A PRACTICAL WEDDING: CREATIVE IDEAS FOR PLANNING A BEAUTIFUL, AFFORDABLE, AND MEANINGFUL CELEBRATION by Meg Keene
I’ve been reading a lot of wedding planning books these past few weeks, and while most of them aren’t worth mentioning, I was particularly impressed with A Practical Wedding. While most wedding books are filled with pretty pictures to give you ideas for your wedding “look,” A Practical Wedding is filled with questions to give you ideas for your wedding will “feel.” By picking apart wedding “traditions” and their history, this book gives engaged couples a great starting point for deciding what is important to them. Then, as the title would imply, it provides practical advice for how to put your plans into action while also sticking to your budget.
A Practical Wedding also addresses some of the rarely-discussed emotional aspects of wedding planning—not the “what to do if your bridesmaids aren’t supporting your rustic-vintage-rainbow-emu theme” problem that the other magazines seem more eager to discuss, but rather weddings in the face of grief, health problems, etc., and how to negotiate the deeper emotional and logistical issues of creating a new family out of your and your fiance’s families of origin. I definitely recommend reading this book, ideally at the beginning of your wedding planning process. It can help you sift through the wedding culture madness and frame your wedding planning with the values that are important to you and your fiance.
Susan the Librarian 