My Wedding Planning Bible | Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration |...

Great pictures! | Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration | Karen Bussen

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	• Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration Karen Bussen Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2004 - 192 pages average customer review:based on 11 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Incredibly Tasteful and Creative Ideas

This book is excellent for both engaged couples planning their weddings, and those who want to plan weddings as a career. The colors and shapes of each spread give them a strong impact without becoming tacky and flamboyant. I highly recommend it!

My Wedding Planning Bible

I used this book to plan my wedding that happened in May '07, which was done without a wedding planner. My wedding was held in a historic, beautiful synagogue and historic beautiful hotel (similar to the country club chapter). So many of our guests have commented directly to us or my parents about how beautiful our wedding was -- and I have to say this book helped me more than any other. Simple Stunning Weddings guided most of my decor decisions over the 9 months that I spent planning our wedding.

For starters, I used this book to communicate with my florist -- it was extremely helpful for that. So many of my friends and family have commented on how stunning our flowers were -- we used fresh seasonal flowers in colors that suited our venue but they were of a style and in containers similar to the ones presented here.

In addition, her ideas about where to splurge and where to save for a given venue were invaluable. Not only did they save money, but they also saved time and stress.

Her suggestion of bringing old family photos into a reception site was one of the biggest hits of my wedding -- both my husband and I found old photographs of our family going back to the early 20th century and had them displayed on a large table. People couldn't stop talking about them -- not just our relatives, but friends too. That suggestion cost us about $50 -- how great is that? Her idea to hire a swing band to harmonize with the classic space was another giant hit -- the dance floor was full until the band stopped at midnight.

I didn't copy her ideas, rather I adapted them for the synagogue and ballrooms that we used -- and I found it quite easy to do so. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by all the choices around planning a wedding -- everything from table linens to wineglasses to lighting to picking a band -- it was wonderful to have her photos and text to guide and influence our decisions.

I spent nine months being fairly wedding obsessed while planning our wedding -- I purchased many books and magazines, spent lots of time figuring out our options and looking around for ideas, and I have to say that the ideas presented here were the best resource I found. My other favorite book (in a very different vein) was Bridal Bargains -- it's discussions on how to hire vendors from photographers to caterers to dress shops informed and influenced all of our vendor selections. By doing so I hired great vendors right away and avoided many of the hassles that my friends went through while planning their weddings. I'm not sure how much money I saved through their suggestions, but they really do understand what good vendors look like -- which was tremendously helpful.

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Great pictures!

I get the most inspiration from visuals and this book is chock full of em. The tips and ideas she gives are relevant for any size wedding. Let's hope some of those tacky brides pick this one up!

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Not so stunning...

In all seriousness this book isn't really that ingenious. Everything that's in this book revolves around the advantages and disadvantages of your "reception location". Although it does provide some good advice, it's quite lackluster. I went off the reviews of this book and I'm not impressed.

I must mention that I'm an artistic & strong minded person who knows what she likes. For those of us who have a clear idea of their reception, skip the book, it's not worth the money.

If you have no idea how or what you want your reception to be like, this book will most likely come in helpful. It has the run down on the "typical" types of wedding reception locations. I stress the word typical. It does not include reception/banquet halls whatsoever.

Even if you fall into the catagory above, I strongly recommend you save your hard earned cash for something actually useful.

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Fairly stunning

This book is good for the gorgeous photos. It tells you how to make your wedding look great in different kinds of venues (ie. hotel, tent, barn, etc.). This book should not be used as a wedding planning tool--it's not that.

The three biggest trends in weddings today are simplicity, personalization, and color. Wedding design expert Karen Bussen highlights these elements as she shows couples how to design their own weddings without going crazy or broke.

Simple Stunning Weddings is the first wedding design book to focus on the where of the wedding. Location is the first and most important decision brides and grooms must make: everything else flows from that. Bussen showcases 12 popular wedding settings, including the city loft, country inn, art gallery, botanic garden, and private club, and demonstrates how to make them extraordinary. With the site as the starting point, she creates unifying themes with color, flowers, and personal touches. She explains how to deal with vendors, how to spend the wedding budget, and when it makes sense to hire a specialist.

Sharing all her trade secrets, Bussen teaches the power of simplicity and the impact of color, which can be tailored to any budget, always to stunning effect: substituting cotton tablecloths for silk in the same eye-dazzling color combinations, for example, or creating striking flower arrangements using only one or two types of blooms. Whether for a barefoot union on a beach or a formal affair in a hotel ballroom, this fully illustrated, information-filled book is like having Bussen on hand as your personal wedding designer. AUTHOR BIO: KAREN BUSSEN is one of Manhattan's most exciting wedding designers. Her work has been featured in such magazines as Modern Bride, Martha Stewart Weddings, Home, Food & Wine, and Interior Design. In the past six years, she has designed more than 100 weddings.

ELLEN SILVERMAN's photographs have appeared in Charmed Bracelets and New Soul Cooking (both STC).

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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