Wedding Planning Resources

Maybe you got engaged over the holiday season, or maybe you're expecting a ring this Valentine's Day, or maybe you're already in the thick of planning your wedding.  Maybe you're just interested and dreaming during February, National Weddings Month.  Anyway, here are 10 wedding planning resources (along with a little humor!) to help you along the way.

2brides 2be: A Same Sex Guide for the Modern Bride by Laura Leigh Abby - Planning a two-bride wedding can mean twice the beauty and twice the stress, and with a shortage of inspiration and guidance for the modern lesbian bride, this is the book for the next generation of women planning a same-sex wedding. 2Brides 2Be is a wedding guide for the bride who exudes youth and style no matter what her age, who is inspired by innovation, and who wants to marry the woman of her dreams and do it her way. She is a visionary who is up to the task of blending tradition and rebellion, but she is looking for some practical wedding planning advice. She will find it here.
Author Laura Leigh Abby shares her own experiences navigating the world of lesbian wedding planning with a sense of humor and a dose of sass. She has advice on everything from the logistics of walking down the aisle to wording the invites, and she's not afraid to throw all the rules out the window. With input from wedding industry professionals, 2Brides 2Be will enlighten brides on booking vendors, wrangling family and pulling off the wedding of her dreams.

The Big White Book of Weddings: A How-To Guide for the Savvy, Stylish Bride by David Tutera - Entertaining expert David Tutera opens his files to reveal a wealth of detailed information about creating that perfect day, featuring advice about everything from wording invitations to negotiating with caterers, planning the meal to throwing an event on a budget.
The same insight celebrity entertaining and wedding expert David Tutera gives to his A-list clientele is now at your fingertips in The Big White Book of Weddings: David's ultimate "how-to" guide designed to get every bride down the aisle in style!
It's tough to be a bride on a budget--but David reveals his personal tips of the wedding trade that proves brides can be both sophisticatedly chic and realistically resourceful! Covering the entire wedding experience from brainstorming, budgeting, invitations, gift registries, food, music, traditional reception rituals, and even what happens after the wedding's over, Tutera has created a must-have for brides-to-be. Full of the personality that David brings to every wedding he plans and every TV show or magazine article he appears in, Big White Book of Weddings is the book every bride needs to make her wedding unforgettable for all the right reasons!

Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette by Anna & Lizzie Post - Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette is the classic indispensable, comprehensive guide to creating the wedding of your dream, now in its sixth edition.
Today's weddings are more complicated than ever, with new traditions replacing old, and new relationships to consider as family life grows more complex. Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette has everything a bride will ever need to know to have the perfect wedding.
Anna Post guides brides and their friends and family through weddings to maximize fun and reduce stress, including:
How to handle awkward family situations
How to address envelopes and word invitations
How to choose an officiant
How to blend family traditions
The timeline of events throughout the engagement and during the wedding
Who to include on your guest list
How to use technology to your advantage

Grow Your Own Wedding Flowers: How to Grow and Arrange Your Own Flowers for All Special Occasions by Georgie Newbery - By growing your own wedding flowers you can add a personal element to your special occasion, while caring for the environment and saving money at the same time. Filled with gorgeous pictures, this friendly, no-nonsense book makes growing and arranging your own flowers achievable and fun. Whether you're growing for a wedding or for a birthday, festival or other celebration, Georgie's cheerful advice takes you through everything you need to know. Step-by-step guides cover: Planning, growing, cutting and conditioning your flowers; Spring, summer, autumn and winter weddings ; Flower craft for special occasions, including buttonholes, bouquets, centrepieces, garlands and flower crowns. From jam-jar posies to elaborate displays, Grow Your Own Wedding Flowers explains how to grow and create beautiful arrangements and make your special day unique, without costing the earth.

It's All About the Dress: Savvy Secrets, Priceless Advice, and Inspiring Stories to Help You Find "The One" by Randy Fenoli - Every bride wants to feel beautiful and wants to have her dress express the essence of who she is. Now choosing the perfect thing to wear on that special day is easier than ever! Drawing on his experience as fashion director at Kleinfeld Bridal, Randy Fenoli has written a guidebook bursting with insights and inspiration for helping brides-to-be determine what story they want their dress to tell.
IT'S ALL ABOUT THE DRESS covers:
-Suggestions on flattering cuts, fabrics, and styles for every body type
-Price ranges and budget
-Trains, veils, headpieces, undergarments, and accessories
-Insider secrets on managing the bridal dress appointment
-Options for bridesmaids, mother of the bride, and more!
Featuring 100 inspiring photos plus invaluable tips on how to deal with bridal dress 911's, IT'S ALL ABOUT THE DRESS is the ultimate sourcebook no bride-to-be should say "I do" without!

