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"Elizabeth Pleck and Cele Otnes pair their distinct talents to offer us a lavish display of the lavish wedding. In fascinating and often surprising detail--across time and place--they make sense of why we have clung to and, in fact, have radically embellished this vestige of Victorian culture."
Product Description
The fabulous gown, the multitiered cake, abundant flowers, attendants and guests in their finery. The white wedding does more than mark a life passage. It marries two of the most sacred tenets of American culture - romantic love and excessive consumption. For anyone who has ever wondered about the meanings behind a white dress, a diamond ring, rice, and traditions such as cake cutting, bouquet tossing, and honeymooning, this book offers an entertaining and enlightening look at the historical, social, and psychological strains that come together to make the lavish wedding the most important cultural ritual in contemporary consumer culture. With an emphasis on North American society, Cele C. Otnes and Elizabeth H. Pleck show how the elaborate wedding means far more than a mere triumph for the bridal industry. Through interviews, media accounts, and wide-ranging research and analysis, they expose the wedding's reflection - or reproduction - of fundamental aspects of popular consumer culture: its link with romantic love, its promise of magical transformation, its engendering of memories, and its legitimization of consumption as an expression of perfection. As meaningful as any prospective bride might wish, the lavish wedding emerges here as a lens that at once reveals, magnifies, and reveres some of the dearest wishes and darkest impulses at the heart of our culture.
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First Sentence
On June 22, 2001, millions of viewers watched Good Morning America as retired firefighter and cancer survivor Lorenzo Abundiz married Peggy Beeuwsaert in the middle of New York City's Times Square. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
On June 22, 2001, millions of viewers watched Good Morning America as retired firefighter and cancer survivor Lorenzo Abundiz married Peggy Beeuwsaert in the middle of New York City's Times Square. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a must for all those who want to understand why people choose to get married. There are great facts, figures and pictures that back up the claims made in the book.
The influence of film on marriage traditions was particulary interesting and highlights messages the film industry sets out to portray.
This book also deals with the issue of diverse weddings and bi-cultural weddings.
There is a lack of studies in the field of marriage, and Otnes and Pleck set about anwering and concluding why people choose to shun or embrace the lavish wedding.
The influence of film on marriage traditions was particulary interesting and highlights messages the film industry sets out to portray.
This book also deals with the issue of diverse weddings and bi-cultural weddings.
There is a lack of studies in the field of marriage, and Otnes and Pleck set about anwering and concluding why people choose to shun or embrace the lavish wedding.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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1 review
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Fascinating and entertaining, scholarly but never dull
7 Jan 2007
Format:Paperback
Scholarly but never dull, this fascinating chronicle of the changes in the American wedding over the past century reveals the extent to which so many of our wedding "traditions" are actually fairly recent inventions -- lifted straight from the movies, or foisted upon us by the many industries that profit from the lavish wedding. Though the authors approach their task as researchers and seem to have no particular ax to grind, readers who feel that the opulence of the American wedding has spiraled out of control will likely find plenty of support here for making a change.
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