I have several friends that are now planning weddings.  My husband is a groomsman for a wedding this July, and we are going to a wedding in September for a college friend.  I am a bridesmaid for one in October and the matron of honor for my best friend’s wedding next March.

Preparing for all these weddings has got me excited again about the wedding planning process.  It’s great to be able to share my experiences and give advice to my friends.

Too bad those are not my legs!

One of the ways I have been helping some of my friends is passing along books and magazines that I found useful (not only did this help them, it helped clear out most of the wedding clutter from my house!  It’s a win-win!).  I was still getting some of my wedding magazines long after my wedding date. After skimming through them, I passed them along to these engaged friends.

I also bought wedding magazine subscriptions for three of my friends when they told us they were engaged.  It takes so long for wedding magazines to get you onto their distribution cycle that you have to start early!  As we all know, wedding magazines cost an arm and a leg at typical retail outlets, so it’s a huge savings to buy the year subscription.  My friends were all very pleased and excited when they received their first magazine.

Kim Kardashian shops for Bridal Magazines

The books that I found most useful are:

• Wedding Planning for Dummies
• The Knot Guide to Wedding Vows and Traditions

Wedding Planning for Dummies was best as the first thing you read to give you a broad overview of everything.  The Knot Guide to Vows and Traditions basically helped us create our ceremony.  We chose quotes for our programs, designed our vows, and determined the flow of our ceremony and what components we wanted to add in.

I also used:

• Bridal Bargains
• Words for the Wedding
• Emily Post’s Wedding Etiquette
• Bride’s Wedding Planner (a friend passed along an older version of this planner to me)

While all of these were good resources, I only really needed the first two (plus the internet).  They covered everything I needed in an easy-to read and easy-to-reference way.

Most of these books and magazines had comprehensive checklists.  I ended up using the electronic checklist through Weddingwire.com, but these were great resources to start my research and planning with.

What books/resources have you found most helpful?  If you could choose 1 book to advocate, what would it be?