Encore celebration
Love is lovelier the second time around. At least that’s how Andy Williams described it in the Grammy Award-winning record “The Second Time Around.” It’s a sentiment brides and grooms getting married for the second time can certainly appreciate, as they are usually more experienced and bring a different set of expectations — and a more personal style — to planning their second wedding.
“It used to be that second-time brides were much more conservative,” said Wayne Gurnick, a Los Angeles-based wedding and party planner. “But there are no rules anymore, and it’s all about creating an emotional, memorable event that speaks to the interests and lifestyle of the couple.”
“The only rule is to decide what’s appropriate for [you],” said Anna Post, spokeswoman for the Emily Post Institute. “You don’t need to tamp down your celebration just because it’s your second wedding or, as it’s sometimes called, an encore celebration.” Your wedding “should be dictated by your budget and lifestyle and your personalities — nothing else.”
On the other hand, Judith Martin, who writes the nationally syndicated Miss Manners etiquette column, said that a proper second wedding should be small, “although we want it to be frankly festive.”
Either way, most couples having a second wedding put more time and thought into what feels appropriate for them and their situation.
When Juana Rodriguez, 39, married the first time, she had a huge wedding with eight bridesmaids. But when she married Rodrigo Ochoa, 40, on April 2, it was a smaller event, with a ceremony in Pacific Palisades at the Parish of St. Matthew Episcopal Church, where she works at the parish school. She wore a white Kirstie Kelly trumpet-silhouette gown with an arm-length veil, and hosted 100 guests at the reception in Ventura. Her wedding party consisted of a maid of honor and best man only.
“I’m older and, hopefully, wiser, and I [was] much more relaxed about planning the wedding,” Rodriguez said. She and her fiancé at first planned a small ceremony in Hawaii, but changed their minds. “It’s my fiancé’s first wedding, and his parents wanted us to have the wedding here — and we wanted to honor them,” she said.
The white question
Though it used to be taboo, many second brides now wear white dresses.
“You don’t need to apologize for any previous wedding with your dress,” said Post, author of “Do I Have to Wear White? Emily Post Answers America’s Top Wedding Questions” (HarperCollins, 2008).
Etiquette expert Martin generally agrees: “The dress or suit may be white,” she said, but should not look like “the costume of [a] shy young bride.”
“As second brides often don’t marry in church, but in their homes or outdoors, sometimes they choose a suit or a dress,” said Kirstie Kelly, a bridal gown designer with a showroom in Brentwood. “But we always take into account the bride and the groom’s aesthetic.”
Second weddings offer couples a chance to show a more personal style. For example, Gurnick planned a second wedding for a South Carolina couple that kicked off with a welcome party on Friday, followed by a fish fry and hayride Saturday and a Sunday wedding at which the bride arrived with her father in a horse-drawn carriage.
Usually more established in their careers, many encore couples pay for the wedding themselves and are free to focus on personal touches that speak to their sensibilities and situations.
“I wasn’t planning on a big wedding this time, but it was my husband’s first marriage and I wanted to make a statement to him and my guests that this was very special for me and not in any way less important because I had been married before,” said Kristie Moomey, a post-production executive at Turner Network Television.
Her wedding to Arthur Cuyugan, an IT project manager for an entertainment company, was a traditional religious service at a Beverly Hills church. Moomey had five bridesmaids and wore a traditional white Monique Lhuillier gown with lace and tulle and maintained such standard wedding customs as throwing the bouquet and having her garter removed by her husband at their cocktail reception at Shutters on the Beach.
“We live in a time of self-expression, and these couples are telling the world who they are together, and their statement can be loud and colorful or more subdued and traditional,” said Colin Cowie, a New York- and L.A.-based wedding designer and planner.
Couples getting married the second time should understand the etiquette of presents, said Post. The idea of shower and wedding gifts, she said, is to get a couple started in life, and guests who attended the bride or groom’s first wedding may feel they have already done their part to help with that. There is nothing wrong with an encore couple registering for and accepting gifts, but they should not expect them from people who attended the first wedding, Post added.
Bring in the kids
If children from a previous marriage want to participate, it’s important to include them. But if they aren’t interested, “it shouldn’t be a command performance,” said Post.
Gurnick said he planned a wedding for a man whose wife had died, and after the groom exchanged rings with his new bride he kneeled down and presented his 6-year-old daughter with a promise ring. “He promised her that he would always be there for her and that she wasn’t losing him but gaining a mommy. It was a very touching moment,” Gurnick said.
When Kymberly Marciano-Strauss married Evan Strauss during a sunset ceremony on the beach in Mexico, their three children from their previous marriages served as the wedding party. “I was 23 when I got married the first time, and the ceremony was about me,” said Marciano-Strauss, a former model who’s now a Beverly Hills-based fashion photographer specializing in children and teens. “But for my second wedding, when I was 35, the ceremony was about blending our families together.”
After the couple exchanged vows standing inside of a heart-shaped garland, their children joined them with their own garlands that were tied together to form a circle of love they released into the ocean.
Cowie, who planned the Marciano-Strauss wedding, said, “Children play a vital role in the success of the unit and these connecting rituals can be a way to make them — as well as their guests — feel part of the ceremony.”
– Shelley Gabert, Custom Publishing Writer