The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner: How to Prepare Emotionally, Practically, and Spiritually for a Meaningful and Joyous Wedding

I loved this book- it is great at helping you remain centered throughout the process of getting engaged and then married. It focuses on the emotional side of the process and has many excerises to work through, relating many of the aspects of the planing process to emotional events in your life, such as letting go of past relationships and lost loved ones, and asserting yourself (in creating and limiting your guest list). While it does have sections for everything from flowers and food to dress and location, it might not be the definitive planner in terms of planning a really traditional, detail-oriented wedding. However, if what you are looking for is a companion to guide you through the wedding planning process and keep you sane and grounded, this is really an excellent choice. Lots of excercises, worksheets and more, and a companion website- highly recommended!

The Conscious Bride wedding planner is an insightful, organized and invaluable resource for any bride. It covers the deeper areas of preparation for your wedding day with just the right touch. It helped me clarify my intention for marriage and create just the right feeling and look for my wedding that was uniquely my own. I would have never been so prepared or calm or joyful without having worked through this planner.

This planner is perfect! It helps you to stay focused on what your wedding is really about by discussing not just the practical but also the emotional aspects of wedding planning. It acknowledges that a wedding is a rite of passage and just the beginning. This book will help you arrive at your wedding day feeling calm and ready with simple reminders like, "It's not about the dress!" This is a great book for every bride who wants a marriage and not just a wedding.

My fiancé and I have been together for nearly eight years. In that time, we've attended and been in more weddings than we can count. While we've loved being part of our friends' celebrations, we've also seen stressed-out grooms and tearful brides, and have heard plenty of, "Our families are making us crazy. This doesn't even seem like our wedding. We should have eloped!" So when we recently decided to marry, that's exactly what we wanted to do. We are now planning to marry abroad in a tiny, informal civil ceremony, and therefore hardly needed a great big "white wedding" type of planner. But although our ceremony will be small and informal, we want it 1) to go smoothly, and 2) (and most importantly) be meaningful. So, like most brides, I started doing some research. I looked through many wedding planners for tips and suggestions on how to be organized and how to keep the whole process meaningful. Obviously, weddings planners by definition are meant to help you plan, stay on track, be organized, etc., but I didn't get much real help on keeping it meaningful until I got to The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner. Now, this book covers many practical topics (in fact, many more than my fiancé and I needed for our plans), but I found it very valuable for a different reason: it focused on so much MORE than wedding planning tasks. The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner helps guide you through not only the planning, but also your personal and emotional journey. While I won't be wearing a big poofy white dress or having 200 guests in a church wedding, I'm still on a personal and emotional journey toward marriage--and The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner has helped me along that journey. It addresses the emotions that so many of us go through in preparing to marry and also provides terrific advice on how to incorporate what's really important as you plan. For example, one suggestion in the book that particularly resonated with me was the idea of writing personal letters to family members and friends before the wedding. What a beautiful way to let these important people know how you have appreciated them, and that you understand things might be different once you are married, but you will continue to cherish their love and support. The bottom line is this: although many wedding planners can help keep you organized, The Conscious Bride's Wedding Planner goes a step further. It addresses your emotions, your fears and how to incorporate what's most important to you as you plan for your marriage. Thank you, Sheryl Paul, for a terrific wedding resource!

Sheryl's book is thoughtful and comprehensive. It allows a bride to consider everything in preparation for her wedding; the flowers, the guests, and most importantly, her emotions. The book gives exercises for the bride and her future beloved to use to explore how best to make a wedding that reflects them. As a minister, I will reccomend this wedding planner to all of the couples who work with me as a way to feel truly ready when the day comes to walk down the aisle. I give this book 5 stars!!