By Kelly Stewart
Utah has been left in the dust as the rest of the country sheds outdated wedding traditions.
Wedding planners Kate Burton and Lorna Reid said brides don?t need permission to break traditions such as the receiving line and sign-in book.
Burton, general manager for the 23rd Floor Event Center, said it is important for the bride and groom to look at the event from the guest?s perspective. Instead of a receiving line, she suggests more of an open-house atmosphere.
?The receiving line had its day and time and popularity,? Burton said. ?It?s more of an event where the guests are interacting. When the bride and groom are in a receiving line, by the end of the evening they have missed their own event.?
Reid, owner of Design Elite, a bridal coordinating company in Alpine, said the receiving line should be extinct like the dinosaurs.
?The line is pretty outdated,? she said. ?We try to have them the first hour. This way the bride and groom can be a part of their wedding.?
Reid said the parents are usually the ones who think the line is necessary.
?By the next generation, no one will have a line,? she said. ?We always discourage having all your brothers, sisters and bridesmaids in the line.?
Burton, who appears on Utah Brides, a weekly television show about wedding trends in Utah, said another fad in receptions is having guests etch their names into a glass vase, instead of having a sign-in book.
?Every year, on the anniversary, the husband pulls it out and fills it up with flowers,? Burton said. ?It?s become a smash hit with the guests.?
Burton said using fake ivy and a lattice background for pictures and decoration are trends from the ?80s and ?90s that need to be stopped.
?It?s almost predictable,? Burton said. ?It used to be huge in the ?70s, and it had a place. That was totally acceptable.?
One piece of advice Burton gives to brides is to be graceful.
?Girls have dreamed about their wedding from day one,? Burton said. ?You cannot control every detail on your wedding day. There is going to be a glitch, and the most important thing for a bride to do is be graceful. The night is still going to go on.?
Brides are beginning to realize they don?t need to follow a tradition just because it is expected.
Marcia Stephenson, a BYU student majoring in Spanish translation, said she just wants to focus on getting married in the temple and on her family, instead of following the tradition of having a huge wedding and spending a lot of money.
?We haven?t done a lot of the traditional things,? Stephenson said. ?As a part of my wedding budget, I got a computer for my fianc? as a wedding gift. We are kind of doing our own thing, the way it works for us.?
Stephenson, who is getting married Feb. 19 in the St. George Temple, said bargain shopping for wedding dresses is the way to go. Traditionally, girls think they need to spend a lot of money to get the perfect dress.
?I would encourage girls to look for a good deal because I think that girls have the misconception wedding dresses need to be a lot of money,? Stephenson said. ?If you want a really beautiful dress to hang in your closet for a long time, that?s fine. It?s just important that the bride feels like a princess on her wedding day, but she doesn?t need to spend so much money. ?
