The Smart Couple's Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams: Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy
Product Description
Each year, millions of couples wed, and millions of relationships – involving brides, grooms, families, and friends-are undermined by power struggles, fights, and stress before the big event arrives. Often overrun by others’ demands, couples may be too exhausted to experience the outpouring of love meant for them. Now savvy brides and grooms can turn to The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams for a new and personally empowering perspective. W… More >>
The Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams: Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy
I’m in my 40s and getting married for the first–and only–time in a few months. My fiance was feeling a little left out of the planning process, so I bought 2 copies of this book, one for him and one for myself. It’s been a great discussion tool, and we’ve both made lots of notes all over the pages. The book covers the details of wedding planning but with a focus on keeping the relationship and the meaning of the celebration central. No matter what other planning guides you own — and you will need others that do go bananas over flowers and bridesmaids’ dresses if that’s your thing, and God knows there are plenty of them out there– please pick up a copy, or two, of this one. It lets you convert the stress and commericalism of planning your wedding into a relationship-deepening experience.
Rating: 5 / 5
As relationship trainers, motivational speakers, and workshop leaders, the authors of this book have credentials. Drs. Sherven & Sniechowski wrote Be Loved for Who You Really Are (St. Martin’s Press, 2003), The New Intimacy (Health Communications, 1997), and Opening to Love 365 Days a Year (Health Communications, 2000). Married since 1988, they also have the personal experience of marriage longevity in the difficult-to-navigate labyrinth of relationships. Their co-authored book, The Smart Couple’s Guide has personality as well as practical advice.
Divided into fifteen chapters, Drs. Sherven & Sniechowski thoroughly discuss aspects of the wedding plan. The authors offer true-life cases from hundreds of couples as examples of those who chose to plan their wedding together. These examples are used in a variety of settings: from “Popping the Question” to “To Change Names, or Not.” Dispersed throughout the book are insights from the authors’ own co-created wedding. The authors even research the history behind wedding customs, yet empower the wedding couples to co-create their specific style of wedding according to the themes and traditions of their own choosing.
The Smart Couple’s Guide…is not a wedding planner, but a useful source of suggestions that illustrate how a couple can plan their wedding (and marriage) together. The authors state: “By living out your commitment as a couple throughout the planning process, you will experience new possibilities and new levels of awareness.” Pre-marital relationship building skills is a main theme of the book; the authors cite values such as honesty and integrity as the foundation of the wedding, not the number of tiers on the cake or names on the invitations. To strengthen those skills, the authors give the reader questionnaires regarding “The Ten Key Issues of Married Life” and “Financial Truth.”
Whether it is the reader’s first or fourth marriage, whether the reader is age thirty or seventy, The Smart Couples Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams is a must-read prior to the “big day.” After all, the wedding day is a step into the maze of marriage. This book will steer the reader by offering clarity and reality to the couple as they journey together.
review by Lynn C. Tolson
Rating: 5 / 5
In a copycat world of imitating successful books — the millionth weight-loss book, the umpteenth reassuring guide for anxious brides — Drs. Sherven and Sniechowski have filled a void by treating both men and women, brides and grooms, as co-partners. It may be heresy to say that the white-attired princess on the white horse is no longer the only star of the wedding process, but it’s a long-awaited heresy that meshes beautifully with today’s reality — the reality that the vast majority of men and women who marry DO share in the wedding process. This book is for those sharers, those individuals determined to be partners before their wedding, during their wedding and for the rest of their lives.
This utterly indispensable book for married-couples-to-be will do wonders for lowering the divorce rate. Always supportive, never condescending, consistently lovingly and personal from first page to last, here is a book for every couple thinking about a wedding and for every person who knows a couple with marital plans.
Rating: 5 / 5
This book is extremely specific when it comes to planning. I assumed it would be largely focused on the couple and how to reduce stress, but it actually provided real ideas for planning as well. I read it in two days and will most likely go back and keep referencing it throughout my planning process.
Rating: 4 / 5
I am engaged and reading everything I can about wedding planning. Your book, The Smart Couples Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams is the best I have found–hands down! In fact, I am reading it for the second time in 6 months. I can always learn something new with each reading. I love the fact that, in this book, there is lots of focus on preparing for marriage. Judith and Jim do a clever job of weaving the wedding planning into the importance of thinking ahead to the marriage itself. It’s refreshing to see after all the books that deal with wedding plans only. Very thoughtfully and lovingly written and I will go back to it often as I get ready for my own wedding.
Rating: 5 / 5