Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique

Rating:
Summary: A refreshing and challenging perspective!
Review: Even if you already have wedding plans, Geller makes you really think about the true reasons why we follow tradition and fall into the wedding trap, especially its extravagance. It's not an easy read, She defies our conventional views and shatters many of the fantasies of brides-to-be. While there are ideas of hers I don't agree with, I welcome the stimulating views of the author and recommend it to anyone, engaged or not. I think you should discuss this book with your partner/fiancee before making any further wedding plans, if you want an honest, deep look at what you are both getting into (and stating to society and to yourselves) through your wedding.

Rating:
Summary: Flawed, but vastly entertaining
Review: How times have changed. Feminism used to be about women making their own choices of what they wanted to do with their lives. Not anymore. Now it's about doing exactly what other, more prominent feminists tell us. Take the author of this book, Ms. Geller. She clearly loathes the whole institution of marriage. Therefore, in an argument that demonstrates a profound lack of logic, she argues that NO ONE should get married. Her evidence? Marriage was once heavily oppressive to women, and she gives hundreds of historical vignettes to support this. But she conveniently forgets that marriage has also existed in such remarkably egalitarian societies as ancient Egypt. However, the bulk of Ms. Geller's wrath is reserved for the modern wedding: her descriptions, dripping with bitterness, of the modern bride and groom, are priceless. I, too, question the motives of lavish, enormously expensive weddings, and sexist, tacky customs like throwing the garter and "giving away" the bride. But to say the whole idea of marriage is wrong because of a few customs that have become associated with it? That's going a bit far. The message I got from this book: Don't get married. Why? BECAUSE I SAID SO! And people are listening: just look at the reviews from new brides, claiming that if they had known they were joining such a sexist, musty old institution by daring to get married, they never would have gotten married at all. They were nothing but dupes, while Jaclyn Geller alone knows the true, righteous path. Talk about not being able to think for yourself! Entertaining as it is, this book wouldn't stop me from getting married (minus the being given away part), with a white gown and all.

Rating:
Summary: Some good points, with an underlying bitterness
Review: In _Here Comes the Bride_, Jaclyn Geller attacks modern "wedding culture", from staged proposals to thousand-dollar white gowns to the forced sexiness of the honeymoon, and ties modern traditions back to the marriage customs of old, in which women were a commodity sold between father and husband. She asks us, why do we still get married, when the institution is a relic of a sexist past? Why do the invitations still hint at the bride being "given" by her parents? Why do brides get so many gifts lavished upon them? Many good questions are raised. However, for several reasons, the book left a sour taste in my mouth.

First, Geller seems too close to her subject, perhaps a bit too personally bitter about it. Maybe she should have left out the personal anecdotes--she comes off sounding like she is just mad because her married friends are drifting away from her, and because nobody is throwing her a spinsterhood shower and giving her loot. There's a good point here. Married folks are much better off if they hang on to their old friends and don't retreat into a cocoon of coupledom. And maybe we'd all be better off if our relatives helped us get started in our first "place of our own", whether we entered it as single or married people. It's just that she sounds so shrill on these points that it makes her polemic sound more like a personal whine than a political statement.

Second, and this didn't jump out at me at first, but was pointed out in a wonderful review on Salon.com, Geller doesn't interview any brides! She never asks any engaged or married people why they're taking this step, whether they feel "oppressed", etc. (In my own experience, most people who marry have already been living with their lover for years, and get married to please the parents. They already consider this person the most important in their lives; the ceremony is just an antiquated formality. This puts the lie to Geller's thesis that marriage artificially creates closeness between husband and wife.) Her lack of personal stories makes the whole thing ring rather hollow, in retrospect. When Betty Friedan wrote _The Feminine Mystique_, she interviewed many housewives and quoted them to show their discontent.

