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WEDDING FENG SHUI
By Laura Lau and Theodora Lau
On Sale December 21, 2010
 From finding your luckiest wedding day to choosing the perfect centerpieces, WEDDING FENG SHUI (Harper Paperbacks; Trade Paperback Original; On Sale: December 21, 2010; $16.99) is a unique guide to wedding planning from Chinese horoscope experts Laura Lau and Theodora Lau, authors of the top-selling The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes.
Laura and Theodora share answers to the most popular wedding questions they have received over the years, and teach readers how to customize a wedding based on the bride and groom’s lunar and solar signs. Accompanied by beautiful Chinese calligraphy, WEDDING FENG SHUI introduces readers to their Chinese moon sign, shows them how to use their sign’s natural strengths during the planning process, and predicts challenges leading up to the big day.
By interweaving traditional and nontraditional elements, WEDDING FENG SHUI helps brides make every aspect of the wedding personalized and special, from choosing the most auspicious day to selecting the right dress and the luckiest colors, flowers, and symbols. Chinese horoscopes for every sign also offer essential insights on how to best manage the many relationships that come together with a marriage—the interaction of the couple, in-laws, bridesmaids, groomsmen, vendors, and guests.
Special features include:
- A timeline of essential planning dates
- Key information on how different signs interact, and how to deal if you’re a Dragon with a Tiger maid of honor or an Ox groom
- Dress shopping tips, color palette suggestions, and planning advice by sign
- A complete listing of suggested wedding dates for each of the 144 sign combinations
WEDDING FENG SHUI features Laura’s and Theodora’s easy-to-follow advice on how anyone of any culture can use Eastern wisdom to create a unique, meaningful, and beautiful wedding that the bride, groom and their guests will always remember.
About the Author:
Laura Lau is the co-author of The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes and Best-Loved Chinese Proverbs. The daughter of Kenneth and Theodora Lau, Laura is a second generation author on Chinese culture and horoscopes. Born in Hong Kong, she divides her time between Asia and southern California with her husband. www.laura-lau.com
 Theodora Lau authored The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes, Best-Loved Chinese Proverbs, The Chinese Horoscopes Guide to Relationships, and Chinese Horoscopes for Your Child. First published in 1979, Theodora’s books have been translated into over 17 languages and have introduced many topics of Chinese culture to readers all over the world. She was born in Shanghai and later moved to southern California with her husband, Kenneth. www.theodoralau.com
Wedding Feng Shui
Harper Paperbacks
Trade Paperback Original
On Sale: December 21, 2010
$16.99/ 288 Pages
ISBN: 9780061990533
www.weddingfengshui.com
facebook.com/weddingfengshui
 Author Bio
Laura Lau
www.laura-lau.com
contactlauralau@gmail.com
Born in Hong Kong, Laura grew up in Southern California with a strong sense of Chinese culture and the arts. As the daughter of Theodora Lau, best-selling author of Chinese astrology and Kenneth Lau, artist and Chinese calligrapher, Laura began learning about Chinese astrology at a young age.
Laura got engaged in 2006 and started a new journey of learning about Chinese wedding tradition, selecting auspicious wedding dates to cultural traditions. With her mother and father, she ventured off to China and Hong Kong to research Chinese weddings. Their trips inspired her to write Wedding Feng Shui, a wedding planning guide which shares ways of creating harmony in relationships, timing and décor and style, with the inspiration of Chinese astrology and feng shui.
Laura is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and UCLA Anderson School of Management. Laura and her husband make their home in Singapore.
Wedding Feng Shui FAQ
- Tell me about how you were inspired to write Wedding Feng Shui.
When most women get engaged, brides are easily swept off on a sea of wedding creativity. Where will I find the perfect dress? What is the perfect location? But, when you’re Chinese, most important question is what is the perfect date. In 2006, I was asked the big question and started the adventure of my wedding planning. The first step was the date, and I was lucky enough to consult my mother, who is a Chinese astrologer and best-selling author on the subject. She picked my auspicious wedding day, based on my birth information alongside my fiancé’s, like she had for my sister and brother, and we started talking about the topics of Chinese weddings. Over the years, my mother had received many inquiries from fans about the perfect time to get married. It’s no wonder because there isn’t a book or website on the topic of choosing a date. I also could not find a site that talks about Chinese wedding traditions beyond the most well-known. Seeing we saw this an unmet need for brides and her fans alike, we decided chronicle my wedding planning and share our knowledge in Wedding Feng Shui.
- How does Wedding Feng Shui relate to the Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes?
Wedding Feng Shui is a natural addition to the Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes series. The Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes teaches a reader about her Chinese zodiac animal sign and promotes introspection into how a birth animal can influence relationships. The Chinese Handbook Guide to Relationships delves deeper into relationships, exploring each animal sign’s natural affinity groups and offers guidance on how to identify and better develop positive relationships. Wedding Feng Shui explores the ultimate relationship – marriage. Through the lens of Chinese Horoscopes, it shows the reader how she can smooth the way to an auspicious and drama-free wedding day by understanding the interplay between different animal signs. In particular, the book explores how to approach finance and decision-making. In addition, it offers customized wedding ideas based on each sign, specifies the best calendar dates for weddings, and explores which colors, flowers, precious gems and wedding favors suit the bride and groom.
- What was the process like?
Through trips to Hong Kong and China, we met with family members, discussed weddings and walked through dress shops and stationers. This journey of exploration and introspection helped us center the idea of weddings around the metaphor of feng shui – the ancient art of bringing the elements together in harmony. The best weddings are those that take care to make time, relationships and symbolic design work together, like balancing the elements of feng shui. When I was growing up, my mother would use Chinese astrology to counsel me on my friendships and romantic relationships. “She’s a Sheep, so be careful to not to be too harsh with criticism. He’s a Horse and is unlikely to settle down this young.” And, so on. Planning a wedding teaches a bride not only a lot about herself, but also about her friends and family. With the insights of Chinese astrology, a bride can manage the many challenges and stress of wedding planning by knowing how her animal adapts to different situations, not to mention that animal that rules her fiancé, bridesmaids, in-laws and anyone else she’ll be interacting with as a result of her wedding.
- What will brides learn from Wedding Feng Shui?
Each bride’s animal is a guiding force in Wedding Feng Shui, shedding light on how she manages relationships, stress, finances and even what kind of wedding dress she will gravitate toward. We share our interpretations of how the ruling color, season and element of each animal can inspire a signature-wedding flower or wedding favor as well. Wedding Feng Shui also shares a calendar planner of Eastern and Western activities leading up to the wedding, including activities like the traditional engagement gift exchange, wedding banquet and pre-wedding day hair combing ceremony – a little known family blessing for the bride and groom, which prays that their hair will grow gray together in a long marriage.
- You’ve worked with your family on past books. How were they involved with Wedding Feng Shui?
My sister, Michele, did the illustrations. My father, Kenneth, did the calligraphy, as he’s done for all of my mother’s books. And, of course, I worked on the concept of the book with my mother.
Press
Wedding Feng Shui
- Net-a-porte.com Magazine, February 2011
- Daily Kos, January 20, 2011
- AisleDash, January 11, 2011
Best-Loved Chinese Proverbs
- Chinese Daily News, 12/23/08
- Chinese World Journal, 12/23/08
- Slant Eye for the Round Eye, December 23, 2008
Handbook of Chinese Horoscopes
- Houston Chronicle, January 2011
- Cosmopolitan (Turkey), February 2010
- San Francisco Chronicle, February 2008
- New York Times, January 2006
- First for Women, February 2003
- Swarovski Magazine, January/February 2002
- Swarovski Magazine, July/August 2001
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