Jaclyn Geller
Here Comes the Bride
Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique

A diamond ring, a white dress, princess for a day — every girl's dream, right?

Just in time for the wedding bells of June, Here Comes the Bride: Women, Weddings, and the Marriage Mystique critically examines the modern wedding. The first book of its kind, Geller exposes the social forces that shape how we feel about weddings, and calls some of our deepest beliefs about this tradition into question. From the quest for marriage to the institutionalized eroticism of the honeymoon, Geller explores some of marriage's deeper implications.

First there's courtship, then the ridiculous nature of proposals with men on bended knee, the inane practice of engagement and gift giving, and of course the bizarre rules governing the wedding dress. And what of "the big day" itself — from place cards and table settings to rigid photo ops, vows, toasts, garter belts, and daddy dances. What do these highly scripted procedures really say about this most coveted of ceremonies?

Geller looks at the history of Western weddings and marches straight through magazines and books that teach women how to nab their men, television series about marriage-hungry single women, cinematic comedies that end with the fantasy of happily ever after, honeymoon advertisements that promise erotic bliss, and magazine accounts that promote the success of celebrity coupledom.

Geller's no-holds-barred look at this most sacred of cows is both funny and enlightening. Writing against the historical backdrop of marriage as a property arrangement, Geller argues that cultural sanctions, rather than any "natural" coupling instinct, explain matrimony's continuing allure.

Jaclyn Geller is pursuing a Ph.D. in English Literature at New York University, where she teaches writing and literature. Excerpts from the book appeared in On the Issues and Salmagundi. Geller lives in Brooklyn, New York.