[.ca] Alternative Weddings: An Essential Guide for Creating ... (ISBN 0878339779)

Helpful, but Chock full of Errors:
While the general idea of this book was invaluable - I used it to help plan my own "alternative" wedding - the number of obvious errors in the book became a bit tedious after a while. For example, in Chapter 3, when listing songs, poems and passages to use in one's ceremony, the author incorrectly lists an Edgar Allen Poe poem and she gives credit to the wrong Rosetti for writing "Sudden Light" among other errors. She also refers to the Convocation or Introduction as the "Charge to Convocation" when it should actually be the "Charge to the Congregation". Also, when referring to various passages in the Bible, some of them are incorrectly refrenced as well. I could go on... At any rate, if you can get past all of the things that are incorrect in this book, there are some very helpful concepts.

Read it NOW:
It is hard to figure out how to have a ceremony for a pagan and an atheist. So what did I do? I read this book! It reminded me that the wedding was for me and my fiance to celebrate our love...not to cater to everyone's desires.

Not really very:
I was diappointed by Ross-MacDonald's book. She did provide a fair number of wedding ceremonies of different faiths, but I didn't find many of them to be very alternative. Most of them were the same tired old patriachal, sexist, Western-religion-influenced dreck you see all the time- just slightly different because the faith had a different name. There were maybe eight pages that actually had interesting content. I also did not appreciate the author's use of sexist language or her assumption that all clergy people are male. The Spiritualist and Viking wedding ceremonies seemed most interesting to me, though I wouldn't want to use either of them. It's not worth the money! I'd suggest checking this book out of your library, skimming it for the bit of useful information, and then writing your own book.

Makes You Think:
Besides examples of many different ceremonies what I really liked about this book is that it makes you think about why you are having a ceremony at all. Are you making a religious statement, a family celebration, just getting the legal paperwork done, ect. When you think about why you are having a ceremony it makes it much easier to plan.

Informative, but very limited in scope:
This resource is useful if you're trying to write the wording for the ceremony itself, and not for much else. It provides the basic format and content of weddings for a variety of religious and ideological traditions. Another redeeming factor is the collection of anecdotes and advice from others who have planned alternative weddings. However, the book's layout makes it difficult to read, and it lacks information about all the other aspects of planning a wedding besides the ceremony itself.