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hitched.co.uk looks back to the 1940’s as the Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh celebrate 62 years of marriage

Fran @ Hitched — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:06:00 GMT

Glamorous wedding dresses, grooms in their service uniforms and vintage style bouquets all sound familiar when looking back at weddings that took place 60 odd years ago. As the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh celebrate 62 years of marriage this week, hitched.co.uk explores royal marriage celebrations and wedding trends from the 1940's.

Ration cards meant that food was limited for any wedding party, and in July 1940 there was even a ban on the creation and sale of iced cakes. Sounds very different to the average £20,000 budget and endless choices that we have when it comes to wedding planning today.

The Queen wore a silk, A-line gown on November 20^th, 1947 designed by Norman Hartnell. The ivory gown was embroidered with crystals and 10,000 seed pearls was followed by a 13 foot train. A V-neck style front with long sleeves was quite traditional in the 1940's where as today brides-to-be have endless choices when it comes to making that all important decision on their wedding dress. White or ivory, halter neck or sweetheart, mermaid, ballgown, silk, chiffon, every style for every bride is available today. Princess Diana donned a £9000 wedding dress in 1981 designed by David Emanuel. The taffeta and antique lace gown was followed by a 25ft long train and was hand embroidered with sequins and 100,000 pearls. And in June 99' Sophie Rhys Jones had 325,000 cut-glass and pearl beads sewn onto her ivory silk and organza dress coat which was designed by Samantha Shaw. The wedding dress has always been one of the most important decisions that a bride makes during her wedding planning and a large portion of the wedding budget is usually set aside for this once in a life time gown.

1940's wedding receptions were filled with music from the likes of Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald to name a few. Vintage style wedding cars were the norm, and are still available from various wedding transportation providers today.

If you are looking for wedding inspiration, a wedding dress, wedding planning advice, a wedding car or a DJ in your area head to hitched.co.uk.

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About hitched.co.uk

The site provides free help and advice on every aspect of getting married. Hitched.co.uk was established in 1997 and receives at least 10 million page impressions per month and is visited by 500,000 eager wedding couples.

CONTACT: For further information, quotes and images please contact: Francesca Moore, hitched.co.uk., Email: Francesca.moore@hitched.co.uk, Phone: +44(0)844 8800011

Find the perfect wedding dress with ease on hitched.co.uk

Fran @ Hitched — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:19:00 GMT

Brides-to-be can buy every wedding magazine on the shelf, drive miles around to every bridal wear shop in the county and visit every wedding show in the land before finding the perfect wedding dress....or she can sit in front of her computer and find her wedding dress on hitched.co.uk.

hitched.co.uk has opened a door to endless search options and possibilities when it comes to finding the right style of dress to suit your body, and the type of wedding being planned. A bride can search for her dress by designer, or if she wants to be more specific in her criteria she can select several different options from drop down menus, such as train length, fabric, colour, neckline, or silhouette. A zoom feature has also been added in order to see a clearer view and the stunning detail associated with a particular dress, along with other essential details as well.

The new system will also display a list of bridalwear shops that stock a particular designer surrounding a postcode. Having targeted over 2000 bridalwear shops up and down the country, any UK bride should have no problems in finding a dress, in a bridalwear shop close to home.

Dean Yardley, director of hitched.co.uk quotes, "Bringing the bridalwear designer and the bridalwear shop onto one page makes searching for a wedding dress so much easier and more convenient for busy brides up and down the country. Bearing in mind that a bride will have to travel to the bridalwear shop for several fittings during the run up to the wedding day, choosing a bridalwear shop close to home is a sensible decision."

A bride can now search for her dress with ease on hitched.co.uk, to find her dream dress from the world's finest bridalwear designers and know she won't have to travel the length of the country each time she wants to try it on.

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About hitched.co.uk

CONTACT: For further information, quotes and images please contact: Francesca Moore, hitched.co.uk., Email: Francesca.moore@hitched.co.uk, Phone: +44(0)844 8800011

9/9/9 Wedding Celebrations

Fran @ Hitched — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:09:00 GMT

We are always hearing of unusual wedding themes at hitched.co.uk....Shrek, Star Trek, Las Vegas and Medieval to name a few. Sometimes special dates in our calendar allow for wedding couples to theme their wedding with something exciting. A late date in December is ideal for a winter wonderland themed wedding, February 14^th makes for a very romantically themed occasion, and October 31^st can be themed orange and black for a spooky Halloween wedding. But this year what better date to theme a wedding with handcuffs or fire engine red, than the 9^th of September 2009.

