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.

Seven essays celebrating the beauty of the imperfect marriage. We hear plenty about whether or not to get married, but much less about what it takes to stay married. Clichés around marriage—eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates—leave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still want to sleep with other people. Sometimes your partner will bore the hell out of you. And when stuck paying for your spouse’s mistakes, you might miss being single. In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which “the first twenty years are the hardest.” Calhoun’s funny, poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity, existential anxiety, and the many other obstacles to staying together. Both realistic and openhearted, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers a refreshing new way to think about marriage as a brave, tough, creative decision to stay with another person for the rest of your life. “What a burden,” Calhoun calls marriage, “and what a gift.”

Michael is an editorial photographer for Southern Bride Magazine, and has traveled all over the South, from Florida to New Orleans, and to such destinations as Mexico. His wedding photography style is beautiful and keeps his studio booked year round with weddings. Michael's commercial photography projects have also attracted a lot of attention, he shoots for major companies photographing such celebrity music stars as Lauren Alaina, Dierks Bentley, and many more. He has recently worked on a major shoot with Conde Naste for GQ magazine as an assistant photographer for Sebastion Kim, the worlds top fashion photographer. One of his recent portrait clients includes Leigh Anne Tuohy from the film "Blind Side". This book goes into detail about shooting high end weddings, photography styles, business management, marketing and the gear needed. A perfect book for new photographers that want to gain insights into the editorial side of wedding photography & what it takes to be a successful photographer.(Revised Edition)

“This book shows just how modern and fun a very traditional day can be.” —Darcy Miller, celebrations expert, editorial director of Martha Stewart Weddings In this guide, Vané Broussard (founder of the uber-popular blog Brooklyn Bride) and Minhee Cho (of the covetable paper company Paper+Cup) team up to present hundreds of entirely modern style ideas for every aspect of a wedding, in eight eye-catching and vibrant color palettes. From pretty floral crowns to die-cut invitations, altars made from balloons, and so much more, these ideas are anything but traditional. Simple DIYs will spark creativity while interviews with industry experts provide important insider info. Lusciously designed and bursting with vivid photography, Weddings in Color has everything brides need to design a stunningly colorful affair. “From elegant touches to subtle details, Weddings in Color doesn’t miss a beat. It’s filled with fun and inventive ideas and even manages to make white look like a bold color choice, perfect for the contemporary bride!” —David Stark, event planner and designer, David Stark Design “Broussard and Cho have a fantastic talent for style, and their emphasis on the modern offers brides-to-be chic ideas in a sophisticated package.” —Library Journal “Weddings in Color is the best wedding idea book I’ve ever seen. Well curated and beautiful to look at, it is the perfect gift for anyone planning a wedding.” —Jordan Ferney, founder of Oh Happy Day! “In this clever book, Vané Broussard and Minhee Cho offer a simple and modern approach to beginning the wedding planning process. The book, organized by color, will enable couples to dive in without fear.” —Marcy Blum, event and wedding producer, Marcy Blum Associates

Examines wedding customs from different cultures and eras, and using ideas from figures as diverse as John Milton and Lyle Lovett, describes how and why couples wed today.

In The Wedding Complex Elizabeth Freeman explores the significance of the wedding ceremony by asking what the wedding becomes when you separate it from the idea of marriage. Freeman finds that weddings—as performances, fantasies, and rituals of transformation—are sites for imagining and enacting forms of social intimacy other than monogamous heterosexuality. Looking at the history of Anglo-American weddings and their depictions in American literature and popular culture from the antebellum era to the present, she reveals the cluster of queer desires at the heart of the "wedding complex"—longings not for marriage necessarily but for public forms of attachment, ceremony, pageantry, and celebration. Freeman draws on queer theory and social history to focus on a range of texts where weddings do not necessarily lead to legal marriage but instead reflect yearnings for intimate arrangements other than long-term, state-sanctioned, domestic couplehood. Beginning with a look at the debates over gay marriage, she proceeds to consider literary works by Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Faulkner, Carson McCullers, Vladimir Nabokov, and Edgar Allan Poe, along with such Hollywood films as Father of the Bride, The Graduate, and The Godfather. She also discusses less well-known texts such as Su Friedrich’s experimental film First Comes Love and the off-Broadway, interactive dinner play Tony ‘n’ Tina’s Wedding. Offering bold new ways to imagine attachment and belonging, and the public performance and recognition of social intimacy, The Wedding Complex is a major contribution to American studies, queer theory, and cultural studies.

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Songbook). Piano/vocal/guitar arrangements of 27 contemporary wedding requests, including: All of Me * Are You Gonna Kiss Me or Not * God Gave Me You * I Choose You * Lost in This Moment * Love Someone * Marry Me * Marry You * Only You Can Love Me This Way * A Thousand Years * Who You Love * You and Me * You're Beautiful * and more.