Books offer words of wisdom for women planning weddings and happily-ever-after
Books offer words of wisdom for women planning weddings and happily-ever-after

For many people, "I do” are the two most life-changing words they will ever speak. Such small words. Such large impact.

Every year, about 2.2 million couples in the United States and Canada get married. That's more than 40,000 weddings a week. Along the way, couples spend an average of $25,000 and invest numerous hours planning to make their wedding ceremony memorable, romantic and unique.

June, the height of the wedding season, is upon us, and there are numerous tips to make sure your day measures up to the beautiful perfection you have dreamed about most of your life.

Planning a wedding is the short-term equivalent to being a chief executive officer of a corporation. It is a job fraught with tension, a wide range of emotions and unpredictability. It also can be one of the happiest times of your life.

Four new books will help make this detail-oriented planning easier for you, your fiance and your family and friends.

Start with "I Do … Questions for the Biggest Day of Your Life” by Evelyn McFarlane and James Saywell. This charming and quick read goes well beyond the typical "will you marry me?” proposal.

The book is a series of more than 300 frivolous and serious questions that make you ponder all aspects of being engaged, the wedding day, the honeymoon and living happily ever after.

A sampling includes:

•Who was the person from your fiance's family you were most nervous about meeting for the first time?

•What one thing gets you worked up most quickly regarding planning the wedding?

•In a word, what kind of a bride do you want to be? What does it take to be a great groom?

•What one thing could happen to truly make this the wedding of your dreams?

•What part of the big day will be most important for your mom, and what part for your dad?

•What do you hope will happen every year on your wedding anniversary?

"I Do” would be a great book to read as soon as you become engaged.

It will give a couple much to think and talk about as they begin planning the wedding and their life together.

"The Wedding Book — The Big Book for Your Big Day” is the ultimate, comprehensive planner for designing the perfect wedding. Written by Mindy Weiss with Lisbeth Levine, it is being called "the everything book” by reviewers.

In 27 chapters and 485 pages, Weiss and Levine cover every aspect of planning a wedding, from the initial engagement announcement to freezing the top of the cake, saving the bouquet and planning for anniversaries.

The authors give a one-year timeline for planning the wedding and include a detailed workbook to help you keep track of all the wedding details and contacts. They even include printed stickers for flagging certain aspects of the planning, such as "Another option,” "Talk to Mom,” "Talk to him,” "Love this” and "Don't forget.”

The authors give advice on details from cakes to lingerie and budgeting tools to thank-you notes. Among their good advice: Don't write your thank-you notes on your honeymoon. This is a special time for newlyweds. The thank-you notes won't be expected until after the honeymoon is over.

A special feature of each chapter is an "Ask Mindy” sidebar. This was a typical question: "My mom really wants to go shopping with me for my dress, but so do my sister and my college roommate. And now, my fiance's mother has started hinting that since she doesn't have any daughters of her own, it would be ‘so much fun' if she came along, too. Frankly, I don't trust any of them when it comes to taste, and I just can't picture the five of us traipsing around town together. What to do?”

Mindy responds: "I once heard Vera Wang say that she tells brides to come to her alone. The last thing you need while trying on wedding dresses is a chorus of know-it-alls backing you into a corner. Too many opinions will just leave you confused and exhausted. You'll want to share the experience with someone close to you, plus you will want a second opinion. Bring your mother and your maid of honor. Let everyone else know that salespeople find it a nuisance when more than one or two people come along.” She suggests finding other ways — tastings or flower shopping — to involve other people.

Mindy is described by People magazine as "the megastar wedding planner,” and the Washington Post called her "THE wedding planner.” She has worked for celebrities Heidi Klum, Eva Longoria-Parker and Gwen Stefani. People magazine reported, "Don't be misled by the Hollywood glitz and glamour. Mindy is a practical, funny, hard-working woman who thinks that breaking the bank — whatever size bank — is just plain stupid. Clients and peers embrace Mindy for her down-to-earth approach.”

"Keep Your Mouth Shut and Wear Beige” by Kathleen Gilles Seidel is a fictional account of what happens when the girlfriend of the groom's divorced father tries to horn in on the wedding planning.

Debra Gallant, author of "Rattled” and "Fear and Yoga in New Jersey,” said this book "adds the mother of the groom to literature's rich collection of long-suffering women. When Seidel's heroine, Darcy Van Aiken, refuses to suffer in silence, the results are both poignant and hilarious.”

Darcy's older son, Jeremy, gets engaged to a girl from a wealthy family, and her parents begin planning a dream wedding for their daughter. The groom's father's girlfriend, Claudia, decides she would make a better mother of the groom than Darcy and sees the wedding as an opportunity to entrench herself in the father's life and take credit for the two sons Darcy has worked so hard to raise right.

You can just imagine the tug-of-war and the battle of will and wits that ensue between Darcy and Claudia. What Darcy learns about herself in this unpleasant fray is a touching, sometimes funny and engaging read.

Claire Lewis never intended to be a wedding photographer. She thought she would take her camera to war zones, document political upheavals and expose grave injustices.

Her life didn't turn out that way. Instead, she has been a wedding photographer for 20 years in San Francisco. She lives there with her husband and daughter. She has just written a delightful memoir, "Exposed — Confessions of a Wedding Photographer,” that will make you see weddings in a new light.

If you told Lewis you thought she had a glamorous job, she would laugh and then give you a long list of reasons why it's everything but glamorous.

"But it's never dull,” she says. She calls her work unpredictable, funny, demanding, moving and full of spontaneous moments that cause one to question the nature of love and relationships.

Her world is populated by anxious or stressed-out brides, a few runaway brides, pushy mothers, grooms who misbehave and seduce bridesmaids, brides who dance on tables and, sometimes, a couple who are truly in love on their wedding day.

The book runs the gamut of emotions you would expect to find at a wedding. She tells her "confessions” with wit and humor, and she notes that during the course of her career, she even found time to fall in love and plan a wedding of her own.

Lewis notes, "America spends about 70 billion dollars a year on weddings. Wedding magazines flourish. The market for wedding cakes and boutonnieres never runs dry. The fantasies, indeed, are formidable.

"It is the tension between expectation and reality that keeps the work interesting. I like what I do,” she writes. "I'm not a glamour photographer. I'm not a fashion photographer. I am a storyteller, and the story I tell is the one I see.”

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