The Best Wedding Reception Ever!
September 6, 2010 by admin
Filed under Wedding Reception
The Best Wedding Reception Ever!
If you could only choose 3 words to describe your dream reception…WHAT 3 WORDS would you choose? If one of your top choices was…FUN…then this book was written just for you! For years the bridal magazines, wedding planning books, and wedding focused TV programs have explored every facet of wedding celebrations except for one…the FUN. Brides are being told to shop for “Music,” and then when their wedding reception arrives, they suddenly realize what they really needed was talented and a
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(out of 33 reviews)
Price: $ 19.99
Review by Benny Choi for The Best Wedding Reception Ever!
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My fiance and I are experiencing a bit of a role reversal, in that I am in the minority of grooms, one who is the primary planner/coordinator of our upcoming wedding. My fiance has great taste and is involved with all major decisions, but is also an extremely busy professional, so I was happy to step up as the experienced party planner, doing the homework and pre-negotiating with vendors, before my fiance and I together make final selections of vendors and the plan. However, I had never planned a wedding before, so I’ve bought many books and read lots of websites and paged through many magazines (I don’t think I can look at another magazine ad of a bride-model laying horizontal on a couch without snickering). Virtually everything is written for the bride who typically plans the wedding – which to me means there is a heavy emphasis on decorations and flowers and invitations and linens and color schemes… it was all driving me crazy as a guy trying to put together a wedding plan that is simply fun and action oriented, while still allows for nice things. I’ve attended many dozens of weddings over the years and I’ve kept an eye on what makes weddings enjoyable and memorable: keep it festive, keep guests involved, and make sure there is time for the happy couple to spend time with each of the guests. I never saw any correlation with the size of the party, the location, the decorations, even the food quality (and I’m a big foodie), with how successful and fun the wedding was. Given this perspective, I looked and looked for wedding planning advice in all the books and magazines and websites, hoping to find action oriented advice for having a festive wedding reception – frankly, I found little useful advice. Finally, just three months before our upcoming wedding, I have found the book I really needed – on the recommendation of a wedding DJ friend (who lives and works in another state), I ordered Peter Merry’s book, which I have found to be chock full of actionable ideas from an experienced wedding DJ/entertainment director. He focuses on the concept of entertainment and leaves decorations and other more frivolous things to the other books. He is a welcome voice, a rare male perspective in wedding planning books, that a planning groom, and presumably planning brides as well, needs. I’ve already made adjustments to the reception agenda and found validation with some activity ideas we already had in place. Rest assured, there will be great food and many touches of elegance in the design of our wedding, but I am now more confident as ever we will have a truly festive wedding with Peter Merry’s advice influencing our plan. Many thanks to the author – the advice is easily 10 times worth the cover price of the book. I strongly recommend this book to anyone planning their wedding.
Review by Eva for The Best Wedding Reception Ever!
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Useful if you are planning a large wedding reception. Very useful if you can afford to hire a super talented DJ/MC and/or a band (as Chapter 7 will scare you away from any other option).
However, for the “intimate wedding” or “destination wedding”, like the one I am planning, the book is not as helpful. With a budget of
Review by Amy E Korschot for The Best Wedding Reception Ever!
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As not only an event coordinator, but a bride-to-be I found this book extremely helpful. After having experience as a wedding planner I didn’t think that I needed any reading materials to help plan my reception. I’m so grateful to have received this book as a gift! There are so many awesome ideas and tips that I’m excited to use or create my own spin off.
Another nice thing about this is that it’s broken down so it’s really easy to find what you want. So even if you don’t think you want to read all of it, it’s not an issue to go through and find the things that you need the most guidance on.
Be sure to check this book out. It will be one of the best wedding planning tools that you can get!
Review by Brian Swatek for The Best Wedding Reception Ever!
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As a full-time mobile DJ / MC, I feel that Peter Merry’s book provides brides and grooms with a chance to focus their vision in terms of planning their wedding event. It is possible to be both realistic and creative and to spend wisely without cutting corners. However, planning and research are essential in order to create an outstanding, memorable experience for your friends and family on your wedding day.
Peter Merry’s example weddings and lists of pros and cons provide brides and grooms with a number of realistic examples of how their planning might turn out given different choices you might make. His years of experience as a “Wedding Entertainment Director” allow him to address a variety of options, such as the daytime wedding vs. the evening wedding, scheduling a wedding at different times throughout the year, when and how to schedule photos, and what type of entertainment to hire.
With weddings costing tens of thousands of dollars and taking one to two years to plan, reading a few books and articles on how to invest your time and money only makes sense. I highly recommend _The Best Wedding Reception Ever!_ by Peter Merry as one of these pieces of research. It’s certainly the kind of book that will get a bride and groom (and their family and friends) talking about their ideas for their wedding day.
Review by LN Drake for The Best Wedding Reception Ever!
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If you are a wedding planner, a wedding DJ or are soon to get married, this book is as good as it gets. Unfortunately, the author, Peter Merry is not only a brilliant wedding entertainment professional and excellent communicator, he is a capitalist who pursues his goals like a shark in a feeding frenzy, with no concern for his prey or for those injured by the collateral damage he causes.
Merry has created an exclusive middleman wedding DJ talent agency (of sorts), “The Wedding Entertainment Directors Guild” and he promotes it again and again in his book. In doing so, he marginalizes those who are not members. It’s sort of a “Good Old Boy/Girl” organization furthering their individual careers by putting down other members of the industryand telling clients, they are the only ones capable of doing the job well.
It costs over $1000 to become a member of the Wedding Entertainment Directors Guild and $900 in annual dues. It has about 25 current members. It appears Merry wants to increase those numbers by recruiting with this book. He also wants Guild Members to be able to charge top dollar. Some would argue overpriced, but that is another topic.
There are many great Wedding DJ’s or Hosts who are not members of Peter Merry’s WED Guild. They are qualified, talented and competent. So buy the book, ignore the whole Wedding Entertainment Director’s Guild thing, and enjoy some great tips and a lot of valuable information.