Customer Reviews

The Elegant Wedding and the Budget-Savvy Bride: How to Have the Wedding of Your Dreams for Half the Price

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

 

 

This book is a must read for brides like myself who want to have a truly elegant wedding but do not have a large budget. When I began to plan my wedding, I was discouraged by the high prices from vendors. I needed to know how to save money without compromising quality. Deb McCoy taught me how to do this! My wedding was beautiful and it did not cost a fortune... Thank you Deb!

In my opinion, this book was very unuseful.I found it to be a waste of $20. In the first few pages the author states..."A wedding is not a time to have it your way." She also feels that having portraits of the bride and groom or running videos of their love story in the reception "..is vulgar. A wedding is not supposed to convey a message to the guests that says, "I'm Queen For A Day," or "Look At Me!" Personally, I found this to be insulting. Of course the wedding day is supposed to be the bride and grooms' day to shine and to hare that day with the ones you love. In my opinion, you can find friendly and realistic advise in "Bridal Bargains" by Denise and Alan Fields or "How to Have a Big Wedding on a Small Budget" by Diane Warner. These books realize how important this day is to the couple and also present useful information on how to make it your day without the wasted money.

From beginning to end, this book offers innovative ideas on how to plan a great wedding without compromising style or elegance. I have used it as a reference guide for dos and donts and it has also saved me time and expense with its great affordable ideas. A must have for the bride to be on a budget or not.

The author gives great advice on cutting the bills and keeping the frills. For example, our wedding looks like it cost the average $20,000+, but it is only costing 7,000 or less. The book is extremely detailed and gives step by step instructions and ideas on the wedding from start to finish. I really got a lot of use out of the wedding checklists, the recipes, and the suggested vendor list. I've read it cover to cover a few times and have found this resource to be *Extremely Helpful*. I've only bought one wedding planner book - THIS ONE! :)

Deborah McCoy plays the role of the M-I-L from hell, whose advice you might appreciate, but whose snarky tone just sets your teeth on edge. You can practically hear her telling a bride, "Oh, dear, you DID plan on loosing some of that weight, didn't you?" Some of her tips on cutting costs without sacrificing quality were very helpful, but she just can't rein in the judgmental attitude that says, "Any bride who doesn't do it MY WAY is a horrible horrible person whose friends will all hate her." McCoy toots her own horn as a wedding planner over and over again, giving us at least one story per chapter about how she single-handedly saved some poor clueless bride's wedding day. Her tips would have been much more helpful if she were less rigid in her (often contradictory, often old-fashioned) etiquette and "elegance" rules. Her views on what is mandatory and what is unnecessary are completely out of touch with what most brides want, but she sets them down as absolutes that should not under any circumstances be deviated from. (For instance: Videographer, mandatory; limo, unnecessary. Hello???)
That said, she does offer some good tips, for instance recipes and instructions on making your own wedding cake and a great chapter on selecting engagement rings. If you can get this book from your library, you might glean some good ideas from it, but I would never recommend that you rely exclusively on this book when planning your wedding.

As a bride with a very limited budget I read this book from cover to cover and marked almost every page as having information I'd need along the way. Although some of it did not apply to me at all, the tips and suggestions given certainly inspired me to "get creative" with how things should be done. Thanks to this book I feel like my wedding will be the one I've always wanted, without breaking the bank! Thank you, Ms. McCoy, for showing that elegant does not have to mean $$$$.