From the basics of wedding etiquette to a guide on keeping your big day 'Simple,' the following reviews will help brides-to-be decide what to read.
"Simple Stunning Wedding Etiquette: Traditions, Answers, and Advice from One of Today's Top Wedding Planners"
By Karen Bussen, Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 2007, $19.95
Wedding etiquette has always been a tricky landscape to maneuver. But this handy manual will bring you up to speed on the many rules and guidelines of planning your big day.
Bussen, a wedding planner who's been featured in Modern Bride and InStyle Weddings, covers everything from announcing an engagement to hosting the perfect reception party and beyond.
Warning: The list of "dos & don'ts," is enough to make your head spin.
Some good dos: Expect to be the center of attention at an engagement party, wedding shower and bridesmaid's party, all taking place before the actual wedding.
Some bad ones: Good etiquette apparently means giving up any ambitions of saving the environment or simply saving the trees. You are expected to print an engagement announcement, save-the-date card, wedding invitation with reply card, escort card, place card, program, menu card, and, well, you get the idea, the list goes on and on.
Nothing, of course, is written in stone, and a bride-to-be can toss some of these guidelines with the same abandon as her bouquet. In the end, the best tips are the ones based in common sense, such as:
"If it's against state law, it's generally considered a breach of etiquette."
-- Anne Machalinski
"Real Simple Weddings"
Real Simple, 2008, $12.95
Real Simple magazine doesn't cover weddings. But that didn't stop its many fans from asking about them. "It wasn't rocket science to figure out what to do next," said Steven Sachs, the publisher of the magazine.
In January, the company joined forces with Crate & Barrel and released its first foray into the wedding business -- "Real Simple Weddings," a photographically stunning, supremely streamlined planner for brides-to-be.
What do you get? Checklists and worksheets, but not page after obnoxious page of them, just enough for the on-the-go bride-to-be, whose war cry is: make it simple, real simple. The guide also offers tons of great ideas, sweet wedding tales and smart tips galore.
Brides-to-be are interested. Crate & Barrel sold 6,000 copies in the first 18 days it was on sale -- a number that surpassed the magazine executives' expectations.
-- Tania Padgett
"One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding"
By Rebecca Mead, The Penguin Press, 2007, $25.95
When it comes to weddings, a keeping-up-with-the-other-brides' mentality is about as common as a drunk uncle at a reception: Everybody is aware of the problem, but you'd be hard-pressed to get them to admit to it.
That is everybody except Rebecca Mead.
