The Fields have been featured on TODAY SHOW, OPRAH and DATELINE NBC.

Thanks Denise and Alan for accepting our invitation to be interviewed.

Norm:

Please tell our readers how you started writing about weddings and why did you want to write about this subject matter?

Denise and Alan:

We began writing in 1989 as we were planning our own wedding; yep, we are still married today. As two starving college students in Austin, Texas, we quickly realized planning a wedding was a darn expensive endeavour. We wanted to know how to save money but still have a nice wedding without getting ripped off. We heard horror stories from our friends and decided world needed a consumer's guide to tying knot. Bridal Bargains, our first wedding book, was result of that effort it was first published in 1990 and now is in its 7th edition, with 500,000 copies sold. Our latest book, Bridal Passport wedding planner (the Dollars & Sense Guide to Planning a Wedding) was published in December 2004.

Norm:

What in your opinion makes for a wonderful and unique wedding experience, where everyone would be left with fond memories? As a follow up, do you have to spend a great deal of money to have such a memorable experience?

Denise and Alan:

Think about best weddings you have ever attended and what made them so memorable? Chances are it was a FUN event first and foremost. That might have been a combination of several factors, a unique setting, a great band, and so on. Focus on those factors when planning your own wedding. Conversely, realize there are many parts of a wedding that are expensive, but contribute little to fun aspect of a wedding flowers, for example.

No, you don't have to go bankrupt to plan a memorable wedding! Yes, you may have to make a series of trade-offs to pull it off, but you can save and still have a fantastic wedding. Example: instead of a fancy downtown hotel, you can rent a historic home that lets you bring in your own caterer. That enables you to hold total cost down, way under what hotel would charge. The key: you save money in ways your guests don't see. A bottle of house wine from a hotel might be $50; that same bottle from a wholesale club like Sam's or Costco would run $10. Do you guests know difference? No.

A destination wedding is another great way to save and you have a special setting for your wedding, without all cost of a domestic affair.

Norm:

What tips would you have for destination brides who plan to bring along a wedding party? It's a growing trend for destination weddings to now have a fairly sizeable wedding party sometimes about 50, so it would be great to get their tips on group airline discounts, hotel blocks.

Denise and Alan:

Good news: travel biz has awakened to destination-wedding trend. As a result, many airlines and resorts have special discount packages for those planning a wedding. Airlines, for example, are courting destination weddings with special group discounts. Many resorts now have on-staff wedding planners to ease planning; and special discount rates for blocks of rooms.

The best advice: work with airlines group booking department and/or resort's meeting planners. And always double check to make sure any special rate you get is really a deal and simply price same stay or fare on a travel web site. Most travel companies honestly offer groups a better deal than regular travelers; but it always makes sense to double check.

Norm:

Could you tell us something about advantages and disadvantages pertaining to different unique venue weddings as: beach, park, museum, mountain ski lodge, tent, train, yacht, and other sometimes off- the- wall sites? (Perhaps you can add a few of your own.)

Denise and Alan:

Name a destination and you can get married there---ski buffs can take their vows on a mountain top in Telluride, beach fans on white sands of Aruba and so on. The key advantage of a destination wedding: you are already in place where you will honeymoon. That cuts down on travel, as you just travel once to both wedding and honeymoon.

This activity, which is strictly speaking a kid science experiment, can be used in any party as entertainment. Even better: have a "Mad Chemist" theme and use this idea as one of kid experiments.

Fill a plate or saucer with milk and put in a few drops of food coloring on top of milk in different spots. The smaller drops better.

Use a spoon to pour a small amount of dishwashing liquid into milk. Pouring it into center works best.

Now watch colors dance and explode.