The Best Wedding Reception Ever!

by Peter Merry, Robin Haywood (Editor)

For years, bridal magazines, wedding planner books, and wedding-focused television programs have explored every facet of wedding celebrations except for one the fun! Professional wedding entertainer Peter Merry shines some light on the subject of how to create fun and entertaining wedding receptions. This popular book is now available in a trade paperback format.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Wedding Entertainment Director® / Wedding DJ/MC / Roast Master / Entertainer / Author / Public Speaker / Business Consultant / Performance Coach / Blogger

Reviews

[Misono · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book as a gift from my Maid of Honor and best friend. She sent it to me because I was stressed out over figuring out a timeline for the wedding reception and what features I should include, and it ended up being one of the most helpful planning books I read during my planning process. I believe the author (Peter Merry) has years of experience in the wedding business and is a reliable source of information. The book features some real-life couples and highlights some of their reception timelines, what songs they chose for dances/grand entrances, etc. which provided a great reference for me in terms of planning my own wedding timeline. There are lots of ideas for various games and dances (both traditional and original) you can include in your reception to make it more entertaining. Although we didn't use too many of the ideas, it's helpful to see what's out there. The author also gives tips based on real reception experiences, which I felt were invaluable. This is a book definitely worth picking up if you need some ideas on planning your wedding reception!

[Michelle H · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a good reference guide for people planning wedding receptions of a larger size - it had several good ideas that I would like to incorporate into my own wedding - and it had lots of examples of weddings that used the things they were suggesting.

I found a lot of it repetitive though, and the writing tone become more preachy than helpful about halfway through.

I wouldn't suggest this book to others, though I wouldn't outright tell people not to read it.

Just be warned... despite the great pictures, and the anecdotal writing style, it only ranked a "meh" in my giant pile of wedding books.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the most helpful book from all the books I used to plan my wedding reception. It has a lot of ideas and what I liked is that many of them go beyond just the traditional "have a dance" receptions. We didn't have a dance at our reception (just a first dance) so it was very helpful to get a lot of ideas for other things to do. There are a lot of examples of what other people's actual reception plans looked like and there is enough detail given so that the couple planning their reception can easily replicate the ideas. I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone planning a wedding.

[Ellon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did get some cute ideas from this book. I didn't like the first half of it though. The author seemed very biased about some of the things he mentioned and it almost made me second-guess my own choices until I took a step back and thought "oh course he is going to insist that the entertainment is the most important part of the wedding, he's the entertainment." As long as you go into it with that, it's a pretty good spot to get some new ideas.

[Ozma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Compared to all the other wedding planning books out there, this one was pretty useless. But, I suppose if you know nothing about weddings, this might be helpful to you. There's a lot better books out there though. Heck, you can just e-mail me and ask anything and get better info. Nice cover though.

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Best Wedding Reception… Ever was the first of many wedding books I’m sure I’ll read in the next few months. There were a few good tips here and there, although I’m not sure I’m fully ready to conduct the best reception ever… right now, I’d just like to plan a reception.

[Ginny · Rating 4 out of 5]

The reception is the part I am most worried about. But this book helped me to see that any reception can be fun. There were lots of fun stories in it and great music suggestions.