AisleDash

This is Part Two of our series of interviews with Jay's Bridal and Special Occasion, a one-stop bridal salon located in Gainesville, Florida and online at jaysbridal.net. Throughout the series, we'll discuss everything wedding, ranging from bridal gowns to music to tuxedos.

Shopping for wedding gowns online is becoming more and more popular, but in many cases, it's a truly frightening thing to undertake. How can you feel confident that you're ordering the right dress, and the right size? What if you want the assistance you'd receive in a store without having to travel? That click of the button just feels so final.

One of the unique things Jay's offers is its online store. It began in 2005, and since then, Jay's has sold dresses to brides as far away as Australia, Ireland, and China. And what's so great about their online shop is that customers can still get the personal relationship and experience that they would get if they walked into the brick and mortar store.

This is Part One of our series of interviews with Jay's Bridal and Special Occasion, a one-stop bridal salon located in Gainesville, Florida and online at jaysbridal.net. Throughout the series, we'll discuss everything wedding, ranging from bridal gowns to music to tuxedos.

Like the fashion industry, the bridal industry sees major changes from one season to the next, and few salons are as familiar with wedding trends as Jay's Bridal and Special Occasion, located in Gainesville, Florida. The store has been a staple for North Central Florida for over 70 years, and has specialized in bridal since the eighties.

Jay's associates Erica Lyn and Joann recently sat down with AisleDash share some tips on shopping for a wedding dress – it's not like shoe shopping, you know!

Even more than fruity drinks with paper umbrellas or sun-kissed skin, images of summer flip-flops are conjured in my head when I think of the beach. And what's a better accessory to pack in your suitcase than the perfect pair of flip-flops when you're traveling to a fun, beach wedding. Wherever the nuptials are being held -- from Fiji to Mexico to Cape Cod -- there will hopefully be sand to bury your toes in and a full weekend with which to enjoy the warmer weather and the flip-flops you brought along with you.

There are plenty of perfect flip-flops to match the sunny beach wedding at retail stores such as J. Crew and Ann Taylor and online shoe mega-stores like Zappos.com. Choose your favorite style, your favorite color and throw them in your carry-on to slip on as soon as you set foot in the beach town you're heading to.

The great thing about flip-flops is you can slip them off as soon as the sand is too tempting and throw them into any beach bag or purse. They are compact and perfect for carrying on your arm or donning on your feet. The choice is yours but with the fun styles in the gallery, it'll be impossible to resist the lure of summer's greatest footwear completely.

Bridesmaids dresses aren't cheap, and while you certainly don't want to ask your attendants to break the bank to buy their dresses (and you don't want to go broke buying dresses for them), we understand that you don't want to give up on the vision you have of your wedding day. Sometimes part of that vision is a bridesmaid's dress. An expensive bridesmaid's dress.

If you find a dress you like, you very well might be able to find it for a lower cost online. However, there are several things we ask that you keep in mind it you opt to order bridesmaids' gowns online:

I love shopping online, in secondhand shops, and at estate sales for jewelry. You almost always find better prices than jewelry stores offer, and it can be like searching for hidden treasure. Finding a great deal can be like hitting the lotto (for a small jackpot, anyway) -- but with great deals like this comes great risk. It's easy to get ripped off if you get too excited about your find to slow down and take precautions, and so often when something seems too good to be true, it's because you missed something.

First of all, check all jewelry descriptions as thoroughly as possible. If no one can tell you what kind of metal it is, look for a stamp on the inside of the ring or on the clasp of a necklace or bracelet. If it's stamped 14K, that's good. If it says 14KGF or 14KP, that means it's only gold plated. In the case of gemstones, are they real or simulated? Natural or fracture filled? You can't always determine these things from the description, which brings me to the next thing you need to do.

When you shop at big box stores like Costco, there are only a few things that don't come in packs of 12 or more. Luckily, diamonds are one of those things you can buy individually. But would you want to? The store isn't exactly known for romance, but it is known for value, and you can actually get quite a bargain when you shop in their jewelry section.

