As the chilly winter season shifts to spring, the wedding bells will thaw as the brides and grooms to be of Tifton begin preparing for their big day, and whether they follow popular fads, stick with timeless traditions, or march to the beat of their own preferences, these bridal parties will excitedly pick out all the cake, dresses, and cutlery crucial to making their perfect wedding.

Fine, high quality china remains a prominent mainstay on wedding registries as reported by Simply Stated Boutique and Interiors, who have offered bridal registry services since May 2022. Jan Hurst, owner, also reported that many brides were interested in incorporating heirlooms or traditions from family members into their table sets.

In terms of equipment, Sherry Savelli of Yes I Do Event Rentals noted a swing towards minimalism, including clear items and neutral colors.

Savelli said resin and acrylic chairs, relatively new additions to her inventory, were becoming increasingly favored over their wood or folding chair counterparts on account of their light weight and ease of stacking, and that cold spark machines were also gaining popularity for energizing the event without actually turning up the heat.

Wedding cakes appear to be staying the course with simpler and more standard cakes according to Cole’s Cakery, with common additions being horizontal fluting along the icing and floral decorations from local florists, but co-owner Jimmy Cole reported that he’d been getting just as many requests for more detailed cakes or custom orders.

Indeed, for facets of the wedding plan like selecting cakes or dresses, the common trends seem to be more vague or even nonexistent, brides and grooms to be making their picks through personal preference over fads or classics.

The wedding cake requests to the Cakery have ranged from traditional cakes to cupcakes, a combination of both, or bite-sized treats, with icing, filling, and cake batter mixed and matched as per the requests of the bride and groom. Even the groom’s cake has seen a spread of variance, Cole reporting that in some cases the dessert was almost as big as the wedding cake.

At Uniquely Yours Bridal and Formal Wear, dresses are on an even broader spectrum; while owner Brenda Lever reported lace was still popular and sleeved dresses were being considered by many brides, the actual dress styles were incredibly diverse.

“There’s a little bit of everything…a lot depends on the bride’s budget,” Lever said. “A lot of the brides like simple elegance, some like a little more glitz and glam, some like the more fitted dresses. There’s not one style that seems to stick out more than the others right now.”

And while fine china was a popular item with wedding registries, Hurst said that the brides and grooms that came to Simply Stated to fill out their registries used their chosen set as a springboard to personalizing the rest of their wishlists.

In many cases, though, there are trends or practices that are falling out of favor, including timeworn traditions.

Lever reported that many of the brides that entered her shop nowadays came looking only for a wedding dress, preferring to pick up their bridesmaid dresses and groomsmen tuxedos online. As a result, many of her colleagues in the field had stopped carrying those types of dresses and suits, unable to keep up with their virtual competition.

She noted that a handful of weddings she’d worked with had refrained from even selecting groomsmen tuxedos, the bride and groom instead permitting their groomsmen to wear more business casual clothing. Lever felt that the decreased emphasis on the formal wear was a result of expenses were being focused more on the wedding itself and the subsequent reception.

Lever and Savelli had both become aware of a shift away from the traditional church locale for a wedding as well, noting they had worked with very few weddings in recent memory that had planned to hold their wedding in a chapel.

Bridal parties instead favored event venues like plantations and barns, Savelli noted, where they could also hold the reception in another building or outside. She suspected the shift was done as a means of cutting costs and saving guests unnecessary transportation.

But with the 2024 wedding season just beginning, these trends or lack thereof could certainly change at the drop of a hat. The next big thing for weddings could be live right now, or even have already started; Cole noted that any fads he saw emerge for wedding cakes would stay untouched for months before they became popular.

“I’ve rarely done something that would be considered a new trend, but like a year or two later, somebody might want one of those,” Cole said. “They’ll find a photo in a magazine, or they’ll have been to a wedding and seen something. A lot of the times, when I do consultations, the bride will have a photo or several photos that they’ve found.”

As wedding bells ring on throughout the season, truly only time will tell what these brides and grooms to be will want at their perfect wedding.