Customer Reviews

Bridal Bargains, 8th Edition: Secrets to throwing a fantastic wedding on a realistic budget (Bridal Bargains: Secrets to Throwing a Fantastic Wedding on a Realistic Budget)

5 star:		(67)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have been reading several wedding planning books during my engagement and have found this one to be the most helpful. Each section has dozens of interesting ideas and relevant information. I especially appreciated their reviews of various companies, stores, designers, etc.

Some books give cool suggestions but assume you have a limitless budget, while others sacrifice elegance in order to drastically cut costs. This book strikes a perfect balance between those two extremes and has excellent advice for planning a very nice wedding at a reasonable cost.

I'm in the process of planning my own wedding. This book has been very helpful in many aspects of wedding planning. It talks about different kinds of wedding invitations offered by different companies. It gives ratings to brands of wedding gawns and bridesmaids' dresses. Then there are sections on photographers, florists, etc. There are also suggested websites to get more information. It's been a great book for me to read before talking to vendors. This book has been more helpful to me than wedding planning books.

I bought this book because the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, and on a tight budget, I really could use some help. I can honestly say that there was literally nothing in this book that I hadn't a) read in my other wedding planning guides, or b) figured out for myself, based on common sense.

If you really aren't a creative thinker, and need some really common sense ideas for saving (i.e. cutting your guest list down?), it might be helpful, but I was really disappointed. At least they offer a refund if you don't like it. Which I didn't.

Carly Roney's "The Knot Complete Guide to Weddings in the Real World" isn't specifically for budget weddings, but it's way better than this book, because it makes great points for etiquette, creativity, saving money, and everything you could possibly want to know about weddings. My bride-on-a-budget advice is save your money, and don't buy Bridal Bargains.

A friend recommended this book to me right after I got engaged. I found it to be helpful in certain areas, but there are also a lot of annoying things about this book. First, the negatives:
1) I found the authors' tone throughout the book to be extremely irritating and depressing. It's clear that they have a vendetta against the entire wedding industry. Yes, I get it, wedding-related services are appallingly overpriced. But these authors take the doom-and-gloom, everyone-is-out-to-get-you thing way too far. It makes you want to jump off a cliff, not jump into wedding planning. Also, they take issue with bridal magazines being vehicles for advertisements, but then they repeatedly advertise their own other books and their website throughout this book. Hypocritical, much?
2) TYPOS. I have literally never read any publication with this many typos before. It seemed like practically every page had a major error on it. Clearly these authors need to get a better editor.
3) I found it frustrating that many of the average prices they quote are inaccurate depending on where you live. I live in the NY area, and while the authors do acknowledge that major metro areas will usually have higher prices, I wish they would have done a little more research into exactly how much higher. Often they quote the "high end" for a vendor as being a certain price, when in NY really it might be hundreds of dollars more.

Now, for the good stuff: if you can get past the angry tone and all the typos, the book actually does have some good advice on planning in general and on saving money. What I found most helpful were the lists of websites, online discount sources, and stores in various cities. If you're newly engaged, there's a lot of information that will help you figure out where to start with planning and which sources will best fit your budget. Also, the authors do offer a money-back guarantee on the book, so if you hate it you don't really have anything to lose!

Finally, a book for those of us who are planning to get married for far less than the average of $20k+ that an American wedding goes for these days. My fiancee and I are planning a wedding for next spring. I've seen many wedding planning books, and the redundancies between them--the same old warmed-over inventory of checklists and idiotic tips like "if you're planning an outdoor wedding, make rain plans"--become clear after reading just two or three.

This book, though, is the best I've seen. It's full of great tips to save money and plan a wedding on a budget, and the best part of the book is the extensive research and tips on working the wedding gown industry to your advantage--probably one of your single largest expenses. There's even a complementary website that grades different wedding gown suppliers/designers--the website access information is printed in the book.

I only have two critiques of the book:

1. It's not proofread all that well--I found spelling and syntax errors with a degree of regularity. To me, this detracts from the credibility of the book.

2. This really applies to almost all wedding planning books, but it annoys the heck out of me that brides are assumed to lead the wedding planning (e.g. the title "Bridal Bargains.") How about "Wedding Bargains"?

