Francine Parnes
AP Special Edition

You’ve found the guy, you’ve found the gown. Now it’s time to plan the rest of your wedding.

Decisions, decisions. If you thought invitations were a chore, organizing your most special day also means picking not only bouquets, bridal chairs and table settings but details such as wedding cake tables, place cards and more.

That is one reason why Maria McBride-Mellinger decided to put her expertise as a wedding stylist to good use by writing "The Perfect Wedding Details: More than 100 Ideas for Personalizing Your Wedding" (HarperCollins, $29.95 hardcover, Dec. 23, 2003).

Once you’ve settled on the overall style of your wedding, be it formal, casual, or somewhere in between, start thinking about location.

"Choosing the location first is such a critical component of celebration planning," says McBride-Mellinger. "If you’re having your wedding at home, you design it very differently from a wedding in a vineyard or any other remarkable location. If it’s a gold ballroom with lots of gold accents, then your floral theme will need to take on some gilded aspects, as opposed to trying to force a pink and rosy wedding idea. Then you can start to dress it with the details that make a difference."

Early on, think about how to dress your tables, focusing on centerpieces, says McBride-Mellinger, wedding style editor for Bride’s magazine and author of four earlier books about weddings. On a practical note, "Centerpieces should not be so high that guests can’t see each other. You want to encourage eye contact," she says.

"It’s important that centerpieces fit the location and the mood of the event. Sometimes I want to express a sophisticated, urbane style, other times a charming, countrified presence and still other times I prefer tailored, chic details."

With all the choices, what is her favorite look? Well, she can at least narrow it down to her look of the moment. "It’s extremely versatile: flowers under water," McBride-Mellinger says. She creates it with a clear glass ice bucket and a narrow cylinder vase that nests inside it. After filling both with water, she lines the channel between the bucket and the vase with colorful flower heads and fills the inner vase with long stems of the same flowers. "The finished centerpiece is an exuberant floral expression," says McBride-Mellinger, who also suggests centerpieces fashioned from colorful blooms paired with favorite objects including gilded nuts, a pile of pearls, polished fruits and even antique birdcages. There is so much beyond tried-and true flowers in a glass vase, she says.

With so many decisions, prioritize. Tables, for example, are key. "The tables are really important because typically wedding celebrations are a dining experience," she says. "You are breaking bread together, and your guests are anchored to the tables. That is their little home away from home for the celebration. It becomes a little oasis for them. They will get up, dance, come back, rest their feet, mingle and come back again. It’s their port of call."

If you decorate your table creatively, you are helping your guests to have an instant conversation builder. "The more welcoming you can make it, the more appreciative your guests will be," McBride-Mellinger says. "You want to create easy ice-breaking opportunities. I find that when the brides take the time to set the table in an interesting way, it starts chatter among the guests. It’s a subliminal way of being a really great hostess."

Her own favorite table setting is an all-white table with chocolate-brown accents. "I love the graphic results of marrying the rich brown tones with crisp whites," she says. "Starched white linen dressed with chocolate linen napkins, vases of chocolate cosmos or calla lilies and dark wood ballroom chairs with white cushions is altogether modern, elegant and classic."

And don’t forget the chairs. "Dressing chairs is a nice punctuation point,’"she says. "I find dressing all the chairs is a little like gilding the lily because having 200 chairs with decorations is definitely over the top and in most cases perhaps an unnecessary luxury. But what is great is to do the bride and groom’s chairs or the bridal party’s chairs as the center of attention."

McBride-Mellinger suggests making a large poufy bow, sewn with the fabric used for the tablecloth, which ties around the back of the chair. And if you don’t want to take the time to sew, a five-inch-wide satin ribbon can make an equally luxurious accent when tied into a bow, she says.

Whatever you choose, make your own individual mark, says McBride-Mellinger. "I find in talking to brides all the time that they typically have been to a number of weddings already, and they choose to marry in some of the same locations where their friends have married, but they want to find a way to make it personal," she says. They’re asking: "What can I do to make my table, my flowers, my event special, but also mine?"

If planning a wedding feels like a formidable task, take heart. "A lot of people don’t come from a background of having planned a lot of events of this magnitude," she says. "We plan holiday dinners or barbecues or potlucks or dinner for six on some occasions, but we get a little stuck trying to think about a bigger picture. We are trying to make an event for 200 feel as special as an event for six or eight. It’s a tall order. Even doing it for 10 people is a tall order."

"How to make a large party intimate, that’s the big trick," she says. "So focus on the details that are manageable and interesting, whether it’s the way you do your napkin ring or decorate the chair backs."