39 out of 39 people found this review helpful.
Proof Money Can't Buy Taste
Date of Review: Aug 23, 2000
Elegance. Beauty. Romance. Just a few of the things you won't find in this magazine. If you want your wedding to look as plastic as something for a magazine, this is certainly the perfect source. Otherwise, you should follow your instincts and not worry about things like finding an ultra-trendy $5000 dress, or any of the other myriad of things the editors at Modern Bride seem to think are essential.
I got a subscription to Modern Bride because I won some silly contest and a very dear friend of mine is getting married. She asked I help with the plans, and I was happy to agree, because I love to plan a party or event (and I know she wants an event). I got my first issue, for October and November 2000, a few weeks ago. This is certainly the heaviest of the bridal magazines I've read lately. That's the only award I could offer it, however.
Is this a wedding or a fashion show?
Modern Bride tries to cover a great many topics. Dresses, wedding planning, budgets, as well as travel are covered. They also offer question and answer type advice columns, and articles on "real weddings". All this is lost, however, amid hundreds of ads.
Quite a number of times while looking through the magazine, I couldn't tell where the ads ended and the articles began. Looking for the table of contents was no easier. It's buried beneath-you guessed it-ads. When (or if) you find it, the table of contents is nicely organized, listing similar topics together. The project for the "Do It Yourself Bride" is also very nice, but I feel more pictures and directions would be useful.
The Wedding Planning department is woefully lacking. Although there are many articles, none are very detailed. If there were more to the stories, any one of them would be useful. I believe the problem is that the magazine is trying to cover too many topics at once, and thus are losing the resources to offer anything useful. The only unusual thing I found is a list of common "pet peeves" and suggestions on how to avoid them. I think it's cute and useful.
The Features is also lacking. Articles about a man left out of the wedding party and on what the stars "tell" of your coming relationship aren't very useful in planning a wedding, though they might be amusing.
My Question: Why?
There are five "question and answer" columns: Helpline, You & him, Wedding planning, Sex & health, and Money. Helpline is dedicated to explaining the reader's way out of potential problems, such as (in this issue) backing out of a contract with a photographer. It's short, and only offers the most basic advice. You & Him deals with your relationship with your fiance and his family. It's longer than Helpline, dealing with more than one letter. The advice is very generic though, and is really what anyone with an ounce of common sense could offer. Wedding planning, longer still, deals with the details of ceremony and reception. Personally, I think whoever writes this column is just copying out of an old edition of an etiquette book.
Sex & health's purpose is obvious, and all the advice offered is on issues I think anyone could clarify with a call to their doctor. This is possibly the most useless column in the magazine, tied with Money, which deals with such things as tipping the people working at your reception and buying insurance. I don't know what qualifies a bridal magazine to talk about these things, since there are more reputable sources available to everyone (bride-to-be or not).
When I found the columns and articles, finally, I was very disappointed and felt my time searching wasn't rewarded. The articles are vague and common. There's little originality to them. Many are simply collections of photographs without any attempt to help you make any sort of choice. Personally, I'd have liked to see advice about what style dress would work for a body type, or an article about how to choose bridesmaids' dresses. They look and read like another ad.
They offer very little that is truly elegant or uncommon. The bouquets, for instance, are the sort any florist could think of for any sort of occasion. Although lovely, I just don't see most of them as what I'd need to spend $5 on a magazine to get. There's more romance offered in the ads than the rest of the magazine. In almost 700 pages, I'd expect to find more of use.
I don't plan to get married for a few years yet, but when I do I'll know to skip Modern Bride.
