Click here
for author and book cover photo downloads
PUBLICATION DATE: May 14, 2007 One Perfect Day By Rebecca Mead Advance Praise for Rebecca Mead’s One Perfect Day “Part investigative journalism, part social commentary, Mead’s wry insightful work offers an illuminating glimpse at the ugly underbelly of our Bridezilla culture.” "Rebecca Mead's insightful, entertaining book is a fine companion to Jessica Mitford's classic, The American Way of Death. It's been said that all great stories end in death or marriage—and as Mitford and Mead have shown us, either way, in the USA, somebody stands to make a buck." "That a subject as gauzy and gilded as the American wedding should be matched with a writer as clear-eyed and levelheaded as Rebecca Mead is a blessing for readers. Mead takes us into a world populated by Bridezillas, ministers-for-hire, videographers, and heirloom manufacturers, exposing the forces behind the consumerist mindset of the American bride and the entrepreneurial zeal of the wedding industry that both serves and exploits her." “Rebecca Mead journeys to the dark heart of the wedding industry, meets those consuming the fantasy and those profiting off it, and reports back with wit and subtlety on her findings. A harrowing and also frequently hilarious book. And the perfect wedding shower gift!” “Rebecca Mead has produced the definitive deconstruction of our crazy national wedding industry. One Perfect Day is a thoroughly reported exposé, sure, but it's also got heart and charm and tons of laugh-out-loud funny scenes.” In 2006, the typical American wedding cost over $27,852—the equivalent of seven-and-a-half months of an American household’s median annual income—and the U.S. wedding industry was worth a massive $161 billion to our economy. In an age when weddings no longer signify a transition from childhood to adulthood, a religious ritual, or an initiation into a sexual or domestic intimacy, it is left to the wedding industry to fill a considerable void. With the absence of tradition and religious authority, weddings have been transformed by the wedding industry into elaborate, extravagant money-making productions designed more to celebrate a couple’s individuality and express their unique style than to represent a traditional rite of passage. By tapping into the deepest hopes and fears of brides and grooms, what the wedding industry really sells is fantasy and promise, about the wedding day and, more importantly, the marriage that follows it. In ONE PERFECT DAY: The Selling of the American Wedding (The Penguin Press; May 14, 2007; $24.95), acclaimed New Yorker reporter Rebecca Mead examines what today’s wedding tells us about American culture at large and reveals how the ways in which we marry define who we are. From the wedding pavilion at Walt Disney World to the David’s Bridal dress factory in Xiamen, China, Mead travels across the U.S. and the world to talk to everyone from celebrity wedding planner Colin Cowie to wedding chapel owners on the Las Vegas strip. She ultimately reveals how the wedding industry spins new traditions and employs complex psychological marketing to corner valuable new customers. As Mead discovers, today’s Bridezilla is merely a product of the culture she’s surrounded by, and it’s the American wedding itself that is really out of control. With ONE PERFECT DAY, Mead uses the wedding as a lens to look at the intimate sphere of American life, showing that the way we marry reveals a great deal about our prevailing cultural expectations of love, hopes for marriage, and the role of family. A fascinating mix of social commentary and investigative reporting, ONE PERFECT DAY is entertaining and enlightening reading for anyone interested in how commerce and tradition come together in American culture. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ONE PERFECT DAY |