Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration [Hardcover]

Karen Bussen (Author), Ellen Silverman (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 2004

The three biggest trends in weddings are simplicity, personalization, and colour! Wedding designer and expert Karen Bussen focuses on these elements as she shows couples how to design their own weddings without going crazy or broke. Simple Stunning Weddings is the first wedding design book to focus on the WHERE of the event. Location is the first and most important decision; everything else flows from it. Bussen then shows how to create unifying themes with colour, flowers, and personal touches; how to talk to vendors; how to decide where to spend the wedding budget; how to adapt the design for every budget - for example, by changing tablecloths from silk to cotton; striking flower arrangements that use only one or two flower types, which can be a significant cost saving; and advising the reader when it is actually faster, safer, and less expensive to hire someone else to do a job than to tackle it oneself.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Karen Bussen is one of New York's most exciting wedding and event designers. Her styling and floral designs have been featured in magazines such as Modern Bride, Martha Stewart Weddings, Home, Food & Wine, Country Living, and Interior Design. She is a consultant to one of Japans largest hotel chains. Over the past six years, Karen has designed over 100 weddings for real brides and grooms throughout the country - couples with widely varying styles, locations and budgets.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Stewart, Tabori and Chang (November 16, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1584793651
• ISBN-13: 978-1584793656
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 9.1 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #21,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Weddings > Planning

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 47 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars MVP for Wedding Ideas, October 5, 2005

By 

S. Casey "bookworm" (CO, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration (Hardcover)

The philosphy of this book is even more useful than the stunning pictures are. When I was planning my weding, it was so easy to be overwhelmed with the choices and ideas available. This book offers a 1-2-3 approach than can simplify some of the decision-making, at least as far as decor is concerned. While I too was occasionally frustrated by my location not fitting into any of the "themes" given, the point of the book is to inspire brides to work WITH their locations, rather than against them. By doing so, I saved a lot of time, effort, and money by not trying to make my location into a castle or a country club when it was a renovated school, but rather embracing the beauty of the architecture and gardens already there.

Aside from the basic philosophy, the pictures are incredible. I love thumbing through this book even though my wedding is over, just for the beauty of the photography and the creativity of the ideas. This book, along with Bridal Bargains, gave me the wedding I wanted with the budget I had.

35 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Wedding Planning Bible, August 17, 2007

By 

Dena Mopsik (Redmond, Washington) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration (Hardcover)

I used this book to plan my wedding that happened in May '07, which was done without a wedding planner. My wedding was held in a historic, beautiful synagogue and historic beautiful hotel (similar to the country club chapter). So many of our guests have commented directly to us or my parents about how beautiful our wedding was -- and I have to say this book helped me more than any other. Simple Stunning Weddings guided most of my decor decisions over the 9 months that I spent planning our wedding.

For starters, I used this book to communicate with my florist -- it was extremely helpful for that. So many of my friends and family have commented on how stunning our flowers were -- we used fresh seasonal flowers in colors that suited our venue but they were of a style and in containers similar to the ones presented here.

In addition, her ideas about where to splurge and where to save for a given venue were invaluable. Not only did they save money, but they also saved time and stress.

Her suggestion of bringing old family photos into a reception site was one of the biggest hits of my wedding -- both my husband and I found old photographs of our family going back to the early 20th century and had them displayed on a large table. People couldn't stop talking about them -- not just our relatives, but friends too. That suggestion cost us about $50 -- how great is that? Her idea to hire a swing band to harmonize with the classic space was another giant hit -- the dance floor was full until the band stopped at midnight.

I didn't copy her ideas, rather I adapted them for the synagogue and ballrooms that we used -- and I found it quite easy to do so. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by all the choices around planning a wedding -- everything from table linens to wineglasses to lighting to picking a band -- it was wonderful to have her photos and text to guide and influence our decisions.

I spent nine months being fairly wedding obsessed while planning our wedding -- I purchased many books and magazines, spent lots of time figuring out our options and looking around for ideas, and I have to say that the ideas presented here were the best resource I found. My other favorite book (in a very different vein) was Bridal Bargains -- it's discussions on how to hire vendors from photographers to caterers to dress shops informed and influenced all of our vendor selections. By doing so I hired great vendors right away and avoided many of the hassles that my friends went through while planning their weddings. I'm not sure how much money I saved through their suggestions, but they really do understand what good vendors look like -- which was tremendously helpful.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine Simplicity, January 14, 2006

By 

Yujine - See all my reviews

This review is from: Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration (Hardcover)

The books offers simple, colorful pictures to indulge yourself in and set up in the most organized fashion. I was surprised at how much information it actually offered once I started reading the book. The text goes beyond the design efforts of the wedding and takes you into the scheduling of the wedding, the tasks that will be developed throughout the preparation of the wedding, wedding day preparations, tips on selecting the the venue & dealing with the people involved and just basic advice on every single detail. I found the book very helpful since it was seperated in different chapters according to the type of venues. The floral ideas were amazing since it offered simplicity using color tactics rather than quantity tactics. I only wished there were more weddings per each theme to compare. Such as three different 'vineyard' weddings, so it would offer more ideas within each particular theme.