By Sandra Lowe Sanchez
Photography by Winfield Little

The bride wore her tennis shoes. It was all part of her plan.

Indeed, Laura Aranda wanted her wedding to Dr. Ray Jones to be enjoyable, not just for her and her groom, but for all her guests.

"I want it to be fun," she said a few weeks before the wedding. "The whole time I want people to be comfortable."

And that's the way it was, she reported after the April 29 wedding. From her dress and shoes to a table with butcher block paper and crayons reserved just for children at the hotel where the reception was held, the plans turned the couple's wedding into an event that will be remembered because of the relaxed atmosphere and joy it brought -- just as Laura had envisioned it.

"I didn't want it to be stuffy and formal," she says. "It was fun and everybody had fun and that's what I was concerned with."

Instead of following traditions, some of which can create tensions while planning the wedding -- not to mention at the ceremony and the reception -- Laura confidently picked those she wanted and rewrote others to please herself, her groom and their guests.

But like more and more brides today, Laura planned her wedding with the help of a bridal consultant, Mary Keene of Angel Weddings. Today, more weddings are pulled off with the help of a bridal consultant. With more people waiting until their careers are under their belt to get married, busy work schedules and our society's transitional nature are leading more career couples to seek out bridal consultants to help them arrange everything from flowers to guest accommodations.

A niche in time

Bridal consultants once served the bride and mother-of-the-bride of wealthy families, but in the 20 years that the Connecticut-based Association of Bridal Consultants has been in existence, its members have noted a change in clientele. The organization now represents 2,300 bridal consultants in 25 countries, and has noted a 40 percent growth rate over the last three years. Those consultants are reporting that this year business is up 25 to 40 percent.

Association officials and members note that their clientele today is largely middle class, with both the bride and the groom holding career-track jobs.

"Because they're (both) working, they can afford it," Keene says about couples hiring bridal consultants. But the fact that both bride and groom are working also means that they don't have the luxury of time, she adds.

"We've seen a continuing increase in (the number of consultants and the number of brides using them), and it's based on demographic factors," notes Gerard J. Monaghan, president of the association. "The traditional wedding planners, the bride herself and the mother of the bride, are working,"

In addition, more brides are like Laura, holding the wedding in their hometown where they grew up but living away from home, making planning all that more difficult.

That's where the bridal consultant comes in. The consultant, or wedding planner, considers the couple's budget and can help them narrow down their choices. Because of their contacts in the industry, they can help make arrangements, smoothing out the process of hiring vendors.

"A lot of people think a coordinator will take away their ability to make a decision," Keene explains. "But I'm there to really help guide them. I won't make decisions. If they ask me I I'm there to help."

For her part, Keene took a part-time vocation in bridal consulting full-time five years ago. She had been introduced to wedding planning in 1984, helping friends and relatives plan their weddings. By 1995, she was enjoying the part-time business she had developed more than she was her job as a police dispatcher.

"It was extremely stressful," she says about the work in law enforcement. "It wasn't a fun job."

Stress-free wedding

Laura and Ray had met in Cleveland while he did a stint in the Air Force as a physician at Wilford Hall Medical Center at Lackland Air Force Base, a month before he was scheduled to transfer to McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita, Kansas. They carried on a long distance relationship for a year, and then Laura joined him in Wichita in April 1999, leaving her job in the real estate property management industry. In Wichita, she accepted temporary work in the human resources department for a camping equipment manufacturer. A month later, Ray, who worked as a family practitioner at McConnell, proposed. That put Laura in the position of planning her Cleveland wedding from Kansas.

Laura was trying to avoid as much stress as possible when she decided to hire a wedding planner. She knew if she wanted to enjoy her own wedding, she would need one.

"Usually (when entertaining guests), I'm really stressed making sure I'm a perfect host," she says.

While bridal consultants do offer a less-expensive service known as wedding day coordination, Laura had another hurdle to overcome -- distance. She had only a limited time to hire vendors, from a photographer to a florists, and to find a location for the wedding reception.

Adding to her problems, Laura thought Cleveland's Fiesta would be weeks over when she and Ray set their wedding date for April 29. It wasn't. In fact, this year, April 29 was the last Saturday of Fiesta, raising concerns for the couple that most spots would be booked.

Laura found a list of consultants through the Association of Bridal Consultants and soon narrowed in on Angel Weddings. "Mary was very easy to work with," she says.

One of the key advantages for Laura was Keene's knowledge of and relationship with vendors in the industry.

"As a bride, you don't know where to and who to go to because you don't know who's the best at what," Laura explains.

"Mary was able to bring it down. 'Here's two or three vendors you can meet with that will fit your style,'" she recalls Keene telling her. "I was able to go down and one week I had hired all the vendors."

Like most of the brides she works with, Keene says she arranged meetings with three to six vendors in each category. She provided Laura with a planning binder that included information about the vendors and their services.

"I spend five days interviewing vendors with her and from there we worked out the details," Keene recalls.

With the couple's budget as her guide, Keene says she ensures that her clients are getting sold what they want -- not more than what they want. She works with vendors to ensure her clients save time by being given choices in their price range.

"I don't go to a vendor who's going to show them a $3,000 cake when all they have is $300 in their budget. I try to keep them within their budget," she says. By choosing vendors that have a history of meeting her clients' needs and arranging for items only in their budget to be considered, she avoids one of the common problems couples face in planning their wedding -- overspending due to impulse buying.

