Wedding On The 3rd Of July

Erica~ I am having sparklers as well at my wedding. Are you having an evening wedding? I`m having a hard time deciding when to use mine. Our wedding is at 6:30. I think it will be too light out when we leave the church. And not enough people when we leave the reception. Where did you get your sparklers?

I`m not sure when to use the sparklers either...I guess after the reception. We are getting married in our home state VA and we haven`t been home for over a year so we`re "hoping" that the guest will want to stay around and visit long enough for it to get dark. Are you getting married July 3rd too? What else are you planning to do? I`m having a hard time coming up with anything else unique to do. I want this to be memorable. Good luck to you. Oh buy the way I haven`t gotten the sparklers yet.

For food, consider red and blue kool-aid for the kids. I have seen blue corn tortillas chips and large grocery chains will usually put out tortilla chips and potato chips in red and blue prior to 4th of July weekend. Serve salad with blue-cheese dressing. How about stuffed tomatoes or red bell peppers as appetizers? Also, not everything has to be colorful to be in keeping with your theme.

For favors, M&Ms or jelly beans can be ordered in any color you want off of their website and through bulk candy stores online. You could also wrap 3 votive candles or taper candles with tulle or ribbon (1 red, 1 white, 1 blue). Have matchbooks printed as favors since these will come in handy for lighting the sparklers later on. Note: If your reception is indoors, put a note on the sparklers asking people not to light them insidoors for their own safety. What about individually wrapped little debbie blueberry minimuffins for everyone to take home?

Once I made blueberry muffins out of canned blueberries and forgot to completely drain the liquid from the can. The result was blue muffins. It was still very yummy. Consider that for your cake or the favors.

Best wishes to you July brides. Just a word of caution on using sparklers at your wedding -- I`m sure you`ve already thought of this and planned for it, but in case it slipped your mind (easy to do when overwhelmed with planning a wedding) be sure to stay at least 5 feet from anyone holding a sparkler. A friend of mine ended up with several small burn marks on her wedding gown from the sparks (the dress was silk). The sparkler affect looks neat but can burn your dress if you get too close to one of the sparklers. I didn`t watch her closely during the sparklers so I dont` know how close she truly got to any of them, but no doubt there were many burn marks on her dress.