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.
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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.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
52 of 52 people found the following review helpful
By S. Casey
Format: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.
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.
37 of 37 people found the following review helpful
By Dena Mopsik
Format: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.
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.
19 of 21 people found the following review helpful
By Yujine
Format: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.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
NIce
Nice book of ideas for a wedding. My daughter the bride likes looking at it . Bought it to help get her moving on wedding plans.
Published 2 months ago by Amidala
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great basic book
If you need a lot of visuals, this is a great book with many ideas. My husband and I chose an outdoor simple wedding and we fashioned our centerpieces and other ideas from some... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Melinda T.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Helpful
I purchased this book to help ,e with my wedding decorations. It has wonderful ideas and has been helpful in the process.
Published 2 months ago by C. Rossi
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very Satisfied
Beautiful book full of ideas on how to plan for a simple or elegant wedding. This book is well worth the price.
Published 4 months ago by Kristine Cohn
5.0 out of 5 stars
pursefect
This book gave me a lot of information and it will be very useful for me planning my wedding. Great book I like it a lot.
Published 13 months ago by pursefect
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Ideas!
I bought this book as an engagement gift. The book has many practical and simple ideas and is organized by theme.
Published 17 months ago by Ellen
2.0 out of 5 stars
Has nice photos but not too useful
I felt like my wife and I would've been better off just Googling things to see ideas. There were a lot of photos in the book but it was hard to get usable ideas from this. Read more
Published 18 months ago by GamingGuyYeah
3.0 out of 5 stars
Eh
Ok, I don't know what I saw in this book in the first place. You can find much better pictures online. There was a lot of words, and not that many pictures.
Published 22 months ago by eearnest
3.0 out of 5 stars
Too many texts.
This book had good amount of pictures but there were not so many ideas that I liked. Also I felt like there were to many texts. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Tomo
4.0 out of 5 stars
More of a Look Book
I liked this book but found it more helpful as a "Look Book" full of great picture inspirations than anything else. Read more
Published 23 months ago by mrsmullen
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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