Bride’s Wedding Story Submission

Calling all recent Christian brides!

In the near future, my book The Purposed Bride will become available. Each chapter has a sidebar with a story from a bride about her wedding. There are five sidebars left that need to be filled.

I’m looking for recent brides to submit their story. If you are interested, see below, and keep an eye out for The Purposed Bride in the near future.

The content:
Each side bar is a story from a real bride about her wedding. The story is either a “Perfect Picture,” which focuses on something that went according to plan and was truly spectacular, or a “Problem Picture,” which focuses on an aspect of the wedding that did not go according to plan but that God redeemed in His glorious way.

The sidebars needed are for the chapters listed below in bold. In parenthesis are ideas to help prompt you, but feel free to choose your own original angle.

Remember that your name will be assigned to the story, so please be respectful in how you choose to depict other people, especially in the “Problem Pictures.”

-guests (the decisions you made to serve your guests at the wedding, the nightmare of whittling down your guest list, how you determined who you wanted to invite, how you juggled your guests’ needs, how people didn’t show up, how special it was to have your friends and family send you off at the end of the night, how you decided to divide the guest list among bride and groom and their families, etc.)

-fiancé (the ups or downs of how you and he worked together to plan the wedding, how you managed to keep non-wedding date times for you, how you leaned on each other during the planning, how you chose to honor the other with your wedding decisions, what spiritual disciplines you practiced during the engagement to create a solid foundation for your marriage, the difficulty of communicating and having quality time when you were not in the same town for the engagement, etc.)

-bridal shower (an awesome shower theme or game that you had, an unfortunate turn out for the shower, a shower that was hosted totally in your personality, a disappointment with someone you had hoped would ask to host a shower not asking to, how busy life was during shower time and how hard it was to break away and enjoy it, how welcomed it was to spend quality time with your close friends and family, how the hostess incorporated your fiance into the shower, etc.)

-dress (how you chose the dress, how you chose the price, problems you had with the dress on the wedding day, what you know now and would do differently next time, what about the dress made you feel like the bride, whether you allowed your fiance to see the dress prior to the wedding, who came with you to buy the dress, etc.)

–bridal party (what criteria you used to choose your bridesmaids, how you served them during your wedding process, the awesome method in which you asked each girl to be your bridesmaid, how your bridal party helped you plan your wedding or keep you calm, a special thing that you did with your bridesmaids like prayer or nails or something, involving your siblings in your bridal party, unfortunate dynamics between the bridesmaids, your attempts to keep all bridal party stuff under control that went awry, your decisions ended up being a great cost to your bridesmaids, etc.)

The word count:
100-200 words

Deadline:
Thursday, October 11

How to submit:
Use the Contact page on the Sweet Christian Bride website.

Samples:

Problem Picture

“I wanted to love my dress, but I wanted my fiancé to love me in the dress even more. I didn’t care about superstition, so I invited him to come with me to try on dresses. Before I dropped a lot of money on a dress, I wanted him to love it. He did, and so did I. I thought everything was perfect until I went for a fitting and the bodice was too small and the skirt was sewn on crooked. This was made by the designer herself with my particular measurements, and it was still a total disaster. After what could be done was done, I ended up wearing a dress that, when straight in front, had an off-center line of buttons down the back. There was nothing I could do but weep a little and then get over it. I was going to love this dress that my dad generously bought me as a gift. My long veil covered the crooked buttons in the back, and when I wasn’t wearing the veil, I was moving around. No one noticed that my dress was crooked, and, even better, I received many compliments on it. I felt like a glowing bride, crooked designer dress and all.”

Perfect Picture

“I loved having my fiancé involved in the shower. The hostess coordinated some questions with him so that they could play a trivia game with me at the shower. It was such a simple thing for them to do, but I felt so honored that they would take the time to ‘investigate’ what my fiancé’s answers were. I felt like he was reading a love note to me at my shower as I heard his responses. Also, the way they designed the game revealed the story of our relationship, so my guests got to learn a little bit more about us as a couple.”

Disclaimer:
Your story must be truthful and original writing.
Submitting your story does not mean that it will be published. Submitting your story does indicate your consent to have the story published either in The Purpose Bride or on The Sweet Christian Bride.

Thank you for your submissions!