Idaho Groom reads vows to his new stepdaughter at wedding

On a wedding-videos-that-will-make-you-cry scale of 1 to 10, this clip is a solid SOBBING NOISILY, NEED TISSUES AND CAKE ASAP. The footage was filmed at NASCAR driver Brian Scott and his now-wife Whitney's wedding in Idaho last year, but is having a well-deserved viral moment right now [H/T The Huffington Post]. It's beautiful footage throughout — I mean, there's banjo music and chandeliers, come on now — but the scene capturing everyone's attention in particular comes at the 4:10 mark, when a choked-up Scott offers some special wedding vows to his new stepdaughter, 3-year-old Brielle. That speech in full:
Brielle, can I tell you something? I promise to always hold your hand and skip with you down the street and bring comfort to your life. I vow to make you say your prayers before you eat. I promise to read you stories at night and to always tuck you in real tight. I vow to show you how a man should treat a woman in my relationship with your mother. And above all else, I vow to protect you, care for you and love you forever.
Knowing an emotional crescendo when they see one, the wedding videographers then cut right to the big wedding kiss moment. In her vows, crying bride Whitney said that she "had prayed to God every night that he would find the perfect man to not only love me, but to love my little girl, and he has more than answered my prayers." Scott told The Huffington Post it was those vows to Brielle that affected him the most on the big day, moreso even than the ones to his bride. "You're living in the moment," he said. "You get engulfed by it." As do all of us now.

He and Whitney welcomed their first child together, a boy called Joseph, last November.

Nick Saban responds to Alabama fan's wedding invite with a 'Roll Tide'

It was the Third Saturday in October - aka the Alabama-Tennessee football game - and it would be the first SEC game that Bama grad Casey Marriott had attended with her die-hard Tennessee fan boyfriend, Brandon Jones.
Whenever Alabama played Tennessee, according to Marriott, Jones would keep saying, "Ya'll just wait a couple more years..." which prompted laughter from Marriott.
"There is a reason Brandon and I (hadn't) been to a game together," she joked. The couple tries to limit smack talk to just the Alabama-Tennessee gameday. "I can't figure out if it is because we keep beating them, or if it's because of me!"
But this game was special. The morning of the game, the couple strolled toward downtown Knoxville, planning to meet Marriott's parents at Tupelo Honey on the square for breakfast.
"We were walking to meet them, and he just gets down on one knee and asked me to be his wife," said Marriott. "Little did I know, Brandon hired a professional photographer to capture the moment, and had both of our families hiding inside the restaurant.
"The day ended with a Tide victory, which means it was the most perfect day for this Bama girl."
In early November, Marriott and her mom were going over the wedding guest list. Her mom was jotting down names of friends and family while Marriott sat there, thinking.
The first name she wrote down? Nick and Terry Saban.
"Why not?" she said. "I figured they seem like nice people, and I have always wanted to meet him. It was all just for fun."
She also, on a whim, invited other celebrities, including Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake and Maroon 5.
When she told Jones she was inviting the Sabans, he asked if that meant he got to invite Butch Jones.
"No, I am sorry, but it doesn't mean that," she joked. "But we can invite Peyton Manning."
Fast forward to last week, when an RSVP arrived in the mail from Nick and Terry Saban. They regretfully declined, but included a handwritten note: "Roll Tide & Best wishes for the happy couple!"
"I was so giddy that they even took the time to send it back," said Marriott. "Not only that, but they sent it back before the deadline date, which some of my guests haven't even done!"
Monday afternoon, Marriott's mother called her at work, saying she had received an envelope from the Alabama Football Department.
"I told her to open it ASAP and send pics of whatever it was," said Marriott.
Inside was a signed photo of the Sabans, addressed to her and Jones.
"Some people think, 'Who cares, it's just an autograph, it isn't that hard to get one,' but to me it is much more than that," said Marriott. "Despite what most football teams and fans think of Coach Saban, he truly is a great guy, and cares for his fans. He is a legend in college football and has created history here at the University of Alabama.
"This just shows what kind of people Nick and Terry are, and I appreciate their kindness."
Marriott said she wishes Coach Saban luck on spring training, which starts the day before Marriott's March 14 wedding.
She and Jones will be married at Burritt on the Mountain in Huntsville.
Afterward, the couple will live in Huntsville, where Marriott is the catering director for The Chef Next Door and general manager for the Marketplace Café, and Jones is the head golf pro at Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Hampton Cove.

