De­siree McEachrane

As a bride-to-be, I know about the ter­ror of wed­ding plan­ning. Some women take to it like ducks to wa­ter; oth­ers, like me, sit like deer caught in the head­lights as well-mean­ing rel­a­tives and friends make sug­ges­tions–or make plans for you. You know what you don't want (gloves, Jor­dan al­monds, huge pieces of baked chick­en slid­ing around on pa­per plates) but what you do want is a lit­tle more elu­sive. Find­ing the per­fect favours, food and wed­ding dress is all about your per­son­al style, and lo­cal wed­ding con­sul­tant Si­mone Sant-Ghu­ran is all about en­cour­ag­ing brides to "do you" in­stead of en­dur­ing what Aunt Clara thinks is a per­fect wed­ding. "I want brides to get in­spi­ra­tion and ideas; I want them to feel that it's okay to not be the same as every­body else. She can per­son­alise, she can cus­tomise and she can make her wed­ding the way she wants it to be."

Sant-Ghu­ran's Web site Trinidad Wed­dings.com (TW) start­ed in 2005 and, ac­cord­ing to her, gets about 500,000 hits per month from brides and grooms-to-be who are look­ing for a com­pre­hen­sive data­base of re­li­able wed­ding ven­dors to choose from. Now there's even more help; the an­nu­al TW Wed-zine launched this year at the I Am Woman wed­ding ex­po on March 20 and 21, and is now avail­able at book­stores. The two is­sue col­lec­tor's edi­tion fea­tures a smil­ing wed­ding pho­to of T&T Miss World 1995 Michelle Khan and her hus­band of over one year Paul-Hen­ri Col­in on the cov­er, and is chock­full of help­ful hints on choos­ing foods, the A to Z of a Hin­du wed­ding and tips and tricks from brides and grooms who've been there. I was es­pe­cial­ly sor­ry that I didn't get the chance to try out the eco-friend­ly wed­ding food and d�cor al­ter­na­tives sug­gest­ed in one ar­ti­cle.

"We didn't want this mag­a­zine to be a 'how-to.' 'How-to' doesn't work for every cou­ple, every coun­try or every re­li­gion!" the 34-year-old ex­plained. "If we do have 'how-to' it would be through the eyes and ears of an­oth­er bride." TW Wed-zine al­so re­ports on big lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al wed­ding trends. But as ed­i­tor-in-chief, Sant-Ghu­ran doesn't want to lose that lo­cal con­nec­tion. Fash­ion de­sign­er Gladys Louis, who launched her G-Se­ow bridal col­lec­tion last year in To­ba­go, is fea­tured in the mag­a­zine and will al­so be the on­ly bridal de­sign­er at the 2010 T&T Fash­ion Week. From mar­ket­ing ex­ec to stay-home-mom­my to en­tre­pre­neur, Sant-Ghu­ran her­self has come a long way from fran­ti­cal­ly sourc­ing ven­dors for her own wed­ding. Pub­lish­ing is risky, she said, but you have to keep your head on and be prac­ti­cal. She wel­comes feed­back, and has grown from be­ing ex­posed to oth­er writ­ing styles. "I'm al­ways open to ideas be­cause that's the on­ly way that we can grow and dif­fer­en­ti­ate our­selves."