Your daughter or son is getting married!! This is one of those major milestones in life that you have either anticipated or dreaded for a long time. Regardless of your mindset, every Mother of the Bride (MOB) or Mother of the Groom (MOG) needs help in dealing with the emotional, logistical and financial challenges of planning the big day.

Times have changed (don’t they always) and there are no more rules about what constitutes a wedding. The one rule for the wedding day is that it is about your son or daughter and their fiancé and not yourself, no matter what the financial arrangements for the wedding may be. Thinking through the entire process and planning up front can help make the overall process that much more enjoyable.

There are many available books on the topic including:

“The Knot Guide For The Mother of the Bride” by Carley Roney and Cindy Luu
“It’s Her Wedding But I’ll Cry If I Want To: A Survival Guide for the Mother of the Bride” by Leslie Milk
“The Pocket Idiot’s Guide to Being the Mother of the Bride” by Amy Zavatto

among many, many others.

What never ceases to amaze me, however, is that given the absolute wealth of information on the Web, the information for Mothers of the Bride/Mothers of the Groom on the web focuses on picking the outfit and accessories for the day. There are articles which offer high level advice on your role. But weddings, as we all know, are highly emotional events that can rapidly take you into unfamiliar territory that can and has ruined relationships and torn apart families. What is currently lacking on the web is information from mothers who have been through the wedding planning and who have advice on:

1. Handling the bride turned Bridezilla.
2. Establishing a relationship with a fiance’ that you don’t really like.
3. Communicating to your son or daughter about areas where you feel they are being
unnecessarily insensitive to you or your spouse.
4. Reining in costs that seem to escalate on a daily basis.

We have gathered the best videos and resources for the Mother of the Bride/ Mother of the Groom that we could find at www.lipstickwisdom.com. Be forewarned, the majority focus on the dress and accessories. What about you mothers that have survived and thrived during the wedding planning process? If you have advice and stories to share, go to www.lipstickwisdom.com and empower the rest of us with your hard earned wisdom.

Better TV’s Audra Lowe speaks with Roger Perry, clothing designer, on some dress options and advice for the mother of the bride.

Long bride’s mother’s wedding dresses are fashionable, get expert tips and advice on weddings and dresses in this free video.

The sleeves of a bride’s mother’s wedding dress can be crucial to the look, get expert tips and advice on weddings and dresses in this free video.

If you have a great figure, mothers of the bride and groom should try on and explore form fitting dresses.

When you’re thinking about your accessories, one important item to remember is a handbag. We all need somewhere to put some Kleenex, and perhaps a cell phone, and a tube of lipstick. One little tip that I would like to pass along is that if you can find a bag that has beading such as these, that blends in with your dress, they’re much more serviceable than the dyed bags. The satin bags that we dye get hand prints and smudge. These will go on and on for many, many years and you can wear them with a lot of different things. Selecting jewelry is important. If you have something very special that you would like to wear from a mother or someone else, I think that’s a really nice thing to do. If you don’t, go ahead and get something that is truly a good quality piece of jewelry. Don’t try to get by with something you had in the drawer for twenty years that’s marginal. We have some items here that are arkoses and pearl, and they’re not as expensive as the real thing; but, they are very good quality items and they will really sparkle and just bring a finishing touch to your outfit. Everyone may not know exactly what it is, but they?ll say, “Boy she really had it together and everything just looked gorgeous on her.” A little sparkle, I think, is good for all of us, especially on a very special day like this.

The Bride’s mother’s wedding dress color is almost as important as the bride’s, get expert tips and advice on weddings and dresses in this free video.

Be realistic with the time frame and wedding planning stress when thinking about losing weight for a wedding.

Dress shoes for a bride’s mother’s wedding dress can be hard to find, get expert tips and advice on weddings and dresses in this free video.

A piece of advice from a mother of the bride
From perfectbound.blogspot.com/2008/07/piece-of-advise-from-mother-of-bride.html

Wedding planning is not for the faint hearted. Fortunately, and by its very nature, getting married is not something you do alone. There’s the groom, of course, but when he’s fed up with color palettes and floral arrangement, there is a whole slew of people ready to hurl advise your way. Take my advice and listen to them. Especially if the advise is coming from someone like Diane. Diane emailed me a few weeks ago to share the details of her daughter’s wedding and exchange information. I thought it would be fun for her to share some lessons learned now that the wedding is over. I think you’ll enjoy what she has to say. Thanks Diane! 1. Decide what is most important to you… then pick the right moment and tell your daughter how you feel about it.My most important wish was I wanted to go alone with my daughter when we first went shopping for “the”dress. I wanted to savor that special moment when my daughter tried on the very first dress…and saw herself as a bride! I think of this a the “Ohhhhh”moment.

2. Allow yourself and your daughter a Bridezilla meltdown moment and be able to laugh about it afterwards! There’s a lot of emotion and unending details in a wedding. No one is perfect…

3. Ask yourself what she needs from you most of all.Is it a sounding board, an idea person, an errand person, a phone contact person.Then have a conversation about how you can really help her most.Keep remembering it is HER wedding!
4. Write her a letter and then read it to her at a quiet moment. Sometimes we don’t take the time to stop and think about the experience. It is a once-in-a-lifetime milestone and it’s easy to get caught up in it all.One of my most poignant moments was the morning of the wedding…Between getting hair and makeup done we sat outside on the patio and I read my letter to my daughter. It will always be our special moment. I cried, she cried.
I think it helped me feel so much more calm and in control of my emotions the rest of the day.

5. Take time for yourself. Think through all the logistics of getting ready, getting to the rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Getting to the church on time!It adds so much stress. Hopefully you won’t have to call and plead for someone to bring your things across town so you can get ready. Take time for yourself so you can be calm and cool!

6. It is my belief that the best wedding gift you can ever give your child is to really “love” their partner. How you treat your new son-in-law goes along way in helping the marriage succeed. Try to talk about something else besides the wedding!
7. Take pictures all along the way. The wedding is not just one day.We loved “Meet the Parents”night and really laughed watching Steve Martin and Martin Sheen in”Father of the Bride” We have wonderful photos which bring back all the memories.

8. Encourage everyone to wear their wedding shoes ahead of time. Bring moleskin and scissors on the day of the wedding. Give everyone a chance to line their shoes with moleskin. We had no blisters and we danced the night away! of course, the brides shoes did break!

9. Accept the fact that everything is going to take MORE time than you think it will. Friday night commute traffic… what a nightmare before a 6 pm rehearsal and rehearsal dinner. Not a good time to pick up wedding dog from the groomers!

10. Help everyone deal with the inevitable disappointments. Something definitely will go wrong… My motto is: The best weddings are ones where something really goes wrong… because they have the best stories!