Advice and inspiration for the wedding of your dreams from Neil Lane, celebrated "Jeweler to the Stars" In this gorgeous book, Neil Lane guides couples through the process of selecting and refining their own wedding aesthetic. Rich photography highlights six key wedding styles: romantic, lavish, modern, elegant, rustic, and vintage, with Neil's personal take on what makes each style distinct and how couples can turn their big day into something uniquely and very decidedly their own. Neil’s insight and advice will encourage and inspire—from how to determine personal wedding style and what to look for in a reception venue, to the basics of stationery and how it sets the tone for a wedding, to selecting centerpieces, bouquets, and boutonnieres. He has many years of experience working with engaged couples and shares everything that's needed to execute one of the most important days of their lives. Beautifully finished with foil accents, Style Your Wedding with Neil Lane makes the perfect gift for you, or for any couple dreaming of their walk down the aisle.

For budget brides, including fans of TheBrokeAssBride.com, this is a definitive guide to saving money and making every dollar count during wedding planning, from the engagement party to the big day, without sacrificing style or personality. Brides-to-be, do you dream of rocking a wedding full of personality, pizzazz, and style, without compromising your dreams or kissing your budget goodbye? Well, bust out your happy dance because today is your lucky day...you're holding the key in your newly-betrothed hands! In the pages of this witty guide, Dana LaRue, creator of thebrokeassbride.com, shares hundreds of tips and anecdotes for getting the most bang for your buck, celebrating your personality as a couple, and making wedding planning fun. She includes: · The top 14 money-saving rules for choosing your location, dress, menu, and music—and most important of all, enjoying the day · Engagement party and rehearsal dinner ideas that won’t break the bank · 4 tips for finding your dream theme · Sample budget breakdowns ($1,000; $5,000; $10,000; $15,000; and beyond) showing where couples saved and splurged · Her very own road-tested advice for becoming a negotiation ninja · 7 ways to keep your booze budget under control · DIY décor projects and recipes you can make without risking a bridezilla meltdown · Online planning shortcuts, tools to find savings, and helpful websites for organization and style inspiration

Shortlisted for the 2007 Costa Novel Award I read "Skin Lane" with one eye closed out of sheer animal terror. Then, unimaginably, it brought me to tears; what a work of art so unexpected and heartbreaking and lovely. Armistead Maupin A powerful and complex story of sexual obsession. . . . A profoundly original meditation on thwarted desire. Patrick McGrath "Skin Lane" welds itself to your hands from first to last. Textured, teeming with menace and deeply moving, it is an extremely fine piece of writing. The Times (London) A fiendishly taut little psycho-shocker. Will Self At forty-seven, Mr. F s working life on London s Skin Lane is one governed by calm, precision, and routine. So when he starts to have recurring nightmares, he does his best to ignore them. The images that appear in his dreams are disturbing Mr. F can t think of where they have come from. After all, he s an ordinary middle-aged man. As London s backstreets begin to swelter in the long, hot summer of 1967, Mr. F s nightmares become an obsession. A chance encounter adds a face to the body that nightly haunts him, and the torments of his restless nights lead him and the reader deeper into a terrifying labyrinth of rage, desire, and shame. Part fairy-tale, part compelling evocation of a now-lost London, this is Neil Bartlett s fiercest piece of writing yet: cruel, erotic, and tender. Neil Bartlett is an award-winning English novelist and theater director. He has directed on numerous occasions for the Royal Shakespeare Company."

The secret to planning a deeply personal and meaningful wedding has nothing to do with budget. It’s about creating a celebration that reflects a couple’s core values. Translating those values is the work of Modern Wedding, an information-filled guide with hundreds of creative ideas and beautiful, inspiring photographs for readers to look at and say, “This feels like us.” The book unpacks every element of a wedding—stationery, attire, seating plans, flowers and tablescapes, food and drink, gifts—with examples that will appeal to couples who care about how things are made but are not overly influenced by trends. The emphasis is on natural surroundings, seasonal flowers and food, modern dresses, minimalist ceremony structures, and naked cakes. Photographs of real weddings—“case studies” like a destination fete in Tuscany, a house party in Brooklyn, and a New Agey revel in Kauai—show how all the pieces can come together into a unique and expressive whole. Extensive practical information and resources give readers access to all the help they need for their own unique celebration.

The astonishing and impressive first collection of short stories from New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman An elderly widow finds the Holy Grail beneath an old fur coat in a second-hand store . . . A stray cat fights and refights a nightly battle to protect his adoptive family from an unimagiable evil . . . A young couple receives a wedding gift that will reveal a chilling alternate history of their marriage . . . Beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks, a frightened little boy bargains for his life with a most persistent troll . . . Such miraculous inventions and more await within Neil Gaiman’s first collection of short fiction, a gift of wonder and delight from one of the most unique literary artists of our day. In his capable hands, magic is no mere illusion, but a powerful means to reveal the nature of our humanity obscured in the smoke of our fears and anxieties . . . and reflected in the funhouse mirrors of our dreams.

A new perspective on woman’s role in the world of art jewelry at the turn of the twentieth century—from Art Nouveau in France and the Arts and Crafts movement in Britain, to Jugendstil in Germany and Austria, Louis Comfort Tiffany in New York, and American Arts and Crafts in Chicago—and the most extensive survey to date of the sheer diversity and beauty of art jewelry during this period. Accompanying a groundbreaking exhibition at The Richard H. Driehaus Museum in Chicago, this lavishly illustrated catalog showcases nearly two hundred stunning pieces from the Driehaus Collection and prominent national collections, many of which have never been seen by the public. Women were not only the intended wearers of art jewelry during the early twentieth century, but also an essential part of its creation. Their work—boldly artistic, exquisitely detailed, hand wrought, and inspired by nature—is now widely sought after by collectors and museums alike. From the world’s first independent female jewelry makers, to the woman as artistic motif, this jewelry reflected rapid changes in definitions of femininity and social norms. Essays by noted scholars explore five different areas of jewelry design and fabrication, and discuss the important female figures and historic social milieu associated with these movements—from the suffragists and the Rational Dress Society in England; to the Wiener Werkstätte and Gustav Klimt; and the Art Nouveau masters René Lalique and Alphonse Mucha, who depicted otherworldly women in jewelry for equally fascinating patrons like Sarah Bernhardt. The essays are illustrated by historic photographs and decorative arts of the period as well as the extraordinary pieces themselves: hair combs, bracelets, brooches, and tiaras executed in moonstones, translucent horn, enamel, opals, aquamarines, and much more. As Driehaus writes in his introduction to Maker & Muse, “Essential as these elements are, the metal and gemstones of a necklace—or a brooch or a bracelet—are like a canvas. It is the designer who evokes true greatness, beauty, and value from them. Neither monumental nor mass-produced, the object contains a memory of a particular artist’s skilled hand.”