Rebecca Mead

I had been so excited to read this book when it came out – the wedding industry is one of those things that simultaneously repels and fascinates me. For the most part this book did not disappoint, even though much of the information presented was not, by itself, revelatory. This is one of those books that kind of makes what you already sensed really, really clear - like you intuitively KNOW that the wedding industry markets the hell out of itself and tries to get people to spend ridiculous show more amounts of money on wedding-related things by appealing simultaneously to the desire to be "traditional" and the desire to be "unique" - but you don't quite realize the extent of it until you read a book like this that looks at the industry in its totality.

Mead covers the whole gamut of wedding-related things – from bridal magazines to engagement rings to the ceremonies themselves to honeymoons, at every point showing how these industries view brides-to-be as unwitting cash cows, waiting to be tapped. She interviews a huge number of people participating in every aspect of this industry, incorporating their perspectives on how what they do is essential to the creation of that “one perfect day.” For the most part, Mead reserves her criticism for the industry, not its consumers – this is not meant to be a litany of Bridezilla tales. When she talks about real brides (and grooms), she is actually quite sympathetic, empathizing with their desire to have a wedding that is unique, special, memorable, and connected to some larger tradition, even if the weddings they have and the lives they lead are in no way “traditional.”

Her examination of the manufacture of “tradition”, which is a theme that runs throughout the book, was particularly interesting. She calls it “traditionalesque” – meaning that the practice in question is meant to hearken back to a simpler, more romantic time, but is in fact something that is newly created by the couple in question, generally with the “assistance” of the wedding industry. Mead argues that because most people getting married now are sort of unmoored from actual traditions, the traditionalesque functions to make them feel that their wedding and their marriage stands on something that is bigger than themselves. This is coupled with a desire to always be “unique” and have a wedding that reflects a couple’s personality – no one wants to have their wedding compared unfavorably to another couple’s.

My only real quibble with the book is that the portion near the end about gay marriage felt really cursory and tacked on – like it wasn’t enough to make a point about the wedding industry and American consumerism, she also had to make a moral point about the larger issue of marriage. I didn’t think it was necessary and frankly, I thought it came off a little cheesy and forced.

I also wished she might have delved a little more into the economics – which I know sounds funny, given that the book is full of figures and comparisons and price tags. But she mentions several times in passing the staggering cost of today’s weddings and the trend of banks encouraging couples and families to take out home loans in order to finance a fantastic wedding that is otherwise beyond them. I would have liked to have seen a few more specific examples of this – maybe a pseudonymous interview with someone who had spent more than they could afford and felt like it wasn’t worth it. Overwhelmingly, despite the criticism of the wedding industry, it didn’t seem like Mead talked to anyone who wished they had done a smaller, less crazy wedding, even though some brides-to-be expressed exhaustion and annoyance with the planning process. The real brides-to-be that she interviewed KNEW they were being marked to and knew they were being seen as “cash cows”, but there was no one interviewed who had decided to opt out of that whole thing. Mead’s own story contained a little of that, as she described her own wedding at the very end, but I would have liked to see another alternative to participating in the crazy system she describes.

It was funny that during my reading of this book, I had two simultaneous and totally contradictory responses – the first was (as expected) that I became even more cynical and irritated by the whole big fancy wedding thing, the second (totally unexpected!) was that I found myself going “I want a big fancy wedding because if I don’t have one I will regret it forever.” Very strange…. I also discovered what kind of ring two months salary will buy me, and discovered, after viewing a number of diamond rings online, that diamonds are pretty boring-looking. show less

Our group at Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum did a slow read together of George Eliot's Middlemarch this past year. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience as we made our way through and discussed Dorothea, Lydgate, Causaubon, Mary, Rosamunde, and their lives. We touched on so many themes--marriage, money, progress, religion, etc. Find a group read like this and I guarantee the book will stay with you.

What a delight, then, to pick up My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead. Mead weaves Eliot's show more biography, and her correspondence along with major themes in Middlemarch and other works. Mead travels to the locations important to Eliot and then draws in a number of the same themes we discussed. This book was made all the richer having done the slow read. How for instance Eliot turned the standard novel on its head by starting the novel with a marriage instead of ending it ala Austen. She addresses Woolf's famous assessment that it is "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people."

