One Perfect Day – The Selling of the American Wedding

One Perfect DayRebecca Mead

The short article last fall in Salon on Mead’s book was enough to get me interested in this book. Like being unable to stop staring at a car accident, Mead’s book is grotesquely fascinating. Laying out the modern mania to have the biggest, most extravagant and wedding possible, Americans are spending billions a year on these bloated bashes. Interviewing numerous wedding industry insiders, Mead lays out the insidious ways the wedding retailers lure in brides and grooms. The simple message- your marriage will fail unless your wedding is picture perfect. And perfection costs and costs and costs. From the wedding gowns stitched at $.40 an hour and sold for thousands, to made-up “traditions” and Disney Fairytale Princess Weddings (gag), Mead covers all the possibilities where a newly engaged couple can hemorrhage money. For anyone planning a wedding soon, read this little number before heading for the Bridal Barn. It will put a bit of iron in your spine for when you are told you HAVE to have a tiara or you fail as a woman. Yeeech.