a white gown and tuxedos. The 90-year old bride and her 102 year-old husband have 10 children and moved to Australia ten years ago from their native home in the Philippines.

Sabas Cabale was a chauffeur when he eloped with Mamerta, who lived in a convent at the time, but Mamerta never forgot her dream of a beautiful white church wedding. Guests from Europe, the United States and the Philippines traveled to Rooty Hill for Mamerta and Sabas’ big day, but the couple won’t be celebrating a honeymoon for lack of money.

The Cabales did note that the Pope was in Australia and invited him to attend their wedding. Unfortunately for Mamerta and Sabas, the Pope was unable to attend.

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Four Couples Celebrate 50th Wedding Anniversaries Together

Four couples who lived as neighbors in an apartment complex in Ann Arbor, Michigan – a college town just west of Detroit – reunited to celebrate 50 years of marriage to their respective spouses last week. The four couples all attended and graduated from the University of Michigan, and married within two months of each other.

The reunion was nothing new for the friends; they’ve remained close to each other since they were neighbors in 1958. Two of the couples still live in Ann Arbor, and another couple live in a suburb of Detroit, not far away. One pair moved back to their native New York State. Among the couples are four children and nineteen grandchildren, many of whom have become friends on their own.

The couples count each other among their many blessings and believe it is unusual to find so many couples celebrating their 50th wedding anniversaries together, especially having remained so close throughout the years. They vow to gather again next year to celebrate their 51st anniversaries, although according to one of the women, “we’ll all be wearing bibs!”

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Man Showers The Latest Wedding Trend

Why should women have all the fun when it comes to getting married? Man showers – parties designed for men – are a growing trend among men who are getting married. Men are growing comfortable with attending couples’ showers with wives and girlfriends, so a “man shower” is a natural extension of that. Others think it has arisen from the increased role men are playing in wedding planning.

But don’t believe that a man shower is a substitute for a bachelor party. Instead, it’s just the opening act. Like wedding showers for the brides, guests bring gifts to the party that can help a groom set up or maintain a household. Some “man showers” are scheduled at the same time as the bridal shower, to give husbands, brothers, male family members and friends time to spend with each other. In some circles, the man showers extend to expectant fathers as well.

What about games, which are a mainstay of bridal showers? You’ll find games at man showers too. Guests may find themselves being judged on the manliness of their gift wrap, which may include duct tape, homemade containers and other “manly” adornments. Tools are popular gifts for man showers, and many home improvement centers are beginning to offer wedding registries.

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Lucky Date 08 08 08

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China registered 314,224 marriages on Friday, August 8, a single-day record for weddings in that country. In Beijing alone, 15,646 couples married. That’s 23 times as many marriages on a typical day in China’s capital city. Beijing’s previous one-day record was 4,452 marriages.

Officials at the Ministry of Civil Affairs asked local authorities around the country to take on extra staff, put in extra hours and open additional offices to meet the highly anticipated demand. Some registry offices opened just after the stroke of midnight and worked around the clock to marry waiting couples. Officials said that this marks the first time that such an accommodation has been made to meet the demands of couples seeking to be married.

Couples from around the world used the unusual date to marry. Registry offices and courthouses reported an unusually high number of weddings, in some places as many as five to six times the normal volume.

Weddings weren’t the only things taking place on the lucky date: hospitals in China reported a higher-than-normal number of births, as couples chose to have their babies by Caesarean section to take advantage of the calendar. In the months leading up to August 8, which the government chose for the opening ceremonies for the Olympics, 3,500 babies were named Aoyun, the Chinese word for Olympics, and an additional 5,000 babies were named for the five Olympic mascots: Huanhuan, Nini, Beibei, Jingjing and Yingying.

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Jamie Lynn Spears Reportedly Planning Wedding In Late 2008

American actress Jamie Lynn Spears is planning a late Autumn wedding. The wedding will likely take place at Ms. Spears 3-acre property in Liberty, Mississippi. Spears, 17, turned heads late last year by announcing that she was pregnant. The actress, known best for her starring role as a squeaky-clean high school girl on the cable channel Nickelodeon’s Zoey 101 programme, gave birth to a baby girl earlier this summer. Following Spears’ announcement, Nickelodeon elected to air the last season of Zoey 101, which had already completed production, and which Nickelodeon had already said it did not plan to renew.

Spears, the younger sister of singer-actress Britney Spears, elected to leave Hollywood and raise her baby out of the public eye. Ms. Spears will marry the baby’s father and her long-time boyfriend Casey Aldridge, 19, whom she met at a church in Kentwood, Louisiana.

A wedding date has not yet been announced but the event is expected to be a low-key, traditional affair with only family and friends present. According to reports published in OK! Magazine, the venue Spears chose to announce her pregnancy, sister Britney will serve as Jamie Lynn’s maid of honor and sister-in-law Ashlee will serve as a bridesmaid. This will be the first marriage for Spears and Aldridge.

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Sweden To Host Drive-In Wedding

Auto enthusiasts in Sweden will get a double dose of true love in July, when the country’s first “drive-in wedding” will be staged at a gathering of car lovers in Vasteras, in Central Sweden. The wedding, which 36 couples have already registered for, will be performed by about ten priests from the Church of Sweden.

