Just because she’s a flower girl doesn’t mean that the only thing she has to carry is a basket full of petals. Here’s your chance to get really creative. Below are some interesting ideas for your flower girls.

Instead of petals in a basket, ask you florist to place roses in a ball with a long ribbon that will serve as its handle. Your flower girls can hold it with one or both hands, or have it wrapped around her wrist. Perfect for the daintiest of flower girls.

If you really want your girls to leave a trail of petals while they walk down the aisle, have your couturier make matching little flower girl purses instead of using baskets. The girls will feel very grown-up carrying this around when the petals are gone!

Having your flower girls carry lit lanterns will set the mood for romance like nothing else. Depending on how old your flower girls are, you can use real candles or battery-powered ones. This idea will work wonderfully for an evening wedding.

Parasols are perfect for outdoor or garden weddings. The fabulous thing about this accessory is that it goes great for many themes: elegant, garden, Asian, modern and more.

Forget Maui or Palawan - the next hottest destination wedding is a place you won’t be able to find anywhere here on earth. A Japanese firm called First Advantage and a US-based private space flight firm called Rocketplane Global Inc. teamed up to host weddings in space for about $2.3 million a pop. The First Advantage website (which is in Japanese) says that there will be a four-day training program, the last of which will be spent holding a wedding ceremony that will start from the ground and end during the one-hour trip to suborbital space 100 km above the earth. The ceremony also includes a marriage certificate, a space wedding photo album, and the capacity to broadcast the wedding live via satellite. For that much money you think you’d be able to take an entire entourage with you at least, but unfortunately the space shuttle can only take three guests (probably a priest and two witnesses). First Advantage and Rocketplane says their first space wedding will be taking off in 2011.

I wonder where people who get married in space go for their honeymoon though. Seriously, any beach or fancy resort is going to pale in comparison to exchanging wedding vows with a view of the earth right outside the shuttle window!

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Made out of rich satin, this sleek wedding dress does a great job emphasizing a woman’s curves, particularly the waist area. Perfect for those who want more attention drawn to their hips while downplaying their bustline.

I love how this short white wedding dress can look sweet and sultry at the same time - the plunging neckline and the cinched waist does the trick. I can imagine this sexy wedding dress at a sunny garden wedding decorated with colorful spring flowers. The wide-brimmed straw hat also makes a great alternative to the traditional veil if you want to stick to the garden theme.

Any bride walking down the aisle in this number will definitely feel like a goddess. I love how the material of this wedding dress flows as you move, and the neckline does an amazing job at emphasizing the breasts. Women who already have big busts should stay away from this dress though; you might end up looking more skanky than sexy!

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The problem with the sexy wedding gowns available on the market today is that most of them look downright skanky. Take the dress pictured above - that style seems more appropriate for a night out in town with the girls because it shows a little too much leg and a little too much breast. When shopping for a sexy wedding gown, it’s important that you find a style that strikes a delicate balance between brazen, sensuous, and beautiful.

I love the sexy wedding gowns of Israeli designer Pnina Tornai because she can make sexy look so classy and brides look feminine but not virginal. The trademark style of her wedding gowns is a fitted bodice made out of sheer lace which, a couple of years ago, was considered to be too daring and inappropriate. In fact, when she first showed her bridal collection in New York, she was met with a chilly reception and got thrown out of the door. After a few modifications she tried again and today, her wedding gowns are among the bestsellers in Kleinfield. You can view the rest of Pnina Tornai’s 2008 bridal collection in her website.

Would you ever wear a wedding dress made out of toilet paper? I would, but only if the toilet paper were unused and only if the wedding dress looked this stunning! This toilet paper wedding dress was designed and made by Katrina Chalifoux for a US toilet paper wedding dress contest. Contestants can only use toilet paper, tape, or glue to create whole bridal gowns complete with faux embroidery, ruffles, lace effects, and pleats. The grand prize of one thousand dollars went to Miss Chalifoux, who spent seven rolls of toilet paper and two weeks to create the winning wedding dress.

I’m not a big fan of the layered ruffles - that kind of cut makes me look fat - but I love the dress’ texture and embossed floral design. Who’d have thought that toilet paper would make such sweet and delicate material for a wedding dress? I wonder if you can achieve this effect by using traditional fabrics. I also wonder how comfortable it is, and if you have to be really careful when you move around. Toilet paper isn’t exactly the most sturdy material in the world.

