Weddings - General & Miscellaneous, Wedding Planning, Etiquette, Brides and Grooms

For the Bride

Name: For the Bride
Author: Colin Cowie
ISBN: 9780385334426

by Colin Cowie

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Overview

From celebrity stylemaker and wedding guru Colin Cowie comes the ultimate style guide for the modern bride. Like its companion volume, For the Groom, For the Bride offers expert guidance on everything from creating an unforgettable wedding to making a graceful transition to life as a newlywed.

Colin begins by walking you through the planning, ordering, and arranging necessary for a memorable wedding that everyone will enjoy. He covers all the details from flowers to dresses, registry to reception, with tips on how to tactfully negotiate the guest list and how to make your wedding a personal expression of your identity as a couple.

Colin goes on to demonstrate how to let the momentum of your wonderful wedding celebration set the tone for your upcoming life together. Your wedding can and should be a springboard for a lifetime of welcoming family into your home and entertaining friends with charm and verve.

Of course, marriage is more than just a succession of parties. Which is why Colin has also devoted attention to the practical marital arts: how to communicate, merge your finances, settle disagreements, and keep the romantic spark alive. With its gorgeous black and white photos, timeless advice, and elegance of tone, Colin Cowie's For the Bride is as indispensable as it is beautiful, and a natural engagement gift for any woman.

In FOR THE BRIDE, Colin walks future brides through the planning, ordering, and arranging necessary for amemorable wedding that everyone will enjoy, covering all the details from engagement to reception. From flowers to dresses, from selecting items for the bridal registry to negotiating the guest list and seating chart, Colin's got it covered.

FOR THE GROOM, written with Colin's trademark charm and practicality, guides husbands-to-be through it all, from how to propose to what to buy for the first anniversary gift. With all the answers the bride wishes the groom already knew: how to assess the quality of a diamond, how to host a rehearsal dinner, how to win over her parents, and much more, FOR THE GROOM is a natural engagement gift for any and every guy soon to be married.

Illustrated with photographs from weddings Colin has planned and written with a warm, engaging tone, FOR THE BRIDE and FOR THE GROOM offer practical advice and romantic, inspired suggestions to create both a memorable wedding day and a graceful, stylish start to married life. —>

About the Author, Colin Cowie

Colin Cowie is the owner of Colin Cowie Lifestyle, a design, event planning, and lifestyle company with offices in Los Angeles and New York. He is a contributing editor to InStyle magazine and the host of the television show Everyday Elegance with Colin Cowie on Romance Classics. He lives in New York City and Los Angeles.

Biography

Most readers know Colin Cowie from television. His show, Everyday Elegance with Colin Cowie, airs on the Women's Entertainment network, where he offers tips on themes based around entertaining, home decorating, and style. He's also regularly in the media as a style icon, appearing on shows including Oprah Winfrey and Good Morning America, and in magazines such as InStyle.

Cowie is a party- and wedding planner with experience designing lavish gigs for rich and famous clients such as Hugh Hefner, Kelsey Grammer and Lisa Kudrow. But his popularity lies in the fact that he takes an egalitarian approach to lifestyle and events. He offers ideas and guidelines for creating the perfect event or look, but doesn't issue edicts. He keeps in mind that not everyone has a celebrity-level budget, and encourages people to do what's right for them, above all else.

His best known works revolve around weddings: Colin Cowie Weddings, For the Groom, and For the Bride cover all aspects of the planning, offering specific rundowns of occasions he has orchestrated. He's a full-service planner, too: For the Bride offers tips on the "marital arts," while his tome for grooms offers similar tips on keeping the romance alive and other elements of post-nuptial care.

Cowie's general books on entertaining, such as Effortless Elegance and Dinner After Dark, inspire readers to go beyond the routine even for traditionally casual meals. In addition to menus (surprisingly simple breakfast recipes for chicken and fennel sausage and almond pancakes, for example), Cowie offers ideas on timing, setting the mood, and decorating the table. He might offer a recipe for an endive salad, but not without a mini-primer on endive and a recommendation on kitchen equipment. It's true that not all of Cowie's ideas are "effortless," or "everyday" -- but for those who are willing to put in a little extra time, isn't that the point?

Good To Know

One of Cowie's greatest moments, he says, was designing and producing Hugh Hefner's wedding. "I had only been living in the U.S. for 18 months and this was a deep-end lesson in American Celebrity. I had no idea how famous the world's most famous bachelor really was! To this day it was probably one of my best produced events. It also labeled me ‘Mr Wedding."'

Cowie is one of Oprah Winfrey's many beneficiaries: His appearance on her show to discuss weddings sparked sales for his book on the subject. Colin Cowie Weddings is now in its fifth printing.