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For Heather Reier, getting just the right shade of browny pink for her wedding invitations meant more work than flipping through pages of creamy sample invites at William Ashley.

After deciding that none of the hundreds of standard Pantone colours would do, she stood over a printer in the back room of his shop as he mixed her up a custom hue.

"Everything [else] was too purple, too pink or too brown," says Reier, who is the founder of ultracute Canadian beauty line Cake. Using her method of choosing a lipstick, she took samples of the ink and pearlized card stock outside to look at it in daylight.

"I say it's my Cake brain coming on," she says. "I treat my wedding the way I would treat a product launch. My mind works a little differently -- it's not a red or blue choice for me. I have a clear vision, so it's hard for me to waver."

No, Reier isn't one the now-archetypal "bridezillas" who alienates her family and screeches at the DJ. She's one of a new breed of bride who, whether because they work in an aesthetic industry or because they are avid design amateurs, see a wedding as the ultimate exercise in visual branding.

Diana Shin, an associate at Bliss Events, says her party-planning firm has found a niche catering to the aesthetics-obsessed.

"Brides in general are getting more interested in those details," Shin says. "Especially for women who work in the design industries, it's about the look, the colours, the themes, the paper -- the really tactile things."

Indeed, the branded bride is usually slightly older and often well established in her work life. She sees the typical cornerstones of a wedding as a mere template in which to imprint her very well-defined tastes.

For Report on Business magazine photo editor Clare VanderMeersch, who took her married name Jordan last weekend, the paint-by-numbers wedding of an ingenue was not an option. Where Reier sees a product launch, she saw it as an issue of her own personal magazine.

"A wedding should be reflective of you. It shouldn't be generic. It does take a certain kind of person to art-direct a wedding," she said before her big day. "I do get obsessed with details -- I'm trying to create a day to remember."

And just like creating a magazine or a beauty line, these brides thrive on deadline pressure. "I haven't changed my personality -- I'm used to working under stress."

Jordan's vision started with the absolute opposite of the solitaire engagement ring. She designed it with her now-husband Gerry Jordan and her design friend Paul McLure. The result is a very modern seven-diamond design in which the two-banded engagement ring and the single-band wedding ring will be welded together after the big day.

"I love the idea that the design is not complete until we're married," she said.

By the time Jordan walked into Catherine Cooper's Urban Bride dress salon in Toronto, the clotheshorse and shoe fanatic had three accessories around which the rest of the wedding would fit. After the ring, there was a long double-stranded pearl pendant bought in Britain, the location of the wedding, and a pair of killer purple Manolo Blahnik heels. The iridescence of the heels inspired Jordan's peacock theme, which showed up everywhere from the invites to the wallpaper table runners.

After a few designs and redesigns and innumerable fittings -- off-the-shoulder was ditched because it didn't suit the gems -- Cooper and Jordan created a ruched-bodice gown with a low V-neck to show off the jewellery and a flowy not-too-long hem to show off the heels.

On the day of her last fitting, no ruche was left unmonitored.

"Clare was an architect in another life," Cooper said. "Clients like Clare focus on a lot of little details, but in fact it's more rewarding than the bride who doesn't know what she wants. We've both put so much into this dress. It has so much meaning."

The art-directed wedding is also adding shine to the DIY trend. Jordan's photo-booth-style wedding invites were designed with the help of a friend and assembled by a gaggle of bridesmaids.

One client of Shin's had her hang decorative Indian mirrors all around the Sunnyside Pavilion on Toronto's waterfront, as well as erect a sparkling "champagne tree" made of a silver-painted branch decorated with crystal chandelier pieces found in antique stores. The bride also scoured eBay for frosted vases that Shin filled with feathers and lights for "very little money."

"She had a clear vision in her head and was very crafty herself."

Reier assembled her own invites too. She then sealed them with -- you guessed it -- just the right colour of wax.

"Putting together the invites was like arts and crafts day at my house," says Reier, who realized wax seals might pop off in the mail so she made them beforehand and glue-gunned them on.

At the craft superstore Michael's, she found a retro plastic bride-and-groom ornament to top her classy, three-tier chocolate, vanilla and lemon cake. Call it tradition reframed.

With her customized colour, Reier, who gets married next weekend, created a logo that runs on all printed material, a rough-edged patch of colour with a monogram with each of their first initials and their shared last initial, R.

"It really defines the vibe of the wedding. We branded the whole thing."

Even mistakes can be solved aesthetically; when Reier realized the 51-cent stamps she had affixed weren't enough, she simply added a second instead of nickel-and-diming her way up to 73 cents.

"I can't have eight stamps on the envelope"

Details of the day

Toronto-based WeddingBells magazine (http://www.weddingbells.ca) recently conducted an on-line survey of more than 1,600 readers to discover "the who, what, when and how much, surrounding this big day." Herewith, a snapshot of its results:

THE BRIDE

27: Average age of engaged women in Canada

71: Percentage of brides-to-be living with their fiancé

$76,476: Average household income after marriage

THE EVENT

$25,800: Average spent on a Canadian wedding

155: Average number of wedding guests

25: Percentage of weddings with 200-plus guests

20: Percentage (annually) of weddings occurring in July (the top wedding month)

36: Percentage (annually) of couples who get engaged in December

PLANNING

10: Average number of months that the WeddingBells reader/respondent has been engaged and planning her wedding

10-12: Average number of months before the wedding that decisions are made relating to location and gown

7-9: Average number of months before the wedding that decisions are made relating to the cake, florist and bridesmaids' dresses