Fairy Tale

August 6th, 2008 admin Leave a comment Go to comments

Fairy Tale

Cinderella’s Wedding Favor Dilemma: A Fairy Tale for Brides-To-Be

Once upon a time, a beautiful, Young Girl named Cinderella had escaped the clutches of her wicked stepmother and mean sisters, who kept her in cruel servitude. Eventually she had been found by and fallen in love with the most handsome prince you can imagine. (You can read all about the fancy ball and the glass slipper and all that stuff in the first Cinderella fairy tale. This is the rest of the story.)

As you can imagine, planning her royal wedding would be an enormous undertaking for the young princess bride-to-be. Other monarchs from neighboring lands and, at Cinderella's request, everyone in the kingdom were to be invited. Like most royal abodes, the castle had a ballroom, beautiful gardens and more than enough room to hold the ceremony, serve a fabulous feast and get down to the sounds of Count Emdown and his Swingin' Serfs.

Fortunately, Cinderella would have lots of help in the planning process—the royal church would take care of the ceremony, the royal secretary would send out the invitations and thank-you notes, the royal seamstress would handle the wedding gown and wedding party attire, the royal gardener would design the flower arrangements and castle decorations, the royal chef would prepare the feast, the court jester would be the emcee, and the royal artist would capture all the memorable moments in oil (surely, the hardest-working person of the night.)

In fact, the only item on the wedding checklist left to Cinderella's choice was the wedding favors, and she was thrilled to be given that honor. Delighted that she would determine the thoughtful thank-you gift for all the guests who shared in such an important day for her and her prince, Cinderella enthusiastically began to contemplate the perfect favor.

On one hand, she knew that gold was no object. After all, her father-in-law was the freakin' king, for heaven's sake. On the other hand, the kingdom had been experiencing a recession ever since the realm's banks had made royally bad loans to businesses and cottage-buyers who were struggling to pay them back. Hence, Cinderella's dilemma. If she spent a small fortune on the most elegant wedding favors, the king's subjects would think poorly of her and she would disgrace the royal household. If she settled for cheap, unimaginative favors to save money, the king's subjects and the monarchs of the neighboring lands would be disappointed and depart believing the prince had married a goober.

Cinderella sat all alone near the castle's kitchen fireplace to ponder her problem. It had worked for her before, and lo and behold, it worked again! Her fairy godmother appeared beside her and said, "What's the matter, dear child? Aren't you happy? You're going to marry the prince, be wealthy and live happily ever after? Starting to get a little piggish, aren't you, my pet?"

"Oh, fairy godmother," Cinderella said, "It's nothing like that." And Cinderella explained her wedding favor dilemma, finally lamenting, "If only I could find elegant, practical and, most important, affordable wedding favors, I know I could win the favor of the entire royal family and all people in the kingdom and beyond."

"There, there, dear," replied her fairy godmother, "I only wish for you that all your future predicaments are as easy to resolve as this one."

And with that, the FG pulled out her wand and her PDA, accessed the Internet and went straight to MyWeddingFavors.com, a magical place where Cinderella had her choice of hundreds of the most elegant and amazingly affordable wedding favors she'd ever seen. After musing over her favorites, she finally chose the "Happily Ever After" Carriage Candle, because it was the perfect wedding favor for her and her prince, who did, in fact, live happily ever after, but not until Cinderella promised not to be so anal retentive.

About the Author

Susan Hawkins is senior copywriter for MyWeddingFavors.com, the leading website for wedding favors, bridal shower favors and wedding accessories. She specializes in articles and blogs that focus on weddings, marriage and relationships.