Best wedding ceremony & toasts books according to redditors

I recommend Handfasting and Wedding Rituals. It has lots of great ideas and sample fusion wedding including a Pagan-Catholic wedding.

We purchased this book when we first got engaged. It was immensely helpful in figuring things out!

This book really gave me a lot of really good information.

It doesn't come out till October 12th though

So far, I've found Budget Weddings for Dummies to contain the most reasonable advice. It was the only one I could find that didn't start off assuming that you'd want matching, hand-dyed napkins, etc. Pretty good glossary and diagrams of different tuxedos, necklines, and things like that as well.

As someone else mentioned, Telushkin's books are very good.

For wedding specific books, when I was planning my wedding, I read both Anita Diamant's The New Jewish Wedding and The Creative Jewish Wedding Book. Both were very helpful.

The Reform movement's publishing arm has just published a new book about Jewish weddings called Beyond Breaking the Glass, and the one amazon review on it so far says it is very user friendly. I have also seen Meeting at the Well recommended for engaged couples.

I have not read it yet, since I just found out about it, but apparently Robert Alter's translation of the Torah is very poetic.

You should take a look at r/judaism's book list as well.

Handfasting and Wedding Rituals has some Greek weddings, and some specifically gay Pagan weddings. Hellenic Polytheism: Household Worship also contains a wedding ritual as well.

Are there deities you feel exceptionally close to? They should be a part of it. If not, Hera, Aphrodite, Eros and Hymen are certainly important, as they are deities of love, and you may also wish to call upon gods of gay love (Aphrodite again, Dionysus, Antinous).

As a gay man who also hopes to one day get married (At the theatre of Dionysus, if it works), please feel free to share your ideas!

I used this book when I first got started doing handfasting and year and a day ceremonies.

Handfasting and Wedding Rituals: Welcoming Hera's Blessing https://www.amazon.com/dp/0738704709/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ug4ZDb141J9FZ

And I am ordained through the ULC. The credentials are good for all of the US. Not sure about anywhere else.

https://ulc.net/

I don't have a lot of detail, but kissing the bride probably developed from the Roman legal customs surrounding betrothals, and the dissolving thereof. There were different variations of the betrothal ceremonies, which were required to precede marriage ceremonies but were considered very nearly as binding (for instance, if a woman's betrothed died in war, she was treated as a war widow). It was difficult, but not impossible, to dissolve a betrothal, but it was markedly more difficult if they had kissed during the betrothal ceremony.

TL;DR: A ceremonial kiss made a betrothal more legally binding in Roman law.

The only citation I have for this is a lecture delivered at a conference last weekend by Dr. Michael P. Foley, who teaches at Baylor, but I'm sure it's covered in his book on the topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Wedding-Rites-Traditional-Ceremonies-Interfaith/dp/0802848672/

The great thing about a Handfasting is there is no set way to do it. So many different cultures have practiced or are practicing it that there's a variety of ways to do it. There are actually 2 different schools of thought on it, too. Here are some links for your enjoyment: website 1, website 2, website 3, book 1, book 2

This is kind of below your budget, but you could try looking down this route. Anyone slightly nerdy is likely to enjoy books, and this would give her something more lighthearted than most wedding planning materials.

Hello, I am Jewish as well..since your getting married I found you some essentials you didn't have on you list This gorgeousmezuzah and this awesome

and this awesome book
"You can't pick your friends nose"

I was looking at this https://www.amazon.com/Grimoire-Apprentice-Wizard-Oberon-Zell-Ravenheart/product-reviews/1564147118/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_summary?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=helpful the other day, it seemed to have a plethora of useful info, all gathered in one place, and I was really excited, but then I read the reviews and it seems to be loaded with misinformation (he (well, the "grey council") gets certain things wrong, such as alphabets (heiroglyphic and runic specifically), and other technical details wrong), which pretty much makes it useless. Supposedly they're making (have made?) A revised edition, but im not sure if they fixed all the errors.

Theres also this media server, which has a ton of pdfs and podcasts, theres a whole folder of grimoires, you should definitely give it a look, it may give you some ideas for books to purchase, if that is what your goal is.
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/z7x8kec9jidn2/Occult

I can't seem to find our questionnaire, but it included the basics about how we met, why we're getting married, goals for the future, etc. We've settled on hiring an officiant, but I did buy this book at one point, just to get ideas: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1452119015/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o08_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Try books!

I haven't read this one, but it looks promising: The Wedding Officiant's Guide: How to Write and Conduct a Perfect Ceremony.

I bought this one because FH & I are writing our own ceremony for our aunt to officiate and it's been really helpful so far: The Wedding Ceremony Planner: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Part of Your Wedding Day. Head's up, she does recommend at the beginning that you don't have non-pro officiants, but we just disregarded that. There's tons of details in there about planning a ceremony I had never thought of, and a ton of ceremony examples.

EDIT: Oh shit just realized you're 48 hours out from the wedding??? You can read those in browser or on a Kindle if you have one... good luck!

http://www.amazon.ca/Handfasting-Wedding-Rituals-Welcoming-Blessing/dp/0738704709

I used this one for my hand-fasting. it's really good.

Seconded! I read this and Budget Weddings for Dummies and meshed principles of APW with the practicals of the Dummies book.