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Rating: 
Summary: THE Jewish Wedding Book Marries Tradition and Style
Review: Don't get fooled by the exquisite photography and tasteful presentation. This book is packed with information to educate and inspire any Jewish couple with a chuppah in their future! Ms. Brownstein presents a wide variety of wedding traditions from around the Jewish world--New York City chic to a simple but elegant West Coast garden party. From mikveh to mezuzah, she packs powerful Jewish wedding customs into 176 pages, finishing with a useful resource guide. A must buy for the prospective bride (groom and mother-of-the-bride too!)who wants to begin her new life with tradition, style and meaning!
Rating: 
Summary: Heavy on aesthetics, light on substance
Review: I give this book a B+ in aesthetics and a C+ in its ability to impart Jewish knowledge. The author tries to combine a pseudo Martha Stewart "look" with some useful information and ideas for Jewish weddings, and the result is mediocrity. The photos are very pretty (much like those found in any of the myriad mainstream bridal magazines at your local newsstand), but I found the text hard to follow and not particularly informative. The author's background as a graphic desginer (not a rabbi or educator or even party planner) clearly dominated her approach to the book. I hoped to find historical context, information distinguishing Jewish wedding traditions from mainstream American traditions, and information further distinguishing Jewish law from custom. Instead I found full page photos of cakes and gowns and ideas about how your creative friends can decorate chairs as a gift to you. While some girly-girls might be into this stuff, as a prospective groom I found it mostly useless and often confusing. To her credit, the author did manage to include a fair amount of information about Jewish laws and customs, but she failed to present it in a way that eases a bride's (and groom's) decisions about what to incorporate in our wedding, or where to find more information about specific practices. I did not find a single Hebrew word written in Hebrew in the book. Instead the author opted to translate almost everything, with the occasional translitteratation. The "chazen"/"chatan" confusion experienced by another Amazon reviewer stemmed from the author's further failure to distinguish Yiddish from Hebrew ("chozen" or "chossen" is Yiddish and "chatan" is Hebrew for "groom"). To sum up, if you're a girly-girl looking for a secular Jewish take on the Martha Stewart Weddings magazine, and you don't mind shelling out for a hard cover book, you've found your book. But if you're looking for information about Jewish wedding laws and customs, with historical context and useful information, take a look at Anita Diamant's "The New Jewish Wedding" (revised), which my fiance and I bought after we returned this book. It lacks the pretty photography, but it's got the information we were looking for.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful in content and style
Review: While planning my (Jewish) wedding I found it very difficult to find a book with ideas on both decorating and Jewish customs. Needless to say, I was thrilled when I found Jewish Weddings. The pages are beautifully laid out--a pleasure to read--and full of clever ideas. The prose is elegant as well. I learned a lot about more about Jewish customs (and I thought I knew a lot) and weaved many into our ceremony.It's an amazing book for all Jewish brides (and their families), whether they are reform or orthodox (like my family). I've now given the book as a shower gift as well, and I keep it on our coffee table too. Ms. Milos Brownstein's other book it worth checking out too. I've used many of her recipes and tabletop ideas while preparing for the holidays.
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