A central tenet of this book is not being pressured into making huge purchases for your wedding just because social convention suggests you should--instead, you should have a wedding that matches you and your fiancee's personalities. I'm surprised that the authors would make this excellent point, and then leave the social convention of the bride planning the whole event by default entirely unexamined. Really, aren't we finally, FINALLY past the era where the bride automatically assumes all of the responsibility of organizing this huge event--as if the groom has no stake at all in this ceremony where two people announce their love to one another in front of friends and family? The division of responsibility in organizing a wedding celebration should be the choice of the couple (and if the bride wants to go nuts with the planning, she should be able to have at it), not some sad, time-worn social expectation of how a wedding should be planned.

That said, this is still an excellent purchase. If you must spend money on one wedding planning book, make it the current edition of this book. It's absolutely worth the money.

This book has great ideas, but I would NOT recommend reading it from start to finish as soon as you get it. The book is packed w/so much information that it is overwhelming at first, especially for a newly engaged bride. And the book tends to paint a negative picture of the wedding industry, which left me feeling somewhat hopeless. Rather I found it most helpful to read in sections when I was working out the details for specific parts of the wedding such as attire, reception, ceremony, etc. The oddest thing about the book is that it jumps around from one topic to another in a disorganized fashion. The chapters are broken down into topics, but the authors allude to other parts of the book in each chapter of it.

I was fearful that this book would have the same old money-saving tips, such as "invite fewer people" or "get married on a Wednesday." But this book actually has good ideas and resources. The authors guarantee that you will save $500 or more or your money back.

The book is in an easy-to-read and engaging format. It is definitely no-nonsense and gives the pros and cons of most everything. It also includes a multi-page bridal gown source guide via the Internet (accessible through a password located in the book) and rates gown makers and sellers, from David's Bridal to Kleinfeld's. The web site also has message boards that are a good resource.

The book starts with an introduction to the multi-billion-dollar wedding industry and how the industry tries to use emotional hooks to get your money. It provides brief checklists to ask vendors (I would recommend a separate wedding planner for more detailed checklists) but more importantly explains the major traps and pitfalls. Sometimes the suggestions, such as getting everything in writing, are overkill (duh!)...but better safe than sorry for such an important occasion! There are plenty of vignettes from actual brides who rant or rave about certain vendors and the like. The authors give practical tips for dealing with sticky situations.

The largest portion of the book is devoted to gowns and has been invaluable to me. It truly has given me many resources that I never would have known of without the book and is a lot more than "buy a sample dress." In fact, it warns that these dresses may not be such a great deal. Who knew that you can order a gown directly from China for $100-300, and that the dressmaker will even customize it? The book also details the problems with such arrangements. It is filled with names of online, brick and mortar, and other retailers, including discounters, outlets, and local stores. It explains what to look for in a quality gown. The book does the same for other major wedding expenses, such as tuxedos, florists, invitations, etc.

This book is not just for people on a budget. It has ideas for people who just want an unusual or personal touch. There are parts that are geared towards people on a strict budget, such as arranging your own flowers purchased over the Internet. But some suggestions are downright pricey. I would actually say that the book is more about getting good value and quality than finding a bargain that is inexpensive but cheap.

I would highly recommend this book to any bride-to-be, regardless of budget. I do not think, however, that it substitues for an etiquette book or wedding planner.

By the way, I glanced at the 7th edition of this book, and the 8th version has been completely updated.

My fiance and I started calling this book the "gloom and doom" book. While it does have some good suggestions for saving money, a lot of the information was presented in a depressing fashion. There are whole sections on brides who get cheated, and disasters that befall weddings. That's the last thing I want to focus on when I'm under stress. Also, many of the web links were no longer active.

I'm not one to rave about, well, anything, but I'm making an exception here. If you are getting married and are on any kind of budget, buy this book. The wedding industry, as I have found, is not the most honest. The prices are insane on flowers and food and not to mention the ridiculous stipulations some venues try to put on you. The authors of this book are very upfront about what can go wrong and give you many tips on what to ask and what to look for in your contracts. I've found with other books that the vendor reviews tend to be skewed, but the vendor reviews in this on seem to be fair. Over all, the book was well worth the price.

I found this book to be extremely helpful in terms of scams to watch out for, unexpected places to look for bargains, etc. I also found it helped get me thinking outside the box in terms of decorations, music, etc - not only to save money, but also to make my wedding fun and unique. I would recommend complementing it with at least 1-2 other books, though. Personally, I am using one etiquette book and one detail-oriented planning book to keep everything running smoothly.