And so, without any personal testimony on the subject of marriage, Geller is left analyzing pop culture. She lambasts self-help "get-a-man" manuals, bridal magazines that recommend lavish and expensive nuptials, and the fascination with celebrity wives, who are always asserting that they're "traditional" wives and mothers despite the fact that they have full-time nannies and probably never even *see* their kids unless they have a photo shoot together. All of this stuff, I agree, is obnoxious as heck! But what Geller never challenges is the assumption that these things reflect the true feelings of the average woman. Most women I know, married or otherwise, think big weddings are just displays of wealth, that "celebrity wife" stories are sexist and annoying, and that dating manuals are the best way to ruin your relationship by analyzing it into oblivion. In _Backlash_, Susan Faludi exposed the "nesting" culture of the eighties as something cooked up by the media, not an actual trend among regular people. What if this marriage culture is the same way? Geller never finds out, since she doesn't talk to the brides themselves, whether women getting married really feel the way she thinks they do.

This book is a remarkable expose' of the marriage culture, but really doesn't say a darn thing about actual marriage. So go ahead and toss those bridal magazines, but don't let this book sway you too much about whether to tie the knot at all. That's up to you. Geller says it's not OK to be married, but we never do find out why.

Rating:
Summary: I loved it
Review: It took me a couple of days to read this book and it was wonderful. My thoughts printed in a book. I got this book when my own wedding ceremony went badly and I decided on a vow renewal to make up for it. After announcing this I was treated as a pariah for attempting a ceremoney twice so I started reading up on what make people act the way they do concerning weddings. I have to admit this pretty well explained it

Rating:
Summary: what do you do when tragedy strikes?
Review: Life brings hard times to us all: tragedy, illness, and death. All this stuff about the meaninglessness of marriage is fine for independent spirits and those who are young and healthy. And of course many people in unhappy marriages are better off divorced. But for some people, I think the day will come when you will find that marriage is really a major comfort. If you live your life this independently, you have to be prepared to be alone during the really tough times. Independent people would have it no other way. But it is inexcusable in my opinion to try to make others who do not share your independent views feel "less than" or in the wrong, or guilty. This is "my way or the highway" thinking, if you ask me.

but that is not my only problem with the book. Here are a few other problems:

- the option to remain childfree inexcusably was ignored. Many married couples don't have kids and are happy that way. That is a way to be independent within the context of marriage, for those who desire it.

- the writing style is clunky at best

- the author's arguments encompassed too wide a variety of subjects. she claimed to be against marriage, when a lot of her arguments really focused on the commercialism of weddings in America. This book would have been better if she had picked a subject and stuck to it. Demonizing marriage because weddings are too commercial seems to me a lot like demonizing Christianity because Christmas has turned into an orgy of materialism.

This type of analysis in my opinion explains why the organized feminist movement will never catch on with most women, because it shows hostility to their choices.

Rating:
Summary: good critique, but too much of ax to grind
Review: Like Jaclyn Geller, I'm an unmarried woman with divorced parents. I am also probably around her age. While I agree with what she says about heterosexual marriage being too overhyped in corporate America and the media, and I also enjoy making fun of self-help books about husband-hunting, I think she takes all of it much too seriously!

I also don't subscribe to her belief that women "must stop repeating the absurd mantra 'it's okay to be single,' and adopt the more aggressive stance that 'it's not okay to be married (page 72).'" With that kind of attitude, she's no better than the radical conservatives who say just the opposite.

Although I'm no expert on this subject, I did find her research on the history of marriage throughout ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, and up to the last fifty years thorough and well-written. But I think one of the reviewers here made a very good point about her not interviewing any brides or married women. I would have liked to see her interview both women who were happy being married and women who weren't, and try to find out why the unhappy women got married in the first place.

Perhaps part of the answer - but not all of it - is that the happy wives got married because they really wanted to and the unhappy wives got married because they felt pressured to do it. But this way, Jaclyn Geller would have found that many women are not as vulnerable to marketing hype as she seems to believe.

Unlike pro- or anti-marriage extremists, I just see being married and being single in terms of apples and oranges, not bad vs. good. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Neither is better than the other.