9/9/9 is proving to be a very special date from Jacqueline Felton and Michael Aldred from Plymouth who both happen to be police officers. It seems as if the couple have chosen a very fitting date to match their professions.

For anyone in the fire service profession having a fire engine red themed wedding arriving in style in something perfect for the occasion will certainly get heads turning. Fire-engine-limo-hire.co.uk can provide an LAPD police car or a red hot fire engine to make sure you get to the church on time if you are having a themed emergency service wedding. Stun your guests with red wedding invitations, red favour boxes, red ribbon, red heart chocolates, red table confetti, red balloons and even a fire engine shaped wedding cake to continue the theme through out the day.

And for those newlywed couples travelling to Australia for their honeymoon, check out the fabulous Fire Station Inn, a very special fire engine suite located in Northern Adelaide with a real fire engine and pole located in the bedroom! This exciting and perfectly fitting hotel can be booked on adelaideheritage.com.

Themed weddings are no longer considered weird or wacky, so if you are planning a wedding and need a venue for your up and coming wedding, check out the hitched.co.uk wedding venues pages for an endless amount of wedding venues in your county.

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About hitched.co.uk

CONTACT: For further information, quotes and images please contact: Francesca Moore, hitched.co.uk., Email: Francesca.moore@hitched.co.uk, Phone: +44(0)844 8800011

Count down to the big day with a hitched ticker

Fran @ Hitched — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:48:00 GMT

Are you counting down to a wedding, birthday, holiday, baby, anniversary or the New Year by crossing off the dates on the kitchen calendar? Leading wedding website hitched.co.uk has created a new way for you to count down to a big event or special occasion in your life.

Nowadays the majority of people write a blog or are a member of some sort of discussion forum, especially if they are planning something major like a wedding. Adding a personalised ticker to an email, signature, profile or blog will make the count down to your event more exciting and will share your planning experience with others around you as well.

Creating a hitched ticker couldn't be easier. You've probably seen the concept before, but hitched tickers is unlike any other online ticker you may have come across in the past. The individuality of hitched tickers becomes apparent when you start to create your personal count down tool. Once you have set up an account and selected the event that you want to count down to the rest is simple. You can chose from a number of backgrounds, markers, fonts and themes, or, you can create your very own ticker by uploading or creating your own personal background and marker from photographs, images or designs on your computer. This makes the possibilities endless, and totally unique when it comes to creating your hitched ticker. Sharing backgrounds and markers with others is also an option and uploading photo's gives this countdown tool a fun twist. There is no limit to how many tickers you can create and not only does each ticker count down the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds, it also counts down the Lunar Cycles, Jiffy's, Shakes, Internet Beats and MicroCenturies, if you are interested.

A hitched ticker is personal to you and can be adjusted at any time if your event date happens to change. Counting down to your event might help also help you stay organised or on the flip side make you realize how much sooner your event is than you think.

To see examples or set up your very own, free of charge, hitched ticker simply head to www.hitchedtickers.com. Counting down to a special event has never been so much fun.

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About hitched.co.uk

CONTACT: For further information, quotes and images please contact: Francesca Moore, hitched.co.uk., Email: Francesca.moore@hitched.co.uk, Phone: +44(0)844 8800011

Credit Crunch Increasing Wedding Stats

Fran @ Hitched — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:25:00 GMT

According to popular wedding website hitched.co.uk the credit crunch doesn't seem to have been affecting British couples from walking up the aisle compared to recent years. Even though the wedding budgets may have been slightly affected and couples said they were pushing wedding dates back there doesn't seem to be a decline in couples actually getting married.

The number of couples that have been planning their weddings online with hitched.co.uk for August 2009 has increased by 50% on last year. Saturday 1^st August will be the biggest wedding day in the UK this year. August 2008 also saw thousands of couples wed, however many of them tied the knot on the very memorable date of Friday August 8^th making their wedding date 08/08/08. A date that a bride would hope her groom will never forget.

As always, wedding planning couples hope for perfect wedding weather which is bright clear skies, no rain, but not too hot either. So far this summer we have seen mixed weather with but the long term forecast is for a return to high temperatures, so ladies don't forget your hats!

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About hitched.co.uk

CONTACT: For further information, quotes and images please contact: Francesca Moore, hitched.co.uk., Email: Francesca.moore@hitched.co.uk, Phone: +44(0)844 8800011