The Jewish Wedding Now by Anita Diamant - Newly revised and updated, the definitive guide to planning a Jewish wedding, written by bestselling novelist Anita Diamant--author of The Red Tent and The Boston Girl--and one of the most respected writers of guides to contemporary Jewish life. This complete, easy-to-use guide explains everything you need to know to plan your own Jewish wedding in today's ever-changing world where the very definition of what constitutes a Jewish wedding is up for discussion. With enthusiasm and flair, Anita Diamant provides choices for every stage of a wedding--including celebrations before and after the ceremony itself--providing both traditional and contemporary options. She explains the Jewish tradition of love and marriage with references drawn from Biblical, Talmudic, and mystical texts and stories. She guides you step by step through planning the ceremony and the party that follows--from finding a rabbi and wording the invitation to organizing a processional and hiring a caterer. Samples of wedding invitations and ketubot (marriage contracts) are provided for inspiration and guidance, as well as poems that can be incorporated into the wedding ceremony or party and a variety of translations of traditional texts. "There is no such thing as a generic Jewish wedding," writes Anita Diamant, "no matter what the rabbi tells you, no matter what the caterer tells you, no matter what your mother tells you." Complete, authoritative, and indispensable, The Jewish Wedding Now provides personalized options--some new, some old--to create a wedding that combines spiritual meaning and joyous celebration and reflects your individual values and beliefs.

A Practical Wedding Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Wedding You Want With the Budget You've Got by Meg Keene - With reality tv shows, glossy bridal magazines, and fanciful Pinterest boards leading the way, it can be easy for a recently engaged couple to slide from wedding planning into wedding madness. Inspiration and ideas abound; what couples really need is clear guidance on how to assess this information and sort the useful from the disastrous. Enter A Practical Wedding Planner, the (practical) companion volume to A Practical Wedding. Meg Keene walks couples through planning, from the big picture down to the nitty-gritty details. In her characteristic seasoned, sassy style, Keene offers no-nonsense guidance for planning a dream wedding on a real budget.

Something New: Tales From a Makeshift Bride by Lucy Knisley - New York Times-bestselling graphic memoirist Lucy Knisley (Relish) writes about her adorable DIY wedding! In 2010, Lucy and her long-term boyfriend John broke up. Three long, lonely years later, John returned to New York, walked into Lucy's apartment, and proposed. This is not that story. It is the story of what came after: The Wedding. DIY maven Lucy Knisley was fascinated by American wedding culture . . . but also sort of horrified by it. So she set out to plan and execute the adorable DIY wedding to end all adorable DIY weddings. And she succeeded. This graphic novel--clocking in at almost 300 pages of humor, despair, and eternal love--is the story of how Lucy built a barn, invented a whole new kind of photo booth, and managed to turn an outdoor wedding on a rainy day into a joyous (though muddy) triumph.

Weddiculous: An Unfiltered Guide to Being a Bride by Jamie Lee - In this irreverent wedding guide, MTV's wedding planning guru and star of Girl Code, comedian and bride-to-be Jamie Lee, offers practical advice and hilarious insights on how to stay sane while planning your "big day."
Weddings. What was once a beautiful celebration of a couple coming together for a lifetime of happiness has become a bit ridiculous, complete with the whimsical monogrammed mason jars and unconventional photo shoots. The Epic task of creating that special event can be nightmarish--a dizzying maze of minutiae and seemingly endless choices that might tempt you to say yes to a quickie drive-through chapel in Vegas.
But weddings don't have to be stressful. You don't have to give in to the crazy--or give up completely. Famous funny gal Jamie Lee learned much more than she counted on pulling together her own wedding, and in Weddiculous she shares her first-hand experiences and hilarious hard-won insights with every girl who just said "yes."
Jamie gives you the real low-down, puts the madness into perspective, and walks you through the process step by step in a calm, realistic, and highly entertaining way. Weddiculous includes helpful checklists, timelines, and suggestions on everything from what questions to ask vendors to how to handle difficult bridesmaids to what's worth the extra cost (and more importantly, what's not). Throughout, Jamie provides guidance on when you should trust your gut and when you need to listen to others.

Weddings in Color: 500 Creative Ideas for Designing a Modern Wedding by Minhee Cho - In this candy-coloured guide, Vané Broussard (founder of the uber-popular blog Brooklyn Bride) and Minhee Cho (of the covetable paper company Paper+Cup) team up to present hundreds of entirely modern style ideas for every aspect of a wedding, in eight eye-catching and vibrant colour palettes. From pretty floral crowns to die-cut invitations, altars made from balloons, and so much more, these ideas are anything but traditional. Simple DIYs will spark creativity while interviews with industry experts provide important insider info. Lusciously designed and bursting with vivid photography, Weddings in Color has everything brides need to design a stunningly colourful affair.