If Geller had been more objective and acknowledged the positives of being married as well as the negatives, and that marriage works for a number of women and not others, she would have made a stronger case.

Rating:
Summary: Oh, please
Review: This book gets two stars rather than one because I do agree with Ms. Geller on one point: the wedding industry is way, way out of hand. As one of those who practice "couple fascism" (Geller's term for the institution of marriage -- more on that later!), I was astounded when I planned my wedding two years ago. There are a lot of people eager to make a lot of money off of your big day. It's easy to let the wedding industry suffocate you with a "it has to be a perfect Martha Stewart day" mentality, and Geller definitely points out that danger.

But that's all I liked about this book. In essence, it's a mean-spirited, narrow-minded diatribe against anyone who believes in marriage. Geller has absolutely no understanding of the true nature of marriage. She sees it as complicity in a capitalist/conservative/patriarchal system, as a smug attempt by couples to make singles feel bad about themselves, as an opportunity to show off by throwing a lavish party. Utterly missing from this book is any mention of the spirituality of marriage. My personal faith background teaches that the lifelong union of two people is a symbol of God's love for and commitment to humanity. Of course, she dismisses such beliefs with a sneer. Her loss.

She also observes that it's unnatural to make a lifelong comittment to someone when you aren't sure you'll really love him/her in future. Anyhow who has been married for any length of time knows that there's actually a freedom that comes with marriage vows: rather than throwing in the towel at the first sign of trouble, you are forced to work through problems together. It's times like these that really develop a relationship. This is why so many of us feel hope when we see an elderly couple walking down the street holding hands: we know, in our bones, that there's something beautiful about such longevity.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but not persuasive
Review: This book presents very interesting and provocative ideas, no doubt about it. I'm one of the happy giddy brides for whom Ms. Geller feels pity and slight contempt. I do enjoy the registry and all the gifts and attention I get. However, I am by no means a mindless self-absorbed creature that Ms. Geller's bride is. I consider myself and my fiance intellectuals. Our home is full of books we've read and discussed together. When we went to register at Macy's, we went together, and we saw many couples registering at the store. In fact, I haven't seen a single bride registering alone or with older women. That may have been Ms. Geller's experience at Bloomingdales, but it certainly wasn't mine. Our decision to get married was a mutual one. We chose the engagment ring and the wedding bands together, and we're planning our wedding together. It's true that in the past women were opressed by men, but modern law allows a woman to be as independent as she wants. It's up to women now to choose husbands that will love and cherish them for their independence.

As a side point, this book is very convoluted. If Ms. Geller wants to reach and persuade a wide audience, she should write more simply. The book won't be less interesting or academic for that. In fact, one of the reasons the marriage experts' books are so popular is that it's very easy to read them. Maybe Ms. Geller should look to them for style.

Rating:
Summary: Marriage presented as what it really is--an institution!
Review: Too many people are focused on having a wedding, not a marriage.

Gellar does a good job of analyzing why women are so anxious for the proposal, the ring, the registry, and the wedding itself when marriage has almost always been an institution where women come up short.

The book is good in analyzing how corporate America convinces brides that their wedding is not "right" unless it has all the bells and whistles, that your friends want to give you really expensive gifts so go crazy, how the social approval of the engaged and married gushes from everyone, including the unengaged and unmarried.

It also points out that only heterosexual monogamous relationships are celebrated as such. Other relationships -- including and perhaps especially friendships --- are deemed immature. Your "real life" begins with a wedding.

This book would have been great if the personal opinions had been taken out -- and if the editor had caught the typos, punctuation mistakes and misused words. The author makes a case that marriage itself should be abolished --- I say it should be there for people who want it. After all, there is no law that says you have to get married. Why should there be a law that says you can't? Or ones that decree who can and who can't i.e. only heterosexual couples?

The bias was too bitter for me to really get into this book, though I learned a lot from it.