The books out there are plentiful, but you would be surprised at how many didn't actually meet our needs. Most of what we found were heavily religious, extremely heteronormative, and too "basic" for our style. But we did manage to find a few diamonds in the rough. Below is a review of the books we've found, what we've used them for, and what we loved and didn't love about them. I've also given each book a score out of 10, where 1 is the worst and 10 is the best.
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| The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Part of Your Wedding Day Reverend Judity Johnson, Ph.D. What We Love: This book is great! It has endless options for how to organize and word your ceremony. This is perfect for us because we are having a dear friend officiate, so it's helpful to write the script for someone who hasn't done it before. It includes traditional church ceremonies as well as super unique secular ceremonies. It has each section of the ceremony broken down and provides tips to personalize them for your needs. The best part is that the book includes access to downloadable PDFs of their scripts. What We Didn't Love: It is VERY heternormative. In the introduction, the author mentioned that they tried to be inclusive, but no where did we actually see those efforts. Everything was "Bride" and "Groom." Overall, we would rate this book an 8/10. It was really helpful and we were able to create a script that is perfect for our ceremony. |
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| Our Q&A a Day: 365 Questions, 3 Years, 2100 Shared Answers. 3-Year Journal for 2 People What We Love: We haven't actually started this book yet. We're waiting to start it on October 13, so we can capture the year leading up to our marriage and our first 2 years of marriage on the exact date. I have previously used a one-sentence a day journal for myself, so when I found this one I got really excited. I love the guided question format of it, and that it asks you the same questions on the same day for 3 years. I'm excited to use this and see how our answers change and develop with each other over time. What We Don't Love: Some of the questions are kind of weird. And also, we're not always the best at remembering to do things like this at the end of the day. I suppose it will require us to practice our end-of-the-day reflection and mindfulness! I can't score this one fairly because we haven't actually put it to the test. |
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| 52 E-mails to Transform Your Marriage: How to Reignite Intimacy and Rebuild Your Relationship Samantha Rodman, Ph.D. What We Love: This book is great because it's so unique! I love the modern twist it has to communicating with your partner. It acknowledges that sometimes talking about tough subjects is hard, and helps guide you through processing how to talk about them. It includes conversation starters about all aspects of a relationship, and includes questions and examples to walk you through your thought process. It also asks you to start each "email" with "Talking to you about this subject makes me feel...", so you can acknowledge your vulnerability from the get go. I appreciate that it encourages emotional intelligence and wellness, and makes those emotions ok. Instead of emailing, we decided to journal our notes. We try to spend a little time each week writing our letters to each other in the journal, and then we trade and write a response. After we finish writing, we talk about it. It's cool because the prompts include questions to ask of your partner so they have a way to keep the conversation going. We opted to journal because it's more intimate and we can do it together, as well as keep everything in one place. We also appreciate that it's 52 prompts, which gives us one prompt a week. We try to make it our Sunday night ritual. This book is also great because it uses inclusive language and is designed for use in a variety of stages of life. It's called "rebuilding your relationship," but it talks about people getting ready to be newly wed and well as people who have lost their way a bit after being married for a while. We're planning on using it now and also revisiting it down the road. What We Didn't Love: We are bad at keeping up with it, which is on us but not the book. There's not much we don't like about it. Overall, we would give this book a 10/10! We love it. It's a great find, and it's been a really great way to connect with each other. |
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| 1001 Questions to Ask Before You Get Married Monica Mendez Leahy What We Love: It covers anything you could ever imagine needing to have a conversation about. It's broken down into sections and chapters, and it covers all the bases. I appreciate that it helps guide conversation through some things we never would have thought to talk about. It's also nice because it gives you the questions in a variety of ways. Some are just traditional lists of questions to go through, while some are worksheets that you fill out separately and then come back together to talk about. What We Don't Love: It is A LOT of questions. It's a bit exhausting to get through them. Some we were able to skip because they were conversations we've had before, but it's almost excessively thorough. Overall, we would give this book a 9. It gives you new ideas of what to talk about, and provides opportunities for self-exploration as well as relationship exploration. |
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| Instant Wedding Planner: Get From "Will You?" To "I Do" In Record Time Jennifer L. Shawne What We Love: It's a planning binder, so it includes lots of checklists and tips for getting things accomplished. We got this one by accident, because we didn't realize it was an "instant" planner, meaning it helps you plan a wedding if you have a timeline of a few months. Even though that is not the case with us, it was still helpful in providing a different perspective of all the things you need to plan a wedding. It's also super helpful in helping you prioritize things. It helps you outline the bare-bones of a wedding. What We Don't Love: It's not something we needed. It's a great book, especially if you have a quick turnaround. It could be improved in the budget breaking-down section. Overall, this one gets a 10. It's so helpful! And it was very inexpensive. |
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| The Knot Ultimate Wedding Planner and Organizer What We Love: This book has EVERYTHING you need to plan a wedding. It includes check lists, ways to imagine your wedding before you even get to the actual planning stages, as well as helpful reminders and questions for venues and service providers. It's also neat because it's in a 3-ring binder, so we were able to reorganize and take out the sections that we didn't want or need. It's great because it helps you think of everything and leaves no stone unturned. It has worksheets for everything from service providers to color schemes, and even has business card holders. What We Didn't Love: There weren't enough worksheets for interviewing service providers. It advises you to make copies if you need more, which we did, but for the price it would have been nice to have those included. It was also pricey. It includes a lot and is certainly cheaper than a human wedding planner, but we would have liked to pay less for it. It could also use more pockets for collecting handouts and brochures from providers. Overall, we would give this an 8/10. It's great and has been helpful, but it's far from perfect. |
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| Emotional Fitness For Couples: 10 Minuets a Day to a Better Relationship Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D. What We Love: This is like a non-religious devotional. It makes checking in and keeping up with each other realistic. It's simple and short for daily things, so it doesn't feel like an exhausting undertaking. We haven't really done a lot with this one, but it seems like a helpful book. What We Don't Love: We didn't find it to be guided enough. Which is fine for some, but we were using it for a pre-marital counseling kind of thing, and it wasn't necessarily good for that. We can fairly score this one as we haven't used it enough. |
If you know of any other books that you think we should check out, we'd love to hear about them!