You might think you'd have to compromise on quality when you shop there, but that's not the case, either. Costco carries a wide selection from lower quality diamonds to high quality pieces that might even be nicer than you find in neighboring jewelry stores. Costco is not a jewelry store, though. Their employees are not trained to educate customers on diamonds, but all of their diamonds are clearly marked with their specs, so if you know your four C's, you can browse Costco's rings without the "help" of some commission-minded salesperson. This might actually be an advantage.

Boston area brides, get ready! The Filene's Basement Running of the Brides wedding dress sale happens tomorrow starting at 8am -- but the hard core brides are already camped out in front of the store by now.

In short, the RotB is a huge one-day sale where you can get designer gowns at massive discounts -- gowns that regularly sell for $10,000 are on sale for no more than $699. You can imagine the kind of chaos this creates. (Read Ilona's recap of one RotB sale here.)

You don't want to show up at this event without a plan. Miss Toucan at Weddingbee, a veteran of Boston's RotB, wrote up a list of helpful hints and tactics that will help you survive the day and come home with the gown you've always wanted. It's time to gather your team, create a strategy, and get ready run!

Buying gifts is stressful. It's hard to come up with the perfect idea, and then to keep doing it for every birthday, anniversary, and whatever other holidays you celebrate together with gifts.

If your girl loves jewelry (few women don't), we've got the perfect gift idea for you -- a charm bracelet. It's great, because you can keep adding to it, simply picking out new charms for each occasion. They make charms for everything, so no matter what her interests may be, you'll be able to find a charm for it, and she's probably got plenty of interests to get you through at least a few years of special occasions. Start by giving her the bracelet with one or two charms on it, and then give her charms to add on later.

If you give her a new charm on every holiday, that will get boring, so this is a good idea to mix in with other gifts for those times when you're just stumped, or it can be part of a group of gifts. Look through the gallery below for examples of some charms that are available (we're serious when we tell you they make one for everything!).

Britney Spears was spied shopping for a wedding dress. Sigh. At least she wasn't shopping in one. Well, not this time, anyway.

And because she's all about being sweet and feminine and frilly, she hit the Monique Lhuillier boutique. Monique Lhuillier is the same designer who designed her unfortunately cheeky lace gown for her equally unfortunate 2004 wedding to K-Fed.

By the way, ML seems to be The Place for supposedly un-engaged starlets to shop for wedding gowns, as Scarlett Johansson was just seen shopping there a little while ago. However, she totally denies being engaged to hottie Ryan Reynolds. Fine, spoil my fun. But, back to Britney ...

According to SFGate.com's Daily Dish, screen siren Scarlet Johannson was seen shopping for wedding dresses last week.

Just last month, the 23-year-old stunner denied rumors that boyfriend Ryan Reynolds had proposed to her, but it's hard to believe that she, her mom, and her sister would spend a considerable amount of time at the Monique Lhuillier boutique looking at a variety of wedding gowns if there wasn't some truth to those rumors, right?

Johannson and Reynolds have been dating for almost a year, before which Reynolds was engaged to singer Alanis Morissette. Should these two get married and have kids, watch out Suri and Shiloh -- the merging of these two hotties might bring a brand new meaning to "genetically gifted."

You already know that you shouldn't wear your wedding dress in public before the wedding -- it reduces the effect of that grand, dramatic walk down the aisle (plus, some folks think it's bad luck). Some brides who opt for a more casual wedding gown look for an excuse to wear it out after the vows are swapped, and I'm not opposed to that. After all, if P. Diddy (or Puffy, or Sean Combs, or whatever he's going by now) invites me to his White Party, I will TOTALLY be scouring the destination wedding gown racks.

However, if you are a celebrity trying to present a wholesome (or sane) image to the public in order to win back custody of your children, you would do well NOT to wear your wedding dress out and about with your boyfriend du jour while car shopping, especially if your wedding gown happens to be of the backless, butt-cheek skimming variety. Britney Spears, honey, are you listening?