Keene's price for the full-service planning package: 15 percent of the total cost of the wedding, excluding honeymoon and jewelry.

According to a 1998 article on published by Dive-In Denver, a service of US West Interactive Services Inc., wedding consultants should pay for themselves. "A wedding will cost as much as you want to spend," wrote Patrick Smid, president of the Denver Area Better Business Bureau. "After establishing an affordable budget with your consultant, it's his or her job to get more value for your money than you could on your own."

In fact, it was Keene's contacts and experience in the business paid off, particularly when it came to location a hotel banquet room to hold the reception.

"Because of Fiesta there weren't a whole lot of hotels left," Laura recalls. The choices came down to the Adam's Mark, the St. Anthony Wyndham and the Omni. Laura chose St. Anthony, which happened to be the closest route from the Alamo Heights church where the ceremony took place, St. Peter Prince of the Apostles.

Keene contends that there may have been a silver lining in the Fiesta wedding date. Today, the favored rooms in the best hotels are often booked at least a year in advance. However, brides that live in Cleveland were likely discouraged from holding their wedding that weekend.

"Fiesta in that regard probably helped us in that it was probably a deterrent for other brides," she says.

Not only was Keene able to find a choice location for the wedding, but she was also able to negotiate a lower group rate for the couple's guests staying at the hotel than those rooms outside the block.

Laura contends that while the she was concerned about expenses on the wedding for which she and Ray budgeted $18,000, saving money wasn't her prime concern.

"I don't know if it saved me money as much as kept me sane," she says, adding that she would recommend hiring a bridal consultant to other brides. "If you want to stress yourself out calling every person you pick up a card from at a bridal fair, fine. But for me, there was no other way."

Proof in the pictures

In fact, when it came to florists, Laura decided a vendor she had met a bridal fair pleased her more than any of the ones Keene referred her to. It was the one item that was over budget -- by $1,000.

"Her florist (Melissa White of Botanika) is a little more of a floral designer," Keene explains.

Laura says it was worth the extra money. "I could not have asked for more," she says, adding that her bouquet was the most beautiful she ever saw.

What impressed her was the floral design. But she also found that same creativity in the vendors that Keene brought to her. Laura went with the Pastry Garden to make her wedding cake, which consisted of four different cakes to please a variety of different tastes.

"It used to be you just got a cake," Keene explains. "Now, you really design a cake. They're every combination you can imagine."

Through Keene, Laura also found a photographer that offered the creativity she sought.

These days, some wedding photographers are trying to be more innovative, getting away from some of the staged wedding portrait shots. Laura had heard some rave reviews about one photographer, but when she saw some work that photographer did, she wasn't taken. For an engagement picture, the photographer had the couple standing waist-high in a pool of water. In another, the wedding party was running toward the camera.

"It's nice, but it's not us," Laura says. "I want it to be fun when you look at them."

Keene directed Laura and Ray to Winfield Little, a photographer who operates a studio with his wife, Karen. The couple works weddings together, and while taking portraits, also aim to get candid shots that present a more photojournalistic approach.

"Now brides are wanting to capture all the little smaller details that go on throughout the day," explains Karen Little, "things to bring back the story of the wedding day."

"I look for the small details," she says. For example, Ray forgot his dress shoes for the wedding, and ended up having to wear his polished combat boots. The Littles captured the boots, together with the bride's tennis shoes, on film.

"They weren't just doing a job," Laura says. "They love to create. They didn't want to do a cookie cutter thing."

Laura knew she'd be happy with the wedding photos when she saw the couple's engagement pictures Winfield Little took on his property off Boerne Stage Road.

"They were more laid back," Laura says. "He didn't try to get us to do anything kooky, but they weren't so stiff."

What's more, the Littles wanted to spend the whole day taking pictures, starting with Laura's arrival at the beauty salon.

While many photographers keep the negatives, Little is of the mindset to give them to the couple. "He told us, 'I don't want to sell paper," Laura recalls. "You can tell he loves his job."

Special touches

Wearing tennis shoes wasn't the only tradition Laura planned to break in her wedding to help bring her guests comfort. As soon as her flower girl, her niece, was finished with her role in the wedding ceremony, she and other children were permitted to change into play clothes and then exit the church where a babysitter was waiting to supervise them on the playground.

Back at the reception, children wrote on the butcher block paper as adults enjoyed toasting to the couple's happiness. Karen Little caught a picture of a note two six-year-olds had written wishing the couple the best of luck.

"It was fun taking pictures of the kids, cause they weren't fussy, they were just hanging out," she says.

"The events really reflect the personality of the couple, usually the bride's," Keene adds, adding that Laura's wedding reflected her fun-loving personality. "She just adores her nieces and nephews."

Laura had also wanted to buck the tradition of throwing the bouquet and the garter, and instead adopted some new ideas they had seen. The bouquet was provided to the couple who had been married the longest, and the garter to the couple who had dated the longest before getting married.

As part of her service, Keene ensured that the reception went smoothly, from the meal to the dancing that ended in a night of children blowing bubbles on the dance floor.

"There wasn't anything I stressed over," Laura says. "There was nothing I worried about that day and that was the way I wanted it."