Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique [Paperback]

Jaclyn Geller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 20, 2001

In Here Comes the Bride, Jaclyn Geller exposes the social forces that shape how people feel about weddings, calling into question some of the deepest-held beliefs about this tradition. Divided into three sections, the book begins with how-to-get-your-man manuals and ends with the newlywed year. First there’s “Courtship and the Marriage Quest.” Geller looks at the absurd nature of proposals, the inane practice of engagement and gift-giving, and the bizarre rules governing the wedding dress. In part two, “The Big Day,” she deals with the specifics of the wedding itself. There are place cards and table settings, rigid photo ops, vows, toasts, garter belts, and daddy dances. What do these highly scripted procedures say about this most treasured ritual? Finally, the author explores some of marriage’s deeper implications in “Living in the Plural”: the strangely isolating honeymoon and the establishment of marital identity that begins with a simple thank-you note.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Tempt a woman with a truckload of wedding gifts and social approbation, says Geller, and she's more than happy to forget that matrimony is the last institution she should want to join, given its patriarchal history. A single woman in her 30s working on her Ph.D. in English at New York University, Geller examines modern marriage in a lively, accessible book that's one part academic analysis and three parts rant. Fleeing a stultifying upper-class suburb, she found college so stimulating that she refused to swap cerebral pursuits for a conventional married life. As friend after friend rushed down the aisle, however, she began to examine why marriage is so revered that it automatically trumps a close, platonic friendship; the excitement of multiple sexual relationships; or a solitary, contemplative existence. Determined to find the answer, Geller pores over husband-hunting manuals and wedding guidebooks, and even poses as a bride at Bloomingdale's bridal registry, where the crystal pitchers, silver fondue dishes and Limoges soup tureens, she confesses, have tremendous allure. Women opt for house and husband, she suggests, because they've been subjected to a centuries-long, pro-marriage marketing campaign. Other lifestyles generate no comparable media blitz "no images of a woman burrowing at home with a book and a glass of wine, or sitting up with a friend talking." While Geller's argument is refreshing and timely in an age of wedding hype, some readers may wish that she spent more time exploring the pleasures and benefits of uncommon lifestyles and less telling readers why marriage is to be avoided at all costs.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In contrast to Marcia Seligson's lighthearted The Eternal Bliss Machine: America's Way of Wedding (1973), this work by Geller (English, New York Univ.) is a lengthy critique of both weddings and the institution of marriage. Using histories of women, histories of marriage, and popular culture sources, she builds her case that marriage institutionalizes gender inequality and that the "big white wedding," with all its customs and extravagance, is a public demonstration of that inequality and the popular notion that marriage is a woman's destiny. Geller proposes, but does not extensively elaborate on, a coming-of-age rite that would celebrate the individuality and independence of each woman, whether or not she had a male partner. Geller's somewhat dour book makes good points but does not completely persuade. Appropriate for public libraries and women's studies collections. Patricia A. Beaber, Coll. of New Jersey, Ewing
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: Seal Press; First Edition edition (June 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568581939
• ISBN-13: 978-1568581934
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #134,804 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #92 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Weddings > Planning

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating--with flaws, but fascinating July 11, 2001

By M

Format:Paperback

As a folklorist and someone involved in alternative relationships, I looked with great interest upon this book, espescially since I am very interested in the current scholarly examination of the primarily het-white-wealthy wedding (and the current Third Wave feminism's dubious obsession with weddings.) Overall, the book provided a great deal of food for thought, espescially upon examination of the current wedding narrative that each (het/white/wealthy) couple fulfills; ie, that they are kooky and delightful, which makes their marriage even more darling--a story that is played to by manufacturers, retailers and the wedding industry.I also admire how Geller elegantly deconstructs the overstuffed, high-priced personalized wedding and the process of creating a het-white-patriarchal fantasia white wedding. However, Geller slips into a very vitriolic, classist tone, espescially when describing lower-class women and weddings, who I would think would be the primary dupes of the wedding frenzy. This really turns an innovative and important work into something that is at times very difficult to read, even from a sympathetic audience member. Likewise, as a former graduate student, I find her graduate school pastorale to ring just as false as wedding magazine promises of castles, fairytales and buttercream icing.I was also disturbed that there seemed to be no room in reexamining weddings for examining any type of romantic relationship. I would have also liked to see what happens when groups that do not normally get the white wedding veneer of privilige appropriate the traditions and tweak the proverbial nose of the white wedding.(It's this anger and classism that keeps me from giving the book 5 stars; the ideas are strong enough for 5, but the execution only leaves it at 3) Still, I suppose the great success of this book is that its ideas do linger and provide interesting context and thought long after the book is closed. I do, however, wish that Geller had toned down her anger--it detracts from a book that with a bit more editing would have been a masterpiece on par with Jessica Mitford's _The American Way of Death_ and severely limits the audience to an academic one when the ideas really should be further disseminated. My hope is that Geller keeps writing and is able to balance her ideas and her style and keeps writing--perhaps her next book will be able to build on this foundation.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Some good points, with an underlying bitterness April 18, 2002

By Kelly (Fantasy Literature) TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

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.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars But here in the real world... July 10, 2001

By Gretchen Laskas

Format:Paperback

While I found the book to be witty, and at times insightful, I couldn't quite escape the notion that these were not the women that I knew. Women who register (if they do, in fact, register) at the local "Bed Bath and Beyond" alone (or with husband-to-be) with a scanner and a tablet of paper. Women who buy dresses from catalogues or at the same store where they bought their prom dresses years ago. Women, in other words, who live in the middle and lower classes. Women who have worked for years, living on their own terms. Women who are paying their own way -- including for their own weddings.

More and more women (and men) that I know have found that the expectations (often from guests) as to what is a "proper" wedding have made formal wedding harder to have, impossible to enjoy. More and more have chosen small family affairs, or less showy ceremonies and receptions because the difference between spending 5 thousand on a wedding and using that money to put down on a house (you can still buy a house with a 5K downpayment in most of the country) is just too stark.

Again, the social history was interesting, but I do wish we could, as feminists, realize that just because we can (and always seem to) make sweeping generalizations, doesn't mean any of us speak for all women.