I just got back from a vacation in Miami and I simply have to share this gem with Aisledash readers: Miracle Mile (in Coral Gables, FL) is a veritable wonderland for brides - a gorgeous business district where everything you need for your wedding (and I mean everything) is within walking distance. It really doesn't get any easier than this! If you're engaged and visiting Miami in the near future (or maybe planning a destination wedding there) I highly recommend you put Coral Gables in you itinerary.

There are over 25 beauty salons (everything from hairdressers to waxing studios and med-spas), 15 jewelers, 20 bridal shoppes, six stationers, six florists, five formal wear stores for men, an alteration shop, lingerie stores ... the list goes on!

Not only can you prepare for your wedding here - you can also hold your wedding right on Miracle Mile! In addition to the many restaurants in the area, there are two venues that are extremely popular with Miami brides - The Westin Colonnade and the Hyatt Regency.

(As you can imagine Miracle Mile is no secret to chic Miami brides - and now you're in the know!)

When you become engaged or married, it often comes to pass that much of the holiday shopping duties fall upon the more feminine of us in the relationship. In many ways, that's good -- I certainly enjoy shopping more than my husband, and I like the challenge of coming up with a creative gift. To a point.

Sometimes, though, it's just really hard to come up with a good gift. For those of us who don't want to give or receive more "stuff" just for the sake of giving and receiving something, it can get especially difficult to find a gift that will be personal and useful without resorting to a gift card. Where do you turn?

This article on MSN Money really spelled things out for me. It breaks types of thoughtful, clutter-free (and generally eco-friendly) gifts into three categories: Consumables, Services and Experiences, and Organizers and Other Life-Enhancing Gadgets. My holiday shopping just got a teensy bit easier.

I am fond of Ikea, I admit. I like the stylish stuff at reasonable prices, all that blond wood, and I love the Swedish meatballs. I do not, however, enjoy shopping at Ikea. The crowds, the pre-plotted path through the displays, the long, long lineups at cash and at delivery bay do not add up to a fun day out for me.

Seems the Norwegians do not feel the same way. Not only do they voluntarily make Ikea shopping trips part of holiday outings, they are now lining up to sleep there. Ikea Hostel has opened in Oslo, providing an opportunity for an inexpensive overnight warehouse in dormitories of 30 beds.

It gets better: There is even a private honeymoon suite, with a round bed, chandelier, and breakfast in bed. You can get up to whatever you like all night long -- and you'll be able to see just fine, as the lights, though dimmed, are never turned off -- as long as you're out when the warehouse opens at ten in the morning. This shouldn't be hard, because the warehouse staff start moving flats of stock at four. In the morning.

You'd think it would be a hard sell, but no: there were 1200 applicants for 150 rooms. So if this appeals to you, you'd better get your name in soon!

For my birthday this year, my husband got me a vacuum cleaner.

I'll let you think about that for a moment.

We've been married a long time, and we HAD just bought a new house, and our old vacuum cleaner completely conked out the week before my birthday. And in his defense, he bought me a Dyson, not just some cheap DustBuster.

But still. A vacuum cleaner. When I told one of my girlfriends, she said, "You're one holiday away from exchanging bowling balls, aren't you?"

I am not alone; my husband is a wonderful, kind, loving man with absolutely NO IDEA how to buy a gift for me. Or his mother. Or anyone, with the possible exception of our children. Who are boys. Men are just like that, at least according to an article in today's Daily Mail. Essentially the article argues that men are poor shoppers because it's in their genes; they are programmed to be hunters, not gatherers, which impairs their ability to go out and choose a gift and wrap it up and present it.

Hmm.

My favorite bit is this: "there is a scientific reason why men don't like wrapping presents. Men and women's eyes are constructed differently. Men suffer greater eyestrain than women because, as hunters, their eyes are genetically configured for long distances - for scanning the horizon for the next kill. As a gatherer and nurturer, a woman's eyes are better suited for close-range activities, making it easier for her to work on the fine detail."

Riiiiight.

The moral, it seems, is that if we just accept that our men are programmed to kill things and not to pick out jewelry, we will all be happier. Somehow, it leaves me feeling like I really lucked out with the vacuum. God only knows what my husband MIGHT have brought home.