A Practical Wedding Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Wedding You Want with the Budget You've Got (without Losing Your Mind in the Process)

This book is full of useful, pragmatic ideas and advice. It's brilliantly non judgemental, which was exactly what I needed. It also contains some ideas I hadn't thought of, such as a list of traditional wedding things to go through with your partner and mark whether they're important to you or not - it's helped us to focus on the key bits and disregard the things that may matter to others, but not to us! Simple but effective and very laid back.

This book has been so helpful whilst planning my wedding. I read A Practical Wedding blog every week. This book laid things out in a straightforward way and I really liked it's 'no pressure' attitude. I ended up lending out to family members who became a but overbearing with their opinions of the wedding and it really helped them understand the kind of wedding we were going for.

Good

I think I bought this a little too late in the wedding process (only about 3 months out) but I'm glad I had it to check out a few things. I absolutely love Keene's blog, and I'm glad this book was full of the practical and helpful advice I've come to expect from her. I'm happily married now(!) and will pass this book on to the next bride in line.

A tad American but still a useful reference.

To be completely honest with you, I had my doubts about this new book when it was out for pre-order. I thought, “What could possibly be covered now?” Between the 2011 guidebook, the website’s oft-updated front page and growing archives, and downloadable spreadsheets available online, I wondered if it was going to be a redundant piece of fluff. I bought my copy to see if it was worth suggesting to my couples (I'm a wedding photographer), or warn them not to waste their money. So for me to read it, cover to cover, and have my skepticism blown away actually speaks really highly of this book. It’s useful! It’s smart! It’s handy! See, the first book, A Practical Wedding: Creative Ideas for Planning a Beautiful, Affordable, and Meaningful Celebration, gets you into the *headspace* of planning a wedding. For many of us, our wedding is the first wedding that we’ve ever had to plan. Figuring out how to approach wedding planning, then feeling right about our decisions, is what the original APW book is all about. This companion book, A Practical Wedding Planner (“APWP”), coaxes you into actually taking action. Meg starts by asking you to think of your wedding’s “thesis” — not colors or theme, but the takeaway that you want your guests to feel after the wedding is over. (Best dance party? Amazing spiritual experience? Warm, casual vibe?) Then build your wedding around that thesis. While the planner, at around 9×7″ (notably bigger than the novel-sized 2011 guidebook), isn’t quite large enough to feel like it’s an essential replacement of a wedding-planning binder, it feels more like a notebook and has wide margins so you can scribble all in it (there are some dedicated spots for you to fill in your plans, but for the most part, the book tracks out to-do’s). It’s divided into sections that you can jump to depending on where you are in your planning process: budgets, venues, catering, etc. The best part about this book is that it can be scaled up or down depending on the type of wedding you’re going to have: Meg doesn’t assume that you’ll be having a giant wedding, a tiny one, or that you’ll hire all of the vendors that most wedding-planning books recommend you to hire. She outlines DIY projects, describes the risks and rewards of DIY, and suggests how to get the most out of DIY planning. It’s a little bit like a choose-your-own-adventure book. Want to do your own makeup? Here’s the path to take. Interested in arranging your own flowers? Here is what you need to look out for. Where APW used voices from married couples, describing how they created an authentic wedding instead of going with the traditional or expected, APWP interviews wedding professionals. These seasoned vendors explain how to get the best deals from different vendors (hint: it’s not always about negotiating, but by understanding what is typically included in the industry norm and what are additional fees), as well as the best questions to ask the vendors you’re vetting to work your wedding. Some of the best stuff is in the nitty gritty: there’s a chart of flowers, when they’re in season, their price ranges, and good substitutes. There’s an alcohol calculator. There are sample timelines, sample ceremonies of many religions and cultures, and even guidelines on how to address your invites in a “gently feminist” way. In short, should you get this book if you’re planning a wedding? Resounding YES.

Ich habe mir das Buch gekauft, weil ich nicht wusste, wo man nur mit der ganzen Planung anfangen soll. Es ist sehr gut geschrieben und die Autorin hat mich auch schon ein paar Mal zum Lachen gebracht. Grandiose einfache Tipps wie z. B. das es immer genug Essen geben muss, da nichts schlimmer für die Stimmung ist, als schlecht gelaunte hungrige Gäste. Dazu gibt es eine über mehrere Seiten lange Liste mit Blumen. Wann man sie kaufen kann, wie viel sie ung. kosten und in welchen Farben es sie gibt. Ich könnte noch 100 weitere Dinge auflisten, die ich nützlich fand. Also wer ein unterhaltsam geschriebenes Buch mit echt guten Tipps und Ideen sucht, wird hier nicht enttäuscht.

I just bought this eBook to read on my computer this morning and I SUPER excited about it. I am a huge fan of A Practical Wedding (APW) and Meg’s previous book, which tackled the emotional parts of planning a wedding – such as how to focus on what you want for your wedding, instead of what your family/friends/wedding industry tells you what should want. This book seems like more of a practical guide, which is perfect for someone like me who has already gone through her first book. On the APW website, Meg mentions that it is meant to be a reference-style book where you could read the section that you need at the time that you need it, versus reading it from cover to cover. This is part of the reason why I purchased it as an eBook – so I could keep a version on my computer and phone (through the Kindle eReader) and reference it when I need to. I love paper books as much as the next person, but I was also impatient to read it too! Overall – Meg’s writing and suggestions for wedding planning are SUCH a breath of fresh air for anyone planning a wedding. She offers and unbiased options and support for YOU to plan YOUR wedding, with any number of guests, and within YOUR budget, which is so different from all the other wedding resources out there (*cough* wedding blogs *cough*). If you are unsure about the book, I would suggest checking out her website – www.apracticalwedding.com – and if you like it, don’t hesitate to purchase this book!

This book was fantastic - very easy to read. I loved that it has checklists at the very end of the book for every step of the planning process - very helpful. This book is a great resource if you're just starting the planning process and need a lot of guidance.

GET IT NOW. i got this book too late into my planning process, but it still comforted me anyways. :-) this is perfect, very practical advice, none of the "YOU MUST DO THIS", "YOU MUST GET THAT" or "THE LATEST TREND IS TO...". it's simply a "how to throw the wedding YOU want...any wedding YOU want...and this is how to do it" book. The accompanying blog is great and has a lot of excel sheets you can leverage to start getting organized right away. This planner is more for implementation and it's accompanying book (sold separately) is more about the philosophy of throwing a practical wedding that matches your values and tastes. it also discusses navigating the emotions and conversations surrounding wedding planning which was really comforting for me personally. i recommend getting both and, like i said, reading them before you announce your engagement. why read it before you announce your engagement? it's nice to familiarize yourself with the types of questions you'll be getting once you announce your engagement. while some people think about their weddings beforehand, i never did. i did not envision my wedding and how it would go down. so i didn't really have an opinion and i didn't even know what all the options and feelings surrounding weddings actually were. if you read it ahead of time you'll be able to create some quiet space at the beginning of the process and start talking with your partner a little bit about what kind of wedding you both want. it's kind of awkward to get put on the spot unexpectedly when you get asked a million wedding questions by friends and family and then you both realize you haven't discussed X, Y, and Z. then you start feeling like you're planning the wedding over lunch instead of catching up and relaxing. :-( make room to breathe. :-) it'll be fun and it'll be worth it no matter what type of event you decide to have to celebrate the momentous occasion.