Future brides might consider an Iowa man’s new book for their Christmas wish list. Dan Maiers wrote 51 Bride’s Wedding Day Embarrassments using tidbits he and his wife Stephanie collected in 10 years behind a camera shooting wedding videos.
“We saw a lot of the more behind the scenes types of thing that a lot of the brides and a lot of the wedding planners don’t necessarily see, a lot of the nuts and bolts of putting a wedding together,” Maiers says, “and so we just compiled a bunch of ideas from all the weddings that we filmed over the years and put them into a book.”
Maiers, who lives in Johnston, says the subtitle of the book is: “51 solutions to avoid ruining your wedding as well.” He says the book is a little more practical, hands on, ideas that make you say “oh why didn’t I think of that” before you get into the wedding.
Maiers cites the example of extra planning for a rural Iowa church wedding that’s in the book. He says a lot of the rural churches don’t have the minister living too close to the church anymore, and he’s seen weddings where the wedding party gets to the church three hours early to shoot pictures and there’s no one there with keys to let them.
“So, it’s that type of thing that we put into our book just to kind of remind brides there’s a lot of other things involved in the planning other than the lists that you might see in some of the magazines,” Maiers explains. There are also advice on keeping young kids occupied at weddings so they don’t become the focal point of the big day instead of the bride and groom.
Maiers says an incident involving a young kid is one of his most memorable. The child didn’t get the instructions for taking the birdseed out of its gauze bag before throwing it at the bride and groom as they came out of the church. Maiers says the kid reared back and threw the gauze full of seed at the bride and pegged her right in the eye, and the bride ended up at her reception with a black eye. Maiers says it’s funny to look back on now, but it wasn’t one of the funny things at the wedding reception that night.
Maiers says the book is available on the Amazon.com and the Target website .