The Best New Wedding Décor Trends

Celebrity Wedding Planner Mindy Weiss on the Best New Wedding Décor Trends to Watch For
Forget all-white everything and subtle pastels—the new wedding décor trends to watch for are bold, unique and, best of all, eye-catching.
Mindy Weiss, a wedding planner to the stars who curated Jessica Simpson and Eric Johnson's Great Expectations-themed wedding, has an official forecast for the best new wedding trends this season. Weiss partnered with Wedding Paper Divas to give a first look at the décor styles we'll see for 2015 celebrity weddings.
Weiss describes Asian-inspired chinoiserie—a European- and Chinese-influenced art that often features intricate floral details—as "big on the runway, big in home décor and big in weddings." These fun, sprightly prints would add an exotic touch to any wedding.
So long soft pink and yellows! Color-blocking rich hues is big for the season, according to Weiss: "We're seeing a turn toward deeper jewel tone hues. It's a fresh, modern way to express yourself," she explained.
And don't only leave lace to your dress. "What says romance more than lace?" Weiss asks. "Not just the dress: Pair lace with soft florals and beautiful lighting for traditional glamour."
Watch the video to see the rest of Mindy's trend picks for the upcoming wedding season!

Newtownbutler shooting: Man dead after being shot at traveller wedding

A guest due to attend a traveller wedding has died after being gunned down outside the church in Co Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.
The man, who was aged in his 60s, was shot on the roadside near St Mary's Catholic church in the rural village of Newtownbutler.
Another male guest, aged in his 30s, was also shot in the incident while a third is understood to have sustained a knife wound to his hand.
The wedding party and their guests had travelled from Longford and Dublin in the Irish Republic.
Parish priest at St Mary's Father Michael King was preparing to conduct the ceremony when the shooting happened outside.
"The bride was standing at the back of the church waiting to come up the aisle and the next thing there was a bit of commotion at the back of the church - several women ran in and said 'there are shots, there are shots, there is somebody shooting'," he said.
The cleric revealed that there already had been disturbances outside the church prior to the fatal incident.
"There was an altercation in the car park long before the bride came - they were thumping and kicking each other," he said.
After the shooting, the gunshot victims were driven to a police station in nearby Lisnaskea in a white van. The older man was airlifted from there to hospital in a police helicopter but he later died.
The injuries sustained by the other two wounded men are not believed to be life threatening
After a delay, the ceremony inside St Mary's church went ahead.
Fr King said the wedding party had asked for the service to take place as planned.
"They said 'father we would like you to proceed with the wedding', so I proceeded with the wedding," he said.
"They spent at least half an hour inside the church at the end taking photographs."
The priest said it was only later this afternoon he heard the injured man had died.
"That really shocked me," he said.
Newtownbutler councillor Thomas O'Reilly, whose office is close to the scene of the shooting, said the community had been left stunned.
St Mary's Primary School is adjacent to the churchyard where the incident happened but it is understood no pupils witnessed the events.
"In a very small rural area and village such as Newtownbutler, it is shocking that something like this would happen," said Sinn Fein representative Mr O'Reilly.
Assembly member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone Tom Elliott said the attack was "horrific".
"It is very worrying that certain people have access to firearms and are willing to use them for any reason," he said.

"There is a significant onus on police to ensure that these criminals are caught and that the courts ensure they are locked up for a long period."

Saving for a wedding?

Valentines Day is fast approaching, and while love is in the air, we decided to have a look at how we could help couples out as they decide to spend the rest of their lives together, and get married.
Valentines is the second most popular day of the year for Brits to get down on one knee and pop the question, second only to Christmas Eve. It’s also a very popular day to have your wedding, as many people see it as the most romantic day of the year. So if you are preparing to get engaged or preparing to get married, we’ve put together some money saving tips so you can have the dream wedding, without the nightmare price tag!
According to Bride Magazine, the average wedding now costs between £18,000- £24,000. It’s a massive amount of money to pay for one day, but a lot of people only get married once in their lives, so believe it to be worth it.
Fall in love with saving
Some people are lucky enough to have £24,000 in a savings or bank account ready for their special day, but not everyone is that fortunate. If you have just got engaged and are looking to save for your dream wedding, the best thing to do is to open an ISA. This way, you can set up monthly payments or even pay in lump sums throughout the year, tax efficiently, for up to £15,000 (going up to £15,250 in April). It is one of the best ways for you and your partner to save up money for your big day. You can start to save from as little as £30 per month, and can vary your premiums as many times as you like to suit your situation, as long as you stay within the annual ISA allowance.
Venue, Menu and extras
Once you have worked out how much your budget, based on your savings, its time to prioritise what you think will work best for you. Venues often come in much cheaper on weekdays and in the winter. You can get the same venue on a Wednesday in November for up to half the price of the same venue on a Saturday in July. Winter weddings can be absolutely beautiful, and if your guests have to travel, they will thank you as there accommodation and travel will probably cost less as well!
If you are considering a budget venue, HallsHire is a website that lists all community halls for hire in the UK. These can cost from as little as £100, and with a few personal touches, can look just as beautiful.
It can be nice to have a sit down meal for your guests once they get to the reception, but buffet options usually work out as much cheaper. They can be more popular among guests as well, as the choice is more extensive and fussy eaters can stick to the things they like. For desert, you could try baking your own cakes, or asking a family member to help you bake them. This usually works out as cheaper than other deserts when baking for many people, as you can make large quantities. You and your partner could even try baking your wedding cake together! It may take a few tries, but it could be really fun!
For alcohol, replace champagne with the much less expensive but just as popular proseccco to help you save money. Don’t be pressured to get a free bar if you can’t afford it, your guests will understand.
Ask your family and friends to help out with decorations and invitations. You and your bridesmaids could look for dresses and accessories in high street shops, or even better, see if you can find any nice vintage dresses in special wedding charity shops.
A nice idea for the music is to ask all your guests to pick a song that reminds them of you and your partner. Put these together in a playlist (leaving out the songs you can’t stand of course) and play them throughout your reception. Your guests will feel touched that there song was played on your special day, and you will have a playlist to remind you of your wedding.
Dream day
One of the most important things to remember about planning your wedding is not to panic too much. If you and your partner are happy and together, no matter what happens, your day will be a happy one. For more wedding planning help visit Hitched or Confettiand make sure you enjoy every minute of it!

Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Carolyn Hax: Kids weren’t invited to the wedding? Then don’t bring them

My son and his fiancee live in California and will be married there next summer. My entire family has met the fiancee and feel she is warm and friendly. We live in the Midwest and plan to attend the wedding.
My sister has three sons in grade school, and they are excited about this trip, their first to California. Also, my three nephews adore my son and are looking forward to seeing him get married.
However, my son’s fiancee has informed us that only adults are invited to the wedding and she has already informed her family of this. All of her family live in California.
We have asked my son and his fiancee to make an exception, given the distance my family is traveling. So far, we have not heard anything more. The nephews will be attending the ceremony and not the reception, so we cannot understand what the issue is. I think my sister should bring her sons to the wedding and hope for the best. I would appreciate any advice.
For the love of personalized matchbooks, do not, do not, do not bring people to a wedding who have not been expressly included.
I realize church weddings are technically open to the public, assuming this is one, and it’s not uncommon for congregations to have open invitations to ceremonies. (Receptions — closed, of course.) But if you use this technicality to justify defying the couple — as in, not just the bride, don’t think I didn’t catch the implication of “she is warm and friendly” and “sheinformed us” — then you risk souring your relationship with them both, indefinitely.
And over what? The boys’ excitement is heartwarming, yes, but not so sacred that it justifies undermining the very people this event is about.
Your inability to “understand what the issue is” moved my disingenuity needle a second time, too. There are many issues, the most obvious being that other parents on the guest list, the ones who cooperate and leave their kids home with (expensive) babysitters, will be justifiably angry when your three nephews walk in.
The bride and groom will also have standing to hold it against you and your sister for setting them up to look bad in this way. And that would be on top of their deserved outrage that you took matters into your own hands just because you didn’t get the answer you wanted. When you do that, it doesn’t matter what the specific issue is, or how unfairly rigid they’re being; the gall of acting unilaterally trumps it.
Would I have said yes to your request? Possibly. Probably. But it’s no more my call than it is yours.
Something else to consider, to make you and your sister feel better about arranging care for the nephews during the wedding: While weddings can be thrilling for kids, most bring out the bored-and-squirmies. And, there are few worse times to visit a special person than around his wedding. A couple’s attention is usually divided into a thousand different pieces. These kids will travel to California with big hopes and likely receive but one of these pieces at best.

So please take this opportunity to be gracious, understanding, compliant. The cousins can hang out some other, more appropriate time.

Lance Bass Recalls the Backlash His Family Faced After He Came Out, Reveals Justin Timberlake's "Lovely" Wedding Gesture

If there's one thing we know about Lance Bass, it's the simple fact that he loves being a newlywed.
Almost two months after the former 'N Sync member said "I do" to Michael Turchin, the pair are loving every minute of married life. But before the two could even picture a wedding day with someone special, they both had to come out.
"Coming out in the south, your family has to come out also," Bass revealed on Thursday's all-new Meredith Vieira Show. "People forget about that. So my family went through it…My mom would go to the grocery store and strangers would be like, ‘I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.' Like I died or something."
He continued, "She just has a thick skin. She is very quiet and reserved."
After awhile, though, the proud mama decided to speak out at her church she attends every Sunday. As it turns out, her story made a difference.
"She finally wrote an amazing letter to the congregation and that got picked up by theHuffington Post," he shared with Meredith Vieira. "It really started changing the dialogue in the churches in the south."
While marriage equality remains a hot top in some states, the newlyweds were also asked about politician Patricia Todd who threated to out her fellow congressmen of their same-sex affairs if they didn't pass the gay marriage law. While the state representative took back her remarks after receiving backlash, both Bass and Turchin agreed it wasn't the smartest statement.
"I am never about outing people at all, but when it comes to voting against my rights to live my life the way I want to and my pursuit of happiness, then I am all for it," he confessed. "Out them, yes."
Turchin added, "If you are going to work to suppress a group of people and yet you are living an equally, in your eyes, immoral life, you can't do that."
Today, the happily married couple continues to enjoy the honeymoon phase of their relationship. And before they start expanding their family, the twosome want fans to witness their love story on E!
In Thursday's wedding special, viewers will see the pair say "I do" in front of a star-studded audience. One guest that couldn't make the ceremony, however, was Justin Timberlake.
"How dare he not cancel his last date on tour for us!" Bass joked on SiriusXM's "Just Jenny" show. "I've always dreamt of my four brothers from ‘N Sync being at my wedding to see me marry the person that I love but unfortunately it just did not work out… by one day…it did not work out."

