Anti-Bride Etiquette Guide: The Rules - And How to Bend Them

This book is full of great ideas if you are looking for non-tradition wedding ideas - it was perfect for our Halloween themed wedding !

This book, the third in the "Anti-Bride" guide, is an alternative to all the Martha Stewart, cookie-cutter do-it-by-the-book books on weddings. This book is incredibly helpful if you, like me, were the first of your friends to get married. Clueless about how to handle your divorced parents and that black sheep uncle? Do you have to invite your boss you hate? Do you have to invite your friend's evil girlfriend he just met? How do you make a seating chart? What if the bride's parents aren't paying, or the maid of honor is a dude? All of these questions and tons more are answered in this book, and it'll tell you whether your crazy ideas are considered socially acceptable in a modern world (and generally, they probably are.) Special thanks to Jennifer, my bridesmaid extraordinaire and BFF 13 years strong, who bought me this book when my fiance and I were wallowing knee-deep in wedding planning ignorance.

The problem with Wedding Etiquette is that it's requirements just don't work for everyone. So how do you get around those that don't suit your needs, but still keep your manners? This book is the answer. It tells you which etiquette rules you can break without offending or appearing ill-mannered, and how you can bend others so they work for you, the unique couple. It's also a fun read.

I have recently become engaged, and I'm dreading planning a wedding. I picked up this book because the questions are already beginning, and I was hoping to find some polite ways to tell people to back off. This book does offer some suggestions there, and overall, it helped me become a bit more excited about the process without drowning me in details. I do wish that they had included more than they did in this book. For example, they give some suggested text for invitations. They tell you that "request the honour of your presence" is only to be used for ceremonies held at a place of worship. However, "request the honour of your presence" is used in *all* of their suggested formal wordings. They didn't provide a single example of the etiquette for a formal wording for a wedding held outdoors or in a banquet hall or other non-religious location. Considering that they suggest alternate locations in several places (and even recommend destination weddings as an option, which I found refreshing as I'm figuring on having one), this omission was glaring. There's several other little things like that where I feel a few more pages would have made this book perfect. Still, I do recommend this book. I haven't looked at any other wedding guide or book, and I feel like I have a grasp of what is needed, what obstacles may come up, etc. The tone is terrific, and the structure is easy to follow when read as a whole or in tidbits here and there.