Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration
Product Description
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 po… More >>
Simple Stunning Weddings: Designing and Creating Your Perfect Celebration
The philosphy of this book is even more useful than the stunning pictures are. When I was planning my weding, it was so easy to be overwhelmed with the choices and ideas available. This book offers a 1-2-3 approach than can simplify some of the decision-making, at least as far as decor is concerned. While I too was occasionally frustrated by my location not fitting into any of the “themes” given, the point of the book is to inspire brides to work WITH their locations, rather than against them. By doing so, I saved a lot of time, effort, and money by not trying to make my location into a castle or a country club when it was a renovated school, but rather embracing the beauty of the architecture and gardens already there.
Aside from the basic philosophy, the pictures are incredible. I love thumbing through this book even though my wedding is over, just for the beauty of the photography and the creativity of the ideas. This book, along with Bridal Bargains, gave me the wedding I wanted with the budget I had.
Rating: 5 / 5
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.
Rating: 5 / 5
The books offers simple, colorful pictures to indulge yourself in and set up in the most organized fashion. I was surprised at how much information it actually offered once I started reading the book. The text goes beyond the design efforts of the wedding and takes you into the scheduling of the wedding, the tasks that will be developed throughout the preparation of the wedding, wedding day preparations, tips on selecting the the venue & dealing with the people involved and just basic advice on every single detail. I found the book very helpful since it was seperated in different chapters according to the type of venues. The floral ideas were amazing since it offered simplicity using color tactics rather than quantity tactics. I only wished there were more weddings per each theme to compare. Such as three different ‘vineyard’ weddings, so it would offer more ideas within each particular theme.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is a beautiful book that contains many wonderful ideas aimed at people who are “coordinating” their own wedding. It offers many different and simple solutions that not only cost less than traditional methods, but look beautiful as well. My only complaint is that the book is sectioned out by ceremony/reception location and if your location is not among those listed, it requires you to cross-reference to other sections to find ideas that would work. Also, the website that you are sent to for more information not listed in the back is not helpful.
Rating: 4 / 5
This book has really beautiful, vivid pictures. The ideas are very simple and very stunning! I use it as inspiration and show it to many of my clients to explain ideas about certain looks. I especially like the use of color in this book. It is one of my favorites because it contains lots of fresh ideas.
Rating: 5 / 5