Wedding Chic: The Savvy Bride's Guide to Getting More While Spending Less [Mass Market Paperback]

Nina Willdorf (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 4, 2005

Brides-to-be can put aside the temptation to elope--Wedding Chic is here to help make sense of it all with the low-budget, high-style scoop. With real saving secrets straight from planners, photographers, florists, caterers, newlyweds, and other savvy sources, this is the essential guide for women on planning the wedding they've always wanted--without spending the rest of their married years paying it off.

Brides will learn to:

- Avoid getting bullied by the professionals
- Find the best planner for their pennies
- Get the most bloom for their buck
- Make saving on their photographer a snap
- Find low-cost entertainers that are music to their ears
- Create a booze budget and wedding menu at palatable prices
- Slip into a teensy, weensy honeymoon bikini without losing their shirts
- Be queen for the day-without getting totally ripped off!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Building on Wildorf’s previous book, City Chic: An Urban Girl’s Guide to Livin’ Large on Less, this valuable introduction to budget weddings and receptions is written in an enjoyably breezy style and packed full of helpful tips. Willdorf recently married, so she knows how expensive the whole affair can be; as she points out, the average cost for a wedding is approximately $22,000. Determined to cut expenses without sacrificing style, Willdorf had the wedding of her dreams on the cheap, and here she explains how she managed to be mindful of her pocketbook "without getting the tulle pulled over my eyes." Amazingly, she was able to keep everything classy by merely tweaking the traditional wedding formula (i.e., having a limited bar instead of an entirely open one, instructing the florist to purchase a "market buy" of beautiful in-season flowers and "opting for a Friday-night affair rather than a Saturday event" to save 10 to 15 percent). Willdorf also offers some crafty suggestions—such as spray-painting pinecones gold for a winter wedding or making colorful centerpieces out of fruit instead of flowers—and it’s clear that she knows her etiquette: going to a department store for a makeover is fine; underpaying your officiate is not. Her overall theme is to know what’s important, put the money there and cut back on everything else. Though some of her advice is commonsense, Willdorf packs enough practical information and can-do spirit into this savvy guide to make it a necessity for budget-minded brides and grooms.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Nina Willdorf is a newly married thrifty style expert and author of City Chic: An Urban Girl's Guide to Livin' Large on Less. She is the Senior Associate Editor for Child magazine, and has written for Glamour, New York, and Entertainment Weekly among other publications.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Perigee Trade (January 4, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399530649
• ISBN-13: 978-0399530647
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,267,483 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful guidance in the midst of wedding planning madness, February 7, 2005

By 

E. Shultz (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wedding Chic: The Savvy Bride's Guide to Getting More While Spending Less (Mass Market Paperback)

Silly me - I thought that once I proposed and my fiancee cheerfully accepted, the hard work and all the planning (to pull off a great, suprise proposal) were done. How wrong I was! As I have quickly come to realize over the past few months, the wedding industry is a huge and often terrifying monster. As a groom-to-be without any sisters, I had no idea of what went into planning a wedding. Thankfully, Wedding Chic came to my rescue.

Photographers show you album after album of photos that all look identical (insert grandma here, make the groom stand here, etc.) and then they all tell you that one album will be $1000! Caterers push the overpriced (and usually bland) prime rib, while the musicians tell you that "have to have at least 8 musicians" for a wedding party of 100 people. Wedding Chic will help you to figure out where YOU want to spend your money so that instead of the caterer, band leader, cake baker, etc. telling you what you MUST spend your money on - you can make informed decisions and feel comfortable that you're not walking down the aisle with the word "sucker" plastered on your forehead. Plus, Ms. Wildorf offers great tips for how to make your wedding unique and express something about who you and your fiancee are. She even includes some guidance for how to make your own invitations and floral arrangements (great ways to save some money)!

My advice: as soon (and maybe even before) you get engaged, get this book so you can have a great wedding and still save some of your cash for your honeymoon.

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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the book i've been looking for!, January 8, 2005

By 

franny s. (brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wedding Chic: The Savvy Bride's Guide to Getting More While Spending Less (Mass Market Paperback)

i just got "wedding chic" yesterday and i've already marked it all up. despite the hours i've spent crouched in the wedding section of bookstores poring over wedding guides, i had yet to purchase anything. even the "anti-bride guide" seemed too adamantly anti to be more useful than cheeky.

the layout of "wedding chic" is clean and accessible and nina has great ideas. i especially love that each section goes through the traditional how-to and then the DIY version of the same thing (food, music, invitations etc...). nina peppers the book with real-life examples from her own wedding and friends weddings, and most importantly she gets that everyone is different. as a result there are tons of ideas and options for all kinds of people looking to have a chic wedding on a tight budget, (regardless of what "chic" and "tight" mean to you).

this book is a great resource, totally readable and appealing to a girl who never thought she would be spending all her time thinking about getting married.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wish I had known about this book sooner!, August 4, 2005

By 

A. Yang (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wedding Chic: The Savvy Bride's Guide to Getting More While Spending Less (Mass Market Paperback)

I love this little book! I've been engaged for 6 months now and I just discovered this gem of a book a month ago on a friend's bookshelf. Much of the information was no longer useful in my stage of planning, as I'm getting married in less than 2 months. But, reading over it confirmed that some of the ways my fiance and I went about cutting costs for the wedding were actually done before, and smart. And, just because we've found ways to spend less, doesn't mean our wedding will turn out "cheap." There have been other information useful to me from this point on. It's a really savvy, and stylish. The illustrations are great, too! I've already purchased it for 2 friends who just got engaged.