Sara and Wes are one of four Texas couples highlighting the Oct. 1st epison of "Four Weddings" on TLC.

This Aledo wedding will be one of four featured Oct. 1 on TLC.

Here’s a sneak peak at Friday’s edition of  TLC’s Four Weddings.

The reality show brought its crew to north Texas, and local brides and grooms allowed their weddings to be videotaped for public inspection. Here’s the premise: four brides and four weddings compete against each other for a grand prize of a dream honeymoon.

Bride Sara and groom Wes shared photos from their summer wedding at The Parson’s Table in Aledo, TX. The couple’s wedding was one of four to be spotlighted at 10 p.m. Friday on TLC.

Donna Smith of Out of the Garden (www.outofthegarden.com)  created the floral design, which included antique iron fencing adorned with vines, lanterns and candles.

Wedding designer was Meredith Commender with Significant Events of Texas (http://significanteventsoftexas.com). 

Guests entered the site surrounded by lanterns for a quintessential Texas ceremony. It set the tone for the evening; the bride even accessorized her white gown with cowgirl boots.the facility and the walk way for guests to enter the tented ceremony.

Hampton Morrow Photography provided the photographs.

Iron works mixed with fresh florals and candles decorated the pathways of this Aledo wedding. Antique doors adorned with decorated grapevine wreaths added to the Texas feel.

With some sort of weird attempt to update Miss America, last night’s Miss America Pageant set it back a good 30 years.

Televised live on the TLC network, the Miss America Pageant crowned Miss Indiana, Katie Stam, the winner. She seems a reasonable choice, given what we saw, but what we viewed on the way to the winner made me cringe.

First, let me explain. I’m a pageant convert. After thinking the Miss America Organization was an affront to feminism, I’ve since done a 180. I think the Miss America Organization trains young women to put their best foot forward. The winners of the Miss Texas Scholarship Pageant, the state’s stepping stone to the Miss America title, have been intelligent, polished, talented and, yes, certainly attractive women.

This year’s Miss Texas, Rebecca Robinson, is among the brightest and most talented, and I’m stunned she didn’t make it to the top 15. That’s just one part of what was at best a disappointing evening and at worst a train wreck of a TV show.

Last night’s version of the Miss America Pageant was a frightening trip to the final crowning. After years of striving to choose women to be taken seriously with platforms on serious issues, we witnessed talent befitting a Saturday Night Live skit. Miss Hawaii, in a wild costume, was a caricature; some singer hit 50 percent of the notes. If the swimsuit competition is about “physical fitness,” someone please explain to me the poor posture of one of the top finishers.

Worse than the lukewarm talent that would have had Simon Cowell stroke out was the way the non-winners (I won’t call them losers) were treated. Instead of calling out the names of who would advance, the show’s producers seemed to delight in hanging these young women out for public humiliation. Why else would you rush them into their talent costumes only to leave two contestants photographed on national TV when they wouldn’t be advancing to the next round?

If you wouldn’t treat the dorkiest kid on the playground that way, it’s just as wrong to treat the winner of a state contest in such a demeaning manner. It’s mean, and it’s reverse discrimination.

TLC in its “Countdown to the Crown” TV show repeatedly touted its re-making of the Miss America image. The network wanted to make Miss America the new “it” girl. Okay to the concept but back-handing young women on national TV isn’t the way to do that. It wasn’t hip and happening; it was cruel.

The young women, many of whom are top university students, worked long and hard for their chance to be in the national spotlight. In the name of Bert Parks, they deserve better than what TLC offered.

Times change. Death and taxes still only two things you can count on.

Miss America, once upon a time, always was crowned the weekend after Labor Day in Atlantic City. Years ago, it was a way to extend vacationing along the boardwalk. Bert Parks singing, high heels with one-piece swim suits–tradition! But in our new millennium, we crown Miss America in January in Vegas with the help of–what else?–reality TV. Throw 52 young women together, and we get to play pageant judge.

So our cute, smart, wonderful Miss Texas, Rebecca Robinson, will be showcased tonight on the first installment of the TV show, “Miss America, Countdown to the Crown,” at 9 p.m. on TLC. Evidently we get to vote on who we like.

I’ve had the pleasure of spending some time with our tap-dancing Miss T, and I can tell you she is a winner. Her TLC bio claims that she’s “bilingual,” but that misses her languages by two. Rebecca speaks FOUR! That blows that dumb-blonde stereotype all to pieces, doesn’t it?

Just as the Miss A TV show takes off, we’re on a roll for the local pageants. Heather Edwards Bruce, herself once a runner-up to Miss Texas, tells me the Miss Southlake and Miss Teen Southlake Pageant is set for 7 p.m. Saturday (Jan. 3) at Carroll Senior High School in Southlake. Admission is $15.