Real Weddings: A Celebration of Personal Style

What I liked about the weddings in this book is that they were all about personality. What people are always trying to do is personalise a wedding. WEddings are typically formal, tradtionally, structured, choregraphed affairs that have been done the same way for 100 years. I think the nice thing about this book is that even the people who had enormous weddings did it with a big shot of personality. Its also a real how to, hands on book that helps couples do instead of what they should do, what they want to do. It encourages them to follow their hearts.

REAL WEDDINGS is the PERFECT wedding book, as it illustrates, in witty text and luscious photographs, every facet of creating a wedding that is stylish, meaningful, personal and unique. As a professional wedding consultant, I deal with dozens and dozens of confused young (and not so young) women every year. They don't want to follow the "traditional" route that their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, etc. took down the aisle, yet they are on a difficult search to find fresh ideas to make their weddings beautiful and meaningful to them. REAL WEDDINGS is the answer. Mss. Kilbridge and Samson have created a book that is near to perfect in displaying a wide range of ideas for brides of all ages, economic backgrounds and personal styles. The weddings that they chronical are chockablock full of wonderful ideas that are easily adaptable. I LOVE this book. I encourage all of my clients to buy it.

It is so difficult to try to figure out how your wedding will actualy come together. What a total relief to find a book with tons of beautiful, real, weddings, each of which walks you through the details. The best wedding book I've seen.

When I proposed, the idea of the perfect wedding didn't exactly jump out at me. We were looking for a book that encompassed every aspect of a wedding without being too traditonal or too contemporary. The "Real Weddings" book is by far the best book we've come across. We've been able to take some excellent and unique ideas from each wedding plan. The photography is exceptional and the detail is appreciated. Now I have a vision of our perfect wedding and its composition can be attributed to this wonderful book.

From the moment I read the first words of the introduction to Real Weddings: "Everyone knows what a wedding is about: a woman in a long white dress, a man in a tuxedo tugging his collar, and pew after pew of family members and friends, all wondering: (a) if this radiant person known as the bride is the same girl they saw last week doing her laundry and (b) how close they'll be seated to the band." I knew I'd finally found a wedding book that would actually be fun to read. And the more I read, (and studied the wonderfully candid photos) the more I was convinced that I'd found the "real" thing. In the sections where each wedding was followed from the planning through to the day itself, I felt I was often there with the bride and groom, even in such intimate moments as when one bride, respecting tradition, and spending the night before the wedding apart from her husband to be, returned from her rehearsal dinner to spend an hour "dancing around buck naked in her veil before realizing she should get some sleep." And in the sections where the professionals talked about how to get the best out of their particular contribution, whether it be the catering, the flowers, or the band, I learned such invaluable (but, I suspect) often overlooked advice as making sure that the first dance is actually danceable.On the whole, a delightfully written and illustrated book.