post number three. one perfect day perfectly describes my anxieties.

Disclaimer: I am not engaged. I am not planning to become engaged anytime soon. I am not pregnant, nor I do plan to become pregnant anytime soon.

So why would I spend precious hours of my summer break reading about weddings? Because One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding skeptically examines the American need for a big wedding with a big, white dress, oversized cakes, enormous flower bouquets, exaggerated wedding parties, gigantic receptions, and huge bills. Rebecca Mead, a journalist with The New Yorker, traveled from China to Gaitlinsburg, Tennessee, to explore the ironies and the lies of the American wedding industry.

If you want to find out more about the wedding industry, this book is a good place to start. While One Perfect Day deserves a place on the coffee table as a conversation piece, it shouldn't rest too long on the bookshelves. Again, like Freakonomics the ideas presented aren't really new; Mead has the professional prestige and the writing skills to package what everyone else has been saying around the water cooler: too much is expected from weddings these days.

Mead blames wedding planners, dress manufacturers, Walt Disney, and Caribbean resorts for raising expectations of the ideal Victorian romance. So much so, the author claims, that the wedding industry has perpetuated the idea of a "Bridezilla," the bride that will go to any length to produce the wedding of her dreams. While Mead backs up her argument with conversations and seminars from nationally-known wedding planners, she overlooks an important aspect of American culture: competitiveness. If my neighbor can do something well, then I can do it bigger and better! When this concept is combined with Victorian social expectations and aggressive advertising tactics, the Bridezilla phenomenon becomes inevitable.

I agree with Mead that a larger, theme-oriented, color-coordinated wedding does not guarantee a happy or lasting marriage. I agree that these things do guarantee a larger debt, thus causing marital discord. But I do not think the idea of perfection is only a top-down message. The masses, the everyday people, from the struggling boutique owner to great-grandma Ethel to youth minister preaching for abstinence, want to be participants. They probably didn't get to see your courtship. They may not understand why you co-habitated first. Or they may want to reward you for marrying so soon and not cohabitating. They may regret not having the time or the money for a real reception when they got married. They may actually enjoy organizing parties or baking multi-tiered cakes. They may need to pay off the debt left by their second spouse. Whatever the reason, brides have to juggle multiple messages from "it's your day to be a princess" and "well, it's really about joining your families" coming from both family members and ad executives.

Mead briefly mentions the gay rights movement, claiming if all couples faced such a legal battle, that the ceremony would be taken more seriously. She also briefly alludes to start-up planners, photographers, and caterers, who work weddings on weekends as a second job. While the industry promotes big-time names, and most start-ups hope to build up a reputation in order to quit their current job, I thought both topics should have received more attention. These up-and-coming grassroots movements are shifting how Americans approach weddings. More and more people I know are turning to friends and family to tape the wedding or cater the reception. At the same time, the right to marriage remains a hotly debated political topic. Again more and more people that I know are not just rushing into matrimony. (Britney Spears excluded)

Mead ends the book asking what is a wedding for? Again, in accordance with the heritage of independence, she leaves the reader with plenty of evidence and thought-provoking situations to decide for oneself. Mead cautions against making wedding decisions based upon creative advertising or a friend's recommendation, lest the experience be full of fluff. Yet,I picked up her book at the library for the similar reasons (the cover is cleverly designed), and ended up with the same result.
Good for a coffeetable conversation, but not to be read again and again.