From great ideas on how to save money to stressing the complete importance of entertainment, this book is a bride's best friend. The Best Wedding Reception.Ever! is broken down into three easy to read sections that each focus on all of the aspects of planning your perfect day. Mr. Merry uses easy to understand analogies to get his point across to his readers. He refers to the Bride and Groom as the Actors in the Starring Roll as well as the Executive Producer, and the vendors (caterer, florist, photographer etc...) as Supporting Actors. The Wedding Consultant or Coordinator would fill the roll of Co-Producer and the DJ would be the Director, otherwise known as the Wedding Entertainment DirectorT. It is this reviewer's opinion that Mr. Merry deserves an Oscar® for Best Original Screenplay . Note to brides..Definitely read this book!!!!"

--Shelley Skaggs
...getting married January 2008

"My fiancee and I really enjoyed this book as it brought up many celebration ideas that we had not even heard of let alone considered. there's a lot of information in the book and it really covers every type of reception from elegant to raucous. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in having a good time at their wedding."

--D. McAlester getting married in October 2007
...posted March 15th, 2007 on Amazon.com

"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."

--Benny Choi, getting married in July 2007
...posted April 22nd, 2007 on Amazon.com

"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!"

--Amy Korschot, event coordinator and bride-to-be
...posted April 30th, 2007 on Amazon.com