Customer Reviews

Real Weddings: A Celebration of Personal Style

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

 

 

I agree with the reviewer below from Seattle. This book is about fantasies. It is rather obvious that most of these brides and grooms have money and are not living in the "real world". I found very few of these weddings to be truly original. Almost all of them were rather large and had more than 100 people in attendance. I have a love/hate relationship with this book. The photography was lush and I must admit I am a little jealous of some of these couples; they had absoulutely beautiful weddings. However, my wedding is in seven weeks and because my fiance and I are paying for the large majority of it, we cannot have absolutely everything we could ever want. I cannot imagine being able to afford a second wedding dress (because I didn't like the first one) and scouring racks in a designer's store to find it. I only found one idea useful and that was what my fiance and his attendants will wear. These couples are simply very "well-off" and can afford anything. And that is just the plain and simple truth. If someone is going to write a book on "Real Weddings" it should include couples planning weddings from various economic backgrounds with various budgets and levels of creativity-not just wealthy individuals with mostly cookie-cutter versions.

If you identify with a bride whose SECOND choice for the wedding location was the groom's family's vineyard/estate in Provence (India didn't work out); for not one, but TWO brides who had the where-with-all to order TWO gowns (the first one was too froufrou); for a bride who had to "make do" with a Vera Wang gown after her fabric was destroyed in a fire, then this is the wedding book for you. In contrast to other wedding books, the text is (morbidly) fascinating; and there are more diverse brides represented in this book compared to others. However, almost without exception, every bride wore a long white dress and most (no matter what their age) wore veils. So, if you are looking for a book on alternative-type (in other words, real-world) weddings, this book does not fill the bill. You need to know, if you have limited funds, that the SMALLEST guest list was 50 (one wedding); every other wedding had over 100 guests, some up to 200. These are "real weddings"? This is fantasy land, where parents pay for the mega-expensive wedding, where the wedding is all about "the dress", the dream location, yada-yada-yada. Great belly laughs for those who are trying to orchestrate a real-world wedding.

I expected to learn something new or fun and exciting for a person with a mid-level budget hence the title Real Weddings. All I read and saw were weddings for those people who do not have to worry about a budget. The pictures were beautiful as well as the weddings, but for those of us with mild incomes it was more of a Fantasy Wedding book as oppose to a Real Wedding.

From the moment I read the first words of the introduction to Real Weddings: "Everyone knows what a wedding is about: a woman in a long white dress, a man in a tuxedo tugging his collar, and pew after pew of family members and friends, all wondering: (a) if this radiant person known as the bride is the same girl they saw last week doing her laundry and (b) how close they'll be seated to the band." I knew I'd finally found a wedding book that would actually be fun to read.

And the more I read, (and studied the wonderfully candid photos) the more I was convinced that I'd found the "real" thing. In the sections where each wedding was followed from the planning through to the day itself, I felt I was often there with the bride and groom, even in such intimate moments as when one bride, respecting tradition, and spending the night before the wedding apart from her husband to be, returned from her rehearsal dinner to spend an hour "dancing around buck naked in her veil before realizing she should get some sleep." And in the sections where the professionals talked about how to get the best out of their particular contribution, whether it be the catering, the flowers, or the band, I learned such invaluable (but, I suspect) often overlooked advice as making sure that the first dance is actually danceable.

On the whole, a delightfully written and illustrated book.

REAL WEDDINGS is the PERFECT wedding book, as it illustrates, in witty text and luscious photographs, every facet of creating a wedding that is stylish, meaningful, personal and unique. As a professional wedding consultant, I deal with dozens and dozens of confused young (and not so young) women every year. They don't want to follow the "traditional" route that their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, etc. took down the aisle, yet they are on a difficult search to find fresh ideas to make their weddings beautiful and meaningful to them. REAL WEDDINGS is the answer. Mss. Kilbridge and Samson have created a book that is near to perfect in displaying a wide range of ideas for brides of all ages, economic backgrounds and personal styles. The weddings that they chronical are chockablock full of wonderful ideas that are easily adaptable. I LOVE this book. I encourage all of my clients to buy it.

When I proposed, the idea of the perfect wedding didn't exactly jump out at me. We were looking for a book that encompassed every aspect of a wedding without being too traditonal or too contemporary. The "Real Weddings" book is by far the best book we've come across. We've been able to take some excellent and unique ideas from each wedding plan. The photography is exceptional and the detail is appreciated. Now I have a vision of our perfect wedding and its composition can be attributed to this wonderful book.

I thought this book would be helpful in "celebrating personal style" - It doesn't. It celebrates some very nice but very expensive traditional or theme weddings. These weddings also seem to have limitless budgets (e.g. spare no expense last minute change of venue to the groom's family estate in the south of France).

Simply put, This is a very nice picture album. Nice pictures, nice cover.
NICE. Not helpful! Very little info and advice. If you want planning, dress ideas, favor/craft how-to's, time and money saving ideas this is not that book.

A beautiful book with interesting ideas. The vendor interviews are a great idea. The one missing is the photographer! Ms. Sampson has plenty of her own nice work on display but given that not everyone will be able to hire her, how can other people get the right photographer? It seemed a glaring oversight that this participant of "behind the scenes" at a wedding was missing. I loved all the quirky humor of the book. The interviews are well presented. Overall a job well done.

i expected this book to have better ideas and tips, but i was surprised with the modest level of creativity it contains

What I liked about the weddings in this book is that they were all about personality. What people are always trying to do is personalise a wedding. WEddings are typically formal, tradtionally, structured, choregraphed affairs that have been done the same way for 100 years. I think the nice thing about this book is that even the people who had enormous weddings did it with a big shot of personality. Its also a real how to, hands on book that helps couples do instead of what they should do, what they want to do. It encourages them to follow their hearts.