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Not all weddings have to attempt recreate a romantic atmosphere by covering the place with tulle and roses and using decorating cliches to death. Depending on the couple’s personality, a wedding can have the fun, playful atmosphere of a children’s birthday party. In fact, I think a fun, informal wedding is close to what the real nature of a wedding should be. A wedding, after all, is a celebration, and it’s a little hard to celebrate and let loose when you can’t quite be yourself in a very formal setting.

A couple named Ben and Kerri had a geeky, superhero-themed wedding - which is fairly surprising since most women would want the roses and the pink and would never consider having the Incredible Hulk top their wedding cake. But in honor of the Hulk, Ben wore a green tie, Kerri wore a green sash around her waist, and the couple had an Incredible Hulk-themed cake, with the Hulk and Wonder Woman on the topmost tier. I love how the cake was able to incorporated typical wedding cake designs together with the Hulk’s bright green color. A bright green cake might not look very appetizing to some guests, but I would definitely eat it just to see what kind of cake it’s made of.

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I outgrew Hello Kitty when I was seven years old but I guess some girls aren’t too old for this white Japanese cat by Sanrio. Japanese brides who have the money for kitsch can shell out $4,000 for a ruffly, pink wedding dress adorned with Hello Kitty’s face. And if that’s not enough for the hardcore fan, you can apparently get an entire Hello Kitty wedding done at the Daiichi Hanyu hotel chain in Japan. Wedding packages cost somewhere in between $8,717 - $22,275.

Sanrio’s not the only company to offer cartoon-themed weddings for the childlike bride. Last year, Disney launched a line of wedding gowns for women who want to look and feel like their favorite fairy tale princess on their wedding day. The most expensive Disney Princess wedding gown is a thousand bucks cheaper than the Hello Kitty wedding dress, and I guess that’s because the Disney gowns are a lot less poofy and busy-looking.

The average wedding costs at least Php 100,000 with the local wedding industry earning millions every year. The reason why the wedding industry earns that much is because couples pay so much for wedding accessories that they don’t really need. Today, the bridal industry in the West is working to minimize this excess by reinventing a new trend: green weddings.

A green wedding is essentially a wedding that’s more environment friendly. These weddings are more sustainable, makes less of a negative impact on the environment, and basically involves reducing items that aren’t necessary. This doesn’t mean that you can no longer have a sleek and stylish wedding without a clean conscience, though.

For starters, you can make your wedding dress eco-friendly by changing the material it’s made of. Most wedding dresses are made from taffeta or polyester, which are not very earth-friendly. This is because taffeta and polyester are synthetic fabrics that are petro-leum based. Eco-friendly wedding dresses have material woven out of natural fibers like organic cotton, fair trade hemp or silk. I’m not sure if local designers are incorporating this trend into their designs, though. If you can’t find wedding dresses made out of eco-friendly material, another chic option is to wear a vintage wedding dress. A Little White Dress will also do the trick, especially if you’re having an outdoor or garden wedding. That way, you can wear your wedding dress again and again at different occassions, which is better for the environment.

Most famous bridal companies began as small family firms and ended up selling to big multinationals and losing touch with their founders’ traditions. Mori Lee is one of the few that has remained a family business for three generations. Established in New York in 1959, Mori Lee began when the great-grandfather of current president Mitchell Udell took an interest in the bridal market. Today, the brand is well-known for stunning designs that suits each bride’s personality.

This year’s Mori Lee wedding gown collection is designed by internationally-acclaimed New York fashion designer Madeline Gardner. She joined the company in 1985 and has since received six prestigious Debi Awards and designed hundreds of wedding gowns and prom dresses. I love how the fabric looks so sumptuous in the Duchess Satin wedding gown (pictured above). This halter-neckline gown has a dropped waistline and a ruched skirt, with crystal beads tucked into the skirt’s pick-up and chapel-length train. What’s great about this design is that it goes perfectly with either a sweet garden wedding or a formal evening wedding.

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Claire Pettibone is well known for her frilly frocks, lacy bridal gowns, and luxury lingerie, making her pieces perfect for feminine, flirty brides. Pettibone looks at a rather unusual source of inspiration for her 2009 bridal collection: wedding cakes. This season you can expect a lot of beaded floral appliques, ribbon-tie straps, delicate embroidery, and wedding gown styles that will make any blushing bride look sweet and sexy. One of my favorites is Jean, an elaborate sweep-train wedding gown with silver, gold, and ivory embroidery lined with pearl silk. I love how the deco-beaded insets gives the bride an old-fashioned glam look that’s perfect for formal evening weddings. Mind you, this is just a sneak peak of Pettibone’s new bridal pieces. The dresses from her Spring 2009 collection are fresh off the runway and are not yet available in stores!

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