Customer Reviews

Weddings for Grownups: Everything You Need to Know to Plan Your Wedding Your Way

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

If you want to overdose on froofy bouquets, fairy princess dresses and hard sales pitches about your wedding being "your day," avoid this book. If you've got a strong sense of style that you're not seeing in Bride's Magazine, a genuine wish to make the wedding a special celebration for all your loved ones, and a sincere longing to avoid becoming Bridezilla, get the book.

It's not going to give you bouquet ideas, it's not going to tell you how to shave $1000 off your dress price, it's not going to show you how to hand-make your favors.

But this book will help you keep everything in perspective and create the ceremony and reception that you want to have, not the one other people think you should have. It will give you the backbone to go your own way when faced with yet another bridal boutique consultant who seems to think that every woman wants a 12-foot train.

This book is a sanity check and wedding-planning outline wrapped in one. I heartily endorse reading this before you even *think* about buying a copy of Modern Bride.

If you had to buy one wedding book, this would be it. At last a book for those of us who aren't 'princesses' and aren't planning to spend all of our families' disposable incomes and all of our time for the next twelve months on our weddings. As an example, one of the weddings Ms. Stoner describes is a potluck reception where the bride had to make a choice between having food or having a band. Now that's like the decisions most of us have to make--unlike so many books for brides. Other nice things: discussing how and where to purchase an untraditional bridal gown (if you don't want to spend 3K to look like Cinderella), decisions and budget sheets, how to plan a wedding in a hurry, etc. Practical, helpful, and best of all, reassuring.

This book was easily the most helpful book I read when planning my wedding. Sure, Martha Stewart was ready to give advice. And yeah, Modern Brides was there with the same articles they run year after year. But this book made me realize that I could make my TRUE dreams a reality. It made me realize I wasn't horrible for not sharing the same wedding vision as my mother. It made me believe that I could do *my* wedding, *my* way (which meant including the wishes of my groom), and still have it turn out beautiful, and even better, be a good representation of who my husband and I are, and let our loved ones see the character our marriage would take on, from the very beginning.

Of all the books I read when planning my wedding (and I read a lot!), this one gave me the courage to have the wedding I really wanted, and the strength to not be guilted or bullied into the wedding I didn't want.

Everytime I hear that someone is planning a wedding, I recommend this book. No others. Just this one. It's really all the advice you'll need.

I'm surprised to read others' reviews describing this book as limited to glitzy "Oscar-party"-type wedding ideas. There were no glossy photos in the edition that I read. There were, however, lots of ideas for saving money and prioritizing what really matters to you. I found the book very helpful and I got married when I was in grad school--we certainly didn't have tons of money to spend on our wedding.

What's more, this book doesn't induce "craftmania"--you don't come from this book feeling as if the only way to have an affordable wedding is to dragoon everyone you know into a cooking and crafting marathon. So many "affordable wedding" or "non-traditional bride" books berate you if you don't seek out EVERY bargain and do EVERYTHING yourself with your trusty glue gun. This book is alot more relaxed.

I loved the eloquent yet down-to-earth tone of the book. I truly enjoyed reading it. It was by far the best wedding book I read, and like most of the other reviewers, I read quite a few!

I had two concrete notions in my head when we got engaged:

1. I wanted to have a nice wedding, surrounded by all my favorite people in the world.
2. And--at 30 years old--the Pretty Princess fairytale event was not my thing.

But then I wasn't sure exactly what step to take next to ensure I ended up with an event that would relect us as a couple.

This book proved an invaluable guide in helping me formulate what I wanted the day to look like. Both my fiance and I got our own copies, read it cover-to-cover, took notes and started our conversation about the festivities from there. I'd highly recommend Weddings for Grownups to any adult who wants their wedding to be a reflection of them as a couple, rather than some image of what the bridal industry in this country is trying to sell you.

I was looking for a book that gave some clues about having a wedding that was a great party - this was it. There are entertaining stories/examples of weddings & how brides solved adult problems. It assumes you know the basics & goes from there. The other good book for grownups is "The Wedding Guide for the Grownup Bride."

Not every bride wants to be a "perfect pretty princess" and have a "fairy-tale wedding," even a young one (I was 22 when I got married). This book is about how to have a wedding that reflects you and your fiance's tastes, interests, and style and reject those parts of wedding "tradition" (most of which is invented by the bridal industry) that don't reflect who you are. There are many, many alternatives to the big-white-church-and-dinner-at-the-country-club wedding, and this book helps you find them. The book has great stories about real-life weddings that were poignant, sophisticated, cheerful, playful or fantasy-like, and they are really inspiring. It really makes you think a lot about what you want the tone of your wedding to be, and then helps you figure out what to do to get that tone. I highly recommend this book. If you buy no other wedding planning book, buy this one.

This book is not really about wedding PLANNING but about wedding pyschology...which is why I liked it so much. It's very helpful in making you and your fiance stop and think why are you doing something and do you really want to do it and where is the pressure to do it coming from. I read a lot of books before my wedding and this one is the best wedding pyschology book I encountered. It is a great engagement present...try to get it into the hands of the lucky couple as soon as possible and before the head table / dress length / entree choice wars (inevitably) break out!

I bought every wedding planning book known to woman, and this is the one I really used. This quote from a bride interviewed for the book became my mantra: "I thought long and hard about the things I cared about, and ignored the rest." I followed that advice and put together a wedding that everyone said was the nicest they'd ever been to. The book is still on my bedside table because the stories in it are so inspiring and so much fun to read.

My post-engagement book-buying frenzy netted me a treacly mess of bridal magazines and wedding planners -- and one little gem: Weddings for Grownups. I chucked the others in short order (the breathless bride routine wore thin in about the time it takes to fill out a "Win Your Dream Wedding!!" sweepstakes form) but hung onto this one. What a breath of fresh air. Well conceived, nicely written, full of charming anecdotes and entertaining (to me) cautionary tales. My husband and I picked and chose our favorite ideas, cafeteria-style, and ended up with a wedding that was everything we wanted and nothing we didn't. Can't give this book all the credit, but it was a big help. I still thumb through it from time to time. Four years after the fact, it remains a fun read.