Down the Aisle, Into the Melting Pot

"The baby boomers were more focused on classic wedding style," she said. "The brides and grooms didn't have the knowledge the brides and grooms have now, so often it was the parents who did everything for them."

In January, her business partner, Sidni Greenblat, oversaw a wedding in Puerto Rico for a Washington couple. "The bride is Argentine and the groom is Jamaican American, so their first dance was a tango and we served Jamaican food at the rehearsal dinner."

Maria Elena Jackson is owner of No Small Affair, an event-planning company in Arlington. She credits Martha Stewart with encouraging the trend toward personalized rather than perfunctory celebrations in her 1987 book "Weddings," and later in her specialty magazines devoted to the subject. "Her wedding magazine brought to the forefront that the event is really about making it your own, reflecting your and your groom's personalities so that it doesn't just become another wedding," said Jackson.

The Knot, a wedding planning magazine and Web site, includes a cultural celebrations section on global customs. "We publish stories on brides and grooms, how they met and the customs they included. [It] is one of the most popular sections," says executive editor Rosie Amodio. "It's part of the anti-copycat wedding movement."

In Korea, according to the site, American-style wedding cakes would be considered too sweet; a more popular choice would be a cake of ground steamed rice covered in red bean powder. In the West Indies, guests pay for a peek at the wedding cake hidden under a white tablecloth, which is believed to bring good luck. In Russian Georgian weddings, often held at home, the bride kicks over a pitcher of wine and scatters bread dough around the house to ensure fertility.

Instead of the bride throwing her bouquet to single girlfriends, as is common in many American weddings, Amodio says in Turkish weddings, "all the single girls sign their name on the bottom of the bride's shoes and the name that is most worn out by the end of the night is the next to get married."

As blended weddings become more popular, so does the availability of specialty supplies in the American marketplace.

Renellie International ( http://www.renellie.com ) is a California-based company doing a brisk business selling cake toppers that can be mixed and matched by race (and gender). The firm, launched earlier this year, sold out of its initial 450-item stock in less than two months.

"I'm African American and my husband is Asian and when we got married I was so frustrated that I couldn't find a cake topper that looked like us," says co-owner Rena Puebla. "I was seeing so many couples from different countries and cultures getting married, so I knew there was a market for them." Their current best seller is the Asian bride. "We can hardly keep it in stock," says co-owner Ellie Genuardi. (The hand-painted 7-inch toppers, sold wholesale and on their Web sites, http://www.weddingate.com and http://www.renellie.com , start at $69.99 a pair.)