He added, "But you know, I had three of the other guys there. And that was nice. And he sent lovely messages the day of the wedding." Nice move, J.T.

Here Comes The Couture Bride: Paris’ Outrageous Wedding Dresses

The Billy Idol song ‘White Wedding’ boomed through Jean Paul Gaultier’s hallowed headquarters, as a motley crew of brides-to-be walked down a central runway, led by the “mother of all brides” dressed in flyaway layers of tulle, matched with a lace bomber jacket for the designer’s spring/summer 2015 couture show.
Other brides followed, dressed in jeans and shorts or wrapped in cellophane, no less, in the case of Naomi Campbell who was minimally clad as a wedding bouquet in a look that closed JPG’s first couture show since he announced last year that he was ditching ready-to-wear in favor of his first love.
The parade, which was met with raucous cheers, was called “61 ways to say yes.”
With its cavalcade of beginning-to-end bridal madness, the JPG show broke convention. As fashion week fans know, a wedding dress more usually provides the grand finale during couture week shows, not the first or, in this case multiple subsequent looks.
Long a staple of couture shows, more usually the bridal extravaganza marks the final moment when a half-dozen men in smart suits swoop in to lift the train of the model bride, as she turns for photographers so she can get back to base camp without walking on her own outfit.
Some of the trains are so vast that they take up about half of the catwalk, like the Ralph & Russo dazzling finale piece shown at the Grand Palais which capped a beautiful collection.
Elie Saab also rarely disappoints with ostentatious bridal numbers. It is no wonder that princesses come to view his shows, although one, along with about twenty reporters, was locked out from this week’s event by the Paris police, who bolted down the doors of the chosen venue at the Palais Chaillot on the dot at one, with several frail looking fashionista waving invites at them, as if they feared a riot.
Saab’s wedding gown was inspired by the gowns his mother wore, in a show entitled “Beirut: Chasing a Dream.” Think decorative floral motifs on beaded gowns: the models looked like the beautiful ghosts of glamorous women of yesteryear, dressed to ethereal delectation.
While Paris Fashion Week saw some beautiful, more traditional wedding dresses that made one think of some of the old-school designs (from 1775—2014) at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum for their current wedding dress exhibition—one features a train so vast that it could make up a dining cloth for a grand dining table—the Gaultier show smacked of some of the rebellious spirit running wild through couture this week.
In place of a white wedding dress, Bouchra Jarrar, considered fresh young blood and alternative in style to the old-school of couture designers, sent out a smoking suit as her wedding look. When asked if she had included any other wedding dresses in the collection, she pointed to a black see through design on her mood board. “The wedding dress is not my style, and while I love so many elements of couture like the hand-crafted and the workmanship, I want to bring it all into the year 2015.”
Or consider also the gold finale pieces at the show for the revived house of Schiaparelli. This included wayward hats worn by women who walked like divinely styled creatures that were caged in a palace for rare butterflies. These brilliant and original looks harked back to the heyday of the designer who had a thing for shocking pink and lobsters.
The final “wedding” look was a gold jacket shimmering with over sized lapels that was attached at the back to a gold narrow train. Tights were worn on the legs. The model spotted a vast Afro hairdo in place of a characteristically fabulous Schiap hat.
Gold was also in favor with the young couture designer Julien Fournie who sent out a beautiful collection that culminated in a gold goddess creation decorated in sumptuous exotic jewelry. The designer got emotional rounds of applause backstage as he spoke of the inspiration which perhaps hinted at the recent Paris attacks.
“I wanted to create a goddess-like creature and a woman who is free with a sense of the freedom that comes with travel,” Fournie said. “I want there to be a sense of liberty and for anyone that comes to my country to create something to be free to do so.”

Meanwhile, Viktor & Rolf were having none of it. They sent out models decked in flowers and what looked like hay twigs decorating their voluminous and amusing cotton dresses, which fanned out wide around the thighs and looked like walking bee-hives.