Who says a wedding is about the bride?

SUMMER is around the corner and that means one thing -- it’s time to start saving for wedding season.

Because I have given about $5,000 in wedding gifts to friends, relatives and even acquaintances, I feel I should get a say in their special day. If my entry fee to a wedding reception is a $119 Wedgwood India sugar bowl, I feel I can give everyone at least five tips on how to give me, and most of their guests, a better time:

5. Forget tossing the bouquet and garter.

Although it’s demeaning and cringe-inducing enough to see a bunch of grown women (Hi, Aunt Julia!) scrambling for the bouquet, it’s more pathetic to see the garter tossed onto the floor as the wedding’s single men try to slink quietly away. Worse, most often the single male catching it is the bride’s 8-year-old nephew, who hasn’t been indoctrinated into the ways of SoCal hipster bachelorhood.

4. Lose the loser single-girl table.

You know the table. The table to which all single women seem to be relegated. The bride is no longer a single girl, so she’s letting you know, as if the big-bucks extravaganza at the Sheraton weren’t enough. You can’t take a casual boyfriend or he thinks you’re getting “ideas,” and suddenly he has to participate in an important three-on-three basketball tournament that weekend. So, you show up with a smile -- but not alone because you have that $105 Bernardaud Naxos round tart platter -- and are seated with nine other women who brought only appliances, a gravy boat, cereal bowls and a relish dish. Still worse: The sympathetic bridal pat and “Don’t worry, hon, your time will come.” The only answer? Heavy drinking.

3. Forget “destination weddings”; instead, have “convenience weddings.”

Some brides want you not only to pay $150 for a Juicy Couture pet bed, but also to spring for a $500 airline ticket to Hawaii and $200-a-night hotel room to attend their special day. Some even market a destination wedding to Vegas as a “fun road trip.” I thought the whole allure of getting married in Vegas was getting drunk and eloping. Either way, a “convenience wedding” allows you to get married in close proximity to all your friends and family, so they can leave the reception at any time to crawl into their own bed and cry, or do laundry, or stop by a liquor store.

2. No more asking for money.

Don’t put that on your invitation. I’m from Fresno (and I have relatives in Taft) and I think that’s beyond tacky. If you need money, you shouldn’t have spent the equivalent of a down payment on a house by staging matrimonial theater and registered for a $195 Williams-Sonoma Deruta cake stand. If you have your wedding in a public park, have the reception at a high school cafeteria and register at Target where the highest-priced thing you ask for is a $40 blender, you would get the blender and a $75 check. No questions asked.

1. We’re over the white gowns.

White makes everyone look fat. In many Asian cultures white is for mourning -- and that may be true for at least half the weddings I will go to -- so brides wear rich golds and reds. The colors are far more flattering and dramatic and no one, not even that copycat from accounting, will be able to wear the same color. And besides, you lived with the guy for 10 years. We’re not buying it. Not even your parents.

I hope all couples think hard about these ways to make your wedding more enjoyable for me. And if she plans accordingly and has an open bar, and plan accordingly, a bride might just get that coveted $269.99 KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer -- in pink, of course.

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Barbara E. Hernandez may be reached at weekend@

latimes.com.