Peggy Post, America's etiquette authority, presents an indispensable, comprehensive guide to planning and personalizing your wedding. Today's weddings are more complex than ever before, with new traditions and new family relationships to consider. This thoroughly revised fourth edition of the classic Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette addresses countless wedding questions both old and new. With the famous Post blend of sensitivity and practicality, Peggy Post shows how to handle the big decisions and the little details that will make your wedding beautiful to behold and uniquely yours -- and how to carry it off with minimum stress and maximum style.
Three new chapters offer advice on the latest realities of today's weddings, including multicultural ceremonies, encore weddings, and postwedding duties. Expanded sections give guidance on financial matters, working smoothly with wedding consultants and others on your "wedding team," and planning theme and destination weddings. Dozens of at-a-glance lists, boxes, and charts on everything from most-asked questions to creative ideas for personalizing the day are perfect guides for busy brides and grooms.
With this book in hand, a couple can confidently blend the best of classic tradition with contemporary style, making this wondrous event a celebration to be remembered and treasured by all.
What makes a perfect wedding? "[The bride] and the groom both look as though there were sunlight behind their eyes, as though their mouths irresistibly turned to smiles," wrote Emily Post in 1922's Etiquette. Great-granddaughter-in-law Peggy Post, author of the fourth edition of Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette, absolutely agrees with Miss Emily. To ensure those bright eyes and smiles, she imparts thoughtful and commonsensical advice on how to plan for not just your wedding, but for all the social and familial obligations and traditions that a wedding entails.
Unlike many wedding manuals, Post includes advice for the "encore" bride as well as for the new bride. In this day of remarriages and blended families, tact and strategy are often needed to make sure feelings aren't hurt and everything runs as smoothly as possible. A chapter on multicultural and interfaith marriages addresses differing world traditions and how they can be incorporated into a touching ceremony that makes both the couple and their families happy. If you are unsure of who is supposed to do what, Post gives you clear instruction, often including a flow chart that delineates the responsibilities of all people involved in the wedding party (bride's parents throw the engagement party, best man returns the tuxes, flower girl's family pays for her outfit).
Throughout Emily Post's Wedding Etiquette are sidebars with questions asked of Post regarding an amazing array of wedding-related conundrums ("My daughter's fiancé wants to follow his family's tradition of having a money tree at the wedding. I personally find this distasteful; can I say so?"). This is a great book to find the answers for all those sticky questions. All involved in the wedding process should leaf through, get their bearings, smile, and then forge ahead. --Dana Van Nest