Jerker Asterlund, one of the organisers of the event and a priest, said he was motivated to put the novel group wedding together because weddings are too commercialised and the Church of Sweden has no interest in promoting that. Instead Asterlund wants to promote a low cost, simple approach to tying the knot. He also wants to remind people that the Church of Sweden can be a part of celebration and happiness and is not limited to just crises and catastrophes. The mass wedding will take about seven minutes to complete and will feature a parade of classic cars from the 1950s and 1960s.

In addition to the parade, the mass wedding will feature a gospel choir and in keeping with the 1950’s and 60’s theme, one of the participating priests will sing Elvis tunes to entertain the attendees. The organisers have also erected a Las Vegas-style neon sign that reads “Get Married.”

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Woman Married Eleven Times Gives Advice To Couples Thinking About Marriage

When it comes to marriage, Bonnie Ashley has it down. In fact, lately she’s been giving advice to people who are considering a walk down the aisle. Few people in the world are better prepared to give advice about marriage than Ashley. She’s married (and divorced) eleven times.

Ashley, 53, has written a book called Ex-Husband In Freezer about her experiences with marriage. Her best advice: Don’t jump into marriage. She should know. Ashley married two of her ex-husbands three times each.

Ashley has been married eleven times to seven different men. She married her first husband to escape her father, whom Ashley describes as a domineering, dictatorial minister, and things went downhill from there. Among the first ten years of her marriages, Ashley also had a long-standing affair with a man she truly wanted to be with.

She’s currently unmarried, having made peace with herself after divorce number three from Husband Number Seven. Her book was written with the understanding that none of their real names would be used. One of her ex-husbands pitched in to edit the manuscript, which Ashley self-published.

Ashley has no children and receives no alimony from any of her husbands. She works as a real estate agent in Delaware, in the United States, and since publishing her book, has been in high demand for radio and television interviews. She’s also in talks to bring the book to the big screen.

Ashley says that she hopes her book helps people to avoid the same mistake she’s made when it comes to marriage. She advises people to wait to marry, and take time to get to know their prospective spouses before talking about marriage. According to Ashley, “Live with people if you have to, and try on the shoe before you buy it.”

Ashley says she is not in a relationship right now, after passing on the opportunity to take on Husband Number Eight. She says she’s just learning how to enjoy life being single.

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Actress Uma Thurman Engaged

Actress Uma Thurman, whose on-screen credits include Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, Gattaca, Dangerous Liaisons, The Avengers and My Super Ex-Girlfriend, is engaged to Swiss financier Arpad Busson. The pair met in 2007 in Milan and began dating immediately. This will be the third marriage for Thurman, who was previously married to actors Ethan Hawke and Gary Oldman. Busson has never been married, but has two children with Australian model Elle McPherson. He has also been linked romantically to actress Farah Fawcett.

Busson, 45, presented Thurman, 38, with an 8-carat diamond ring in June at Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday celebration. No date for the wedding has been announced. The couple have celebrated their engagement with parties in New York, Saint-Tropez and London. They also traveled to Corsica for a private vacation. Ms. Thurman, who lives in New York City has not indicated where she and Mr. Busson will live. Busson owns homes in London and in the Bahamas.

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Episcopal Diocese In California Urges Couples To Marry Outside The Church

Bishop Marc Handley Andrus has urged members of the Episcopal Diocese of California to instruct its followers to marry in a civil ceremony and have their unions blessed by the Episcopal Church. Andrus is following a model used heavily in European countries, but not in the United States.

Andrus is finding support among California clergy who are being pressured by shifting legal and social opinions about who can be married. California recently lifted a ban on same-sex weddings, which the Episcopal Church does not recognize.

Some pastors feel that they are being placed in the middle of a political statement. Pastors work as agents of the state to perform wedding ceremonies that are recognized as legal marriages. They are concerned that the ruling on same-sex weddings may lead to a circumstance where a pastor may be put at odds with his or her beliefs, or may require them to perform same-sex weddings as a civil function if they also perform traditional religious marriages according to the dictates of their religious beliefs.

Other pastors see another reason for exiting the wedding business. According to the Conde Nast American Wedding Study conducted in 2006, nearly half of all weddings in the United States take place in a church, synagogue or other house of worship. Pastors privately complain, however, that many couples choose to marry in their churches, but rarely return after the ceremony.

To date, the Episcopal Diocese of California is the only diocese recommending this approach to marriage in the US.

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Microsoft Wants To Be A Part Of Your Big Day

Microsoft organised a staged wedding event in Toronto, Canada to demonstrate the technologies that couples can use to enhance their Big Day. Microsoft wants to promote the use of its technology products in wedding planning, organisation and execution.

Microsoft’s “wedding guests” were guided through software and online tools that can help them create invitations, organise photographs, build customised Web sites, and create DVDs. Attendees also signed an electronic guest book on a tablet PC that converted their signatures to text.

The company stressed that the everyday technologies built by Microsoft allow people to customise their weddings to suit their tastes. Microsoft also showed off software that would enable brides to create customised reception menus, seating charts, place cards and design reception hall layouts.

The “wired wedding” event wasn’t limited to media creation. The company also demonstrated the Zune MP3 player, which makes its debut in Canada this month, and suggests that couples can use technologies like the Zune, which can hold customised playlists, to replace DJs at the reception.

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