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Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique Paperback – June 20, 2001

by Jaclyn Geller (Author)

2.6 21 ratings

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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.

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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Seal Press; First Edition (June 20, 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 232 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1568581939
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1568581934
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1.25 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #4,091,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,588 in Weddings (Books)
- #31,291 in Women's Studies (Books)
- #320,904 in Reference (Books)

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2.6 21 ratings

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2.6 out of 5

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Thinh Huynh

Terrible book

Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2023

Writer should quit writing

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2013

Verified Purchase

I mean if you are looking into buying this book its an easy read as books go. That's about it

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Catherine Skidmore

Nice to see my feelings explained in print

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2001

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I really enjoyed this book. Geller explores the history behind marriage traditions, and explores the pros and cons (admittedly, more cons than pros) of marriage in the 21st century. It's refreshing to see someone address what I see as truth in such a logical way. She is successful in presenting objective arguments throughout the book.
I do agree with the reviewer who said she would be happier if Geller wrote more about the alternative types of relationships that she found acceptable - but then, the book is about marriage. I found the book's style to be at times TOO argumentative, but I overlooked that in favor of the facts Geller presents.

4 people found this helpful

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D. Shanks

Great topic, horrible execution

Reviewed in the United States on March 17, 2009

I'm still reading this, and I doubt I'll be able to get through it. The writer lost me at the first sentence: "Like many born at the tail end of America's postwar baby boom I grew up in an affluent suburb." You have got to be kidding me. It seems she has never known the world outside of upper class comfort and sheltered academia, and it shines through in her book. Readers interested in studying weddings, where the traditions stem from and what urges us to continue them, the wedding industry and its effect on/representation of our society and its values and the psyche of the American bride will be bitterly disappointed by this book which at its best is thinly veiled militant feminism and at its worst a bunch of movie reviews. I'm serious; in the chapter entitled "Will you marry me? The Proposal Scene in the Contemporary Imagination" Geller gives 3-4 page long synopses of "Moonstruck" and "Honeymoon in Vegas"

Readers will glean a few interesting wedding trivia tidbits and the book does raise the important question of why erotic love is seen as one's raison d'etre in our society, but unfortunately this book doesn't live up to what it could be; Geller fails miserably in execution. For an example of a well-written critique on weddings (or at least the wedding industry) I'd recommend Rebecca Mead's "One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding." After reading Geller's crash and burn, you'll need some reassurance that there are some insightful, talented writers who can take on this intriguing and deserving topic.

2 people found this helpful

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Gretchen Laskas

But here in the real world...

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2001

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.

17 people found this helpful

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Kelly (Fantasy Literature)

Some good points, with an underlying bitterness

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2002

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.

13 people found this helpful

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