wedding dress blog

Kathy’s Wedding Showcase has moved back to the family ranch in Rough and Ready, where owner Kathy Niesen is honing her boutique style of wedding consultations.

Niesen brings brides, grooms and mothers into the warmth and comfort of her home for food and wine tastings, to look at invitations, talk to music DJs, review photographers’ portfolios, ponder floral arrangements and consider other details of weddings and receptions.

“It was always my favorite thing to work with brides,” said Niesen, who for years was known for her Kathy’s Hallmark store in Grass Valley.

She now works with 60 vendors, most in the local wedding industry, and offering product samples and portfolios. She tailors her introductions to those she thinks would most suit her bride and groom.

“I take them everywhere. I take them by the hand” over a year of planning she typically spends with the women she calls “my brides.”

Niesen charges $250 for her services and receives 1 percent or less commission from the vendors she represents, she said. She sees her work as bringing business into the county by highlighting local venues and vendors.

“I would like to represent every person in the local wedding industry,” Niesen said. “I am not in competition with them.”

For 18 years, Niesen ran Kathy’s Hallmark in the Kmart shopping center in southern Grass Valley — five of those years in a corner location she didn’t want, she said. “It nearly destroyed me,” she said.

She already had shifted from Hallmark products to weddings when she moved to Bank Street downtown two years ago. Her window dressing caught the eye of the folks filming Sony commercials, and they sent a camera bouncing down the street in front of her shop.

After two years downtown, Niesen in February moved to the Ennor Niesen ranch; six generations have lived there since founding it in 1852, she said.

BOSTON — An ad placed on Craigslist by prosecutors has not turned up any new accusations against the Boston University medical student charged with killing one masseuse and robbing a second one.

A law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday that police have not been contacted by any other potential victims since Philip Markoff’s arrest last week.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case.

Markoff is charged with murder in the April 14 killing of Julissa Brisman, a 25-year-old masseuse from New York City who he allegedly met at a posh Boston hotel through Craigslist. He’s also accused of robbing another masseuse he met at a different Boston hotel, also through Craigslist.

Markoff is also being investigated in an attempted robbery of a woman at a Rhode Island hotel.

After Markoff’s arrest, Suffolk District Attorney Daniel Conley urged other victims to report any crimes by Markoff to police. Authorities also placed their own ad on Craigslist encouraging victims to come forward.

But as of Thursday, no one else had reported being a victim of Markoff’s.

Authorities still hope that if Markoff did rob other people, those victims will come forward, but they realize that prostitutes and others who advertise erotic services through Craigslist may be reluctant to report a crime.

“This is a population of people who are not readily going to come forward,” the official said.

Last week, investigators posted an item in the “erotic services” section of Craigslist asking, asking, “Were You Robbed After Using Craigslist?”

The ad said investigators believed that both women were attacked by a man “targeting female Craigslist advertisers who would be reluctant to report the crimes.”

Markoff has pleaded not guilty.

Hello lovely girlies I have today been procrastinating at work (naughty pickle) and started looking for bridesmaid dresses and I have fallen in love with VOH flowery and polka dot dresses!

I like them because I think they will suit all the figures I have (which are quite different) and they aren’t a rip off either. Also, I was thinking of a bit of a kitsch seaside theme anyway, which they fit into. Where I grew up was a big seaside resort in the 50’s so I quite like that I’m keeping a bit of that.

However, I’m not sure what sort of bridal dress I should look for to go with them? I couldn’t really decide what sort of thing I was looking for anyway so I guess at least this might give me some direction.

I don’t really want a short one I don’t think, which is kind of a classic 50’s style as it’ll cut me off mid-chunky calf and I want to be a bit different from the bridesmaids. Any ideas muchos appreciated.

HALIFAX — Residents of a small Nova Scotia town are furious at their Roman Catholic clergy for banning Catholics from holding wedding receptions inside a popular, church-owned community hall, if the couples aren’t also married — or commit to raising their children — inside the church.

Meanwhile, non-Catholic couples who marry outside the Church are still free to use the facility for their own receptions.

“Everybody’s up in arms about this,” says Patrick Cormier, a retired businessman and longtime resident of Cheticamp, N.S., a picturesque town of 3,000 people on Cape Breton’s famous Cabot Trail.

“The Catholic Church is always preaching against discrimination and racism, and now that’s exactly what they’re doing — but they’re discriminating against their own people.”

For decades families in Cheticamp have held wedding parties in the Acadian Centre, a former gypsum plant in the heart of town, that was sold to the church half-a-century ago for $1 and turned into a reception hall and meeting place.

