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Posted on August 28, 2020 7:30 pm Modified on August 4, 2026 7:28 pm by BridesToBe

bridal plans A wedding day, is one of the most important days in a couple’s life together. Second only to perhaps the birth of children. This is why so much planning is put into it. Most brides want a wedding day that is memorable for friends, family, and above all, themselves. It is a time we dream of for years, often from the time we are children. This is where we come in. Our aim is to ensure brides and beaus have the wedding they want and the life that they imagine.

Tips for Planning a Wedding

checklist When planning a wedding, you will find tips and tricks come spewing forth. Everyone has their own ideas about what matters most. To make it easier for you, we will simplify the tips as much as possible.

Make Your Plan! The plan has to come first. How many guests, where you want to get married, dates that you want vs dates that may be blacked out by the wedding venue, etc. This is often the most difficult part of planning your wedding, but it doesn’t have to something that drives you nuts.
Who Do You Want to Attend?Making a guest list is also a big deal. There are some people that you may want at your wedding and others that you would prefer to keep home. You may not want to talk to others about your guest list beforehand to eliminate potential drama over the fact that you don’t want your crazy, drunk uncle Earl to attend. However, it is important that if you exclude him, you consider other guests that it may offend.
Any Specific Requests? Some couples today choose to have a device free ceremony, no drinking rules, and no flash photography or standing in the aisles to get pictures. Your wedding day is your day. It is okay to make requests from wardrobe to devices. Any guests that do not like it, will choose to stay home.
Your Licenses and Paperwork. You will need to find out what paperwork or other things you need to have before your big day. No one wants to be ready to walk down the aisle and find out that they can’t do so legally yet.
Your Budget! This is perhaps the biggest thing for some couples. There are going to be several costs associated with your wedding. Catering, bars, venues, photographers, and more. Plan what you can afford and make as many adjustments as you can to get it within a price range that works for you.

Seeking Help When Needed

Often, brides will choose to let someone else help in the planning phase. Luckily, there are people who make wedding planning easier for everyone involved. If you are stuck or need a little help with advice, you can always call on them. They can simplify it and most will not charge you a fortune, especially if they are just trying to establish themselves as a quality planner for weddings or other events.

A Groomsman Gift With Some Craft To It: The Leather Arm Guard

Posted on September 8, 2026 8:15 pm by Texas Brides

Tooled leather archery arm guard on a workbench beside a wooden recurve bow

Groomsmen gifts have a way of collapsing into the same three ideas: a flask, a pocket knife, a set of cufflinks nobody wears twice. If one of your guys spends his autumn weekends in a deer blind rather than on a golf course, there is a far better option, and it costs about the same as the flask. A leather arm guard.

What It Actually Does

An arm guard, or bracer, straps to the inside of the forearm on the bow arm. It has two jobs. It keeps a loose sleeve from catching the string, and it takes the string slap that otherwise lands on bare skin. Anyone who has been hit properly will tell you the bruise lasts a fortnight and the flinch it teaches you lasts longer.

It is one of the few pieces of archery kit that is genuinely universal. It does not need to match his bow, his draw length, or his budget. It just needs to fit his arm.

Why Leather, Specifically

Archer at full draw with a traditional recurve bow at sunset

Plastic and mesh guards work perfectly well and cost very little, which is exactly why they make a poor gift. Leather is the version worth wrapping. It softens and molds to the arm over a season or two, it takes tooling and initials, and it ages into something with a bit of history rather than something that cracks and gets replaced.

For traditional shooters running a recurve or a longbow, leather is also the correct answer aesthetically. A hand-finished leather arm guard sits right next to a wooden bow in a way a strip of vented nylon never quite manages.

Watch: Archery | Do You Really Need An Armguard? (YouTube)

Choosing One Without Asking Him

Close-up of hand-stitched tooled leather with brass hardware

You want the guard on his bow arm, which is the left forearm for a right-handed shooter. Beyond that, three things matter. Length: short guards cover the wrist end of the forearm, long ones run most of the way to the elbow and suit longbow shooters whose string tracks higher. Fastening: elastic straps or buckles, with buckles looking better and elastic being quicker. And thickness, where heavier leather protects more and breaks in slower.

An adjustable mid-length guard fits almost anybody, which makes it the safe pick when you are buying without a fitting.

Why It Lands Well

It is useful, it is personal, and it is the right price for a groomsman rather than a best man. Add his initials and it stops being gear and starts being a keepsake he straps on every opening morning for the next twenty years. That is a better run than any flask on the shelf.

The Groom’s Gift Nobody Thinks Of: A Handcrafted Fishing Net

Posted on August 4, 2026 7:28 pm Modified on August 4, 2026 8:24 pm by Texas Brides

A Texas wedding is a celebration of thoughtful details — the flowers, the boots, the little touches nobody forgets. But when it comes to gifts, the groom and his groomsmen are surprisingly easy to overlook. If your guy trades his boots for waders every chance he gets, skip the engraved flask he’ll set on a shelf and give him something he will actually carry to the water: a handmade wooden landing net. It’s practical, it’s beautiful, and it lasts a lot longer than the honeymoon tan.

Why a Landing Net Is the Right Gift

Unlike most gear, a good net is personal and enduring. It rides on his back on every trip, it protects the fish he plans to release, and it ages into something with a story. A well-turned wooden net is the rare present that is useful enough to get used every season and handsome enough to hang on the wall between outings — the kind of object a man keeps for decades and eventually hands down.

What Makes a Good One

The details matter. Look for a frame of laminated hardwood that is light but strong, a soft rubber basket that is gentle on fish and easy to clean, and a shape balanced enough to swing one-handed while the other hand works the rod. A heirloom-grade net — the sort of nets fly fishers keep for decades — turns a routine piece of tackle into something worth gifting.

Watch: How to Net a Fish Correctly & Types of Landing Nets (YouTube)

A Texas Hill Country Touch

There’s something fitting about it, too. So many Texas couples say their vows near water — a Hill Country river, a ranch tank, a quiet stretch of the Guadalupe. A fishing net nods to those same places the two of you love, which makes it feel less like a random gadget and more like a keepsake tied to the day itself. Pair it with a note about a future trip and you’ve given an experience, not just an object.

Something He’ll Keep

Registries fill up fast with towels and small appliances, and most of it blurs together within a year. A handcrafted net is the gift he’ll still reach for ten seasons from now, quietly remembering who gave it to him. For the outdoorsman marrying into a life of new adventures, it’s a small, lasting way to say the fun is just getting started.