Since then the centre has been maintained and renovated by local volunteers, and each year townspeople raise thousands of dollars for its upkeep.

In November Cheticamp resident Lucille Timmons booked the hall for her son’s wedding reception. Because his fiancee is not Catholic, the couple planned to get married in a Protestant church and hold the reception at the Acadian Centre.

But in February, Rev. Peter LeBlanc, Cheticamp’s parish priest, told Timmons that because her son is Catholic, but is not having a Catholic wedding, he is forbidden from using the centre for the reception — according to rules handed down by the area’s Catholic bishop, Raymond Lahey.

Timmons says LeBlanc agreed to let her son and his Protestant bride use the centre, but only if they promised to raise their children in the Catholic faith.

“The strange thing is,” says Timmons, “if my son wasn’t Catholic they wouldn’t have this problem. If both he and his fiancee were Protestant, they could use the Acadian Centre without any conditions.

“It makes no sense. It just feels like the Catholic Church is living in the 1700s.”

At least two other couples with Catholic ties, who wanted to use the centre for their wedding receptions, have been turned down.

Neither Lahey or LeBlanc responded to requests for interviews on Thursday.

Cormier, himself a Catholic, says even though the centre is owned by the Church, it has no moral right to dictate who can or cannot use the facility, because the people of Cheticamp have funded its upkeep and administration over the years.

He says the Church should resolve the problem by donating the centre to the town.

“The building belongs to the diocese, but whatever is inside belongs to the people,” Cormier says. “It was built by the people, for the people — for all people.”

Timmons says she doesn’t blame LeBlanc, the parish priest, who she says is simply following orders from the bishop.

But Wallace Aucoin, who chairs the centre’s volunteer board of directors, says LeBlanc is responsible for the fracas. He says the priest’s real aim is to close the centre because he’s jealous of the money it raises every year from the community — money he feels might otherwise go to the parish collection plate.

“His ultimate goal is to close the Acadian Centre, because it gets in his way,” Aucoin says.

It’s like losing your virginity—once the innocence is gone, you can’t ever get it back, and you might just feel dirty afterward.

Make good decisions here, people…

Flynetonline.com

OK, ready to be spoiled rotten?

In that case, read on and then send your thank-you vibes to the spies like us who sent in the following report.

One of my coworkers was in Los Angeles on business, and when I called her and told her about Grey’s filming the wedding scene, she freaked and found the set.

She was there for the lunch break (she said there were two or three paps there too) but she said later Katherine Heigl was standing in the doorway with T.R. Knight, and she was smoking in a wedding dress. She had a big jacket/robe thing over it, but she said there was no doubt it was a wedding dress. She said Katherine was only in the doorway a minute or two before they called her back in, but she has no doubt that it was a wedding dress.

Should you trust what a friend of a friend of a friend has to say about the sitch? Well, you can decide for yourselves, but every part of this rings true to us.

The cake was made for the marriage of Princess Louise and the Marquis of Lorne and is on sale at an antiques fair in Birmingham.

The one-inch cake is wrapped in antique parchment dating back to 1871.

The princess’s wedding to a commoner was controversial and is said to have outraged the Prince of Wales.

‘Unusual object’

Antique dealer John Shepherd, who bought the cake from a private seller, is asking for £145.

He said: “This was obviously treasured by the Royal Family and I believe things should be treasured and looked after.”

He said the cake had been sold to him by a descendant of “a noble family from Kent”.

The entire cake was 5ft high and would have taken three months to make, the auctioneers said.

A spokeswoman for the Antiques for Everyone fair, which is at Birmingham’s NEC until Sunday, said whoever buys the cake should not eat it.

Last week we exclusively spoiled (sorry!) the series finale of The Hills when we told you a legal, real-life Speidi wedding will take place. Bet no one saw that coming after all their play fighting in the first few episodes.

Well, guess what we know now! Things about their rehearsal dinner…

Before the couple exchange vows April 25 at an undisclosed (for now) location in Pasadena, Calif., they’ll hold a wedding rehearsal dinner Friday, April 24, at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant Cut in Beverly Hills, a source tells E! News exclusively. Of course Hills cameras will be filming all this, so we’ll all be able to witness Spencer’s snide comments to Heidi’s mom.

We have also been assured that this marriage will last forever and ever. “They are committed to each other,” says the source. “They have been going to prewedding couple’s counseling [with] a pastor.”

As soon as our source exclusively reveals where Speidi is registered, we’ll let you know so we can all pay tribute to the greatest love this world has ever known. A love so inspiring, they’re going to change Valentine’s Day to April 25.

—Reporting by Ken Baker