I especially enjoyed the glimpses into Eliot's domestic relationship with George Lewes and his children and how the people around her may have served as inspiration for various characters. Mead also touches on Eliot's writing process and obstacles (migraines, toothaches, and family illnesses). But also how Lewes and Eliot had what looks like a modern happy working relationship. Like Eliot, I found a true partner late in life and I certainly could relate to Mead's line, "To find a partner as accepting and generous as Lewes is a great and unexpected gift."

On the whole, I found this book enriched my Middlemarch experience, and as I am now working my way back through all of Eliot's works. show less

I'm giving the book four stars for three reasons, the first being that without question [Middlemarch] means the world to Mead and second because the biographical side of the book, about George Eliot, is meticulously researched and, in the way of these more casual biographical excursions, the informality allows for a special kind of revelation. I like pilgrimages, for example, even when the place has become unrecognizable, there is a thrill just knowing that the person you are researching show more walked about on this same bit of real estate that you stand on. All the bits about George Eliot are good, and some are excellent. Also the insights into [Middlemarch] itself were solid, although nothing that wowed me, such as: "This notion--that we each have our own center of gravity but must come to discover that others weigh the world differetly than we do--is one that is constantly repeated in the book. The necessity of growing out of such self-centeredness is the theme of the book." Of particular interest was the odd section on Eliot's fawning admirer, Alexander Main who convinced her to let him epigrammize (not a real word, I know) her book. This felt like the only time that Mead lifted the veil a little on her own inner life. Even if Main's admiration verged on creepy, it was genuine, and he was just an ordinary person, after all, struggling to give his life shape and meaning and Eliot was his benevolent anchor. Mead admits she feels enough the same way about Eliot: adoring and hopelessly admiring of her, that, however reluctantly, she can identify with Main's obsessiveness. But it is the ONLY time Mead offers a real, vulnerable part of herself. I didn't come away with a sense of Mead herself. She stays very much on the periphery, revealing very little. She tells us how much Eliot has meant to her inner life, and yes, she talks about how a love affair entered later in life being deeper and richer and so on--but she implies rather than illustrates her own resonance. Yes, step-children, three boys in both cases, that much is parallel. But she says almost nothing about her relationship with those boys compared to the pages and pages on Eliot. Here and there too, I felt the connections Mead was drawing were forced. All too often the things she does mention, being a student at Oxford or coyly not mentioning the name of "the magazine" where she works in NY, feel like "markers" of being a "somebody" and were, frankly, very annoying and off-putting. I'm not looking for lurid confessions, just . . . something more than what was offered. She could have gone deeper while discussing the "landscape of childhood" and what it means both in [Middlemarch] and in Eliot's life, and briefly, her own. Eliot spent a little time in Weymouth and Mead felt this gave her permission, I guess?, to write a little about the Weymouth of her own childhood, although, again, it was a bit too reserved and didn't take me anywhere, considering ". . . some part of our character grows from the brilliant, scintillating, intense capacity of emotions that a child experiences." There are some little gems from her research, Eliot calling her work, 'the home epic', and this quote supposedly Eliot to a visitor about giving advice to the young: "They will not take it. There must be the actual friction of life, the individual contact with sorrow, to discipline the character." That gem might be worth the whole book!
I've wavered between 3 1/2 and 4 stars but I am going for the 4 as the Eliot parts redeem the lackluster Mead parts. And who knows, maybe Mead tried and found her own life was even more dull and unremarkable than Main's or any of our own lives? She does seem to hint at that here and there. But I don't quite buy that, it's hard to dig, and dangerous too. Maybe that is what the oddly moving chapter on Main was trying to say? **** show less

Part investigative journalism and part sociology thesis, this book looks into the motivations and effects of Bridezilla culture and the $160 billion American wedding industry. Mead examines not-so-authentic ideas of tradition, traces wedding dresses to factories in China, considers whether elopement is an escape from the bridal industry, and offers her own atypical wedding as an example of NOT going over the top. In a society that wants to buy fantasy, Mead suggests that the newly engaged show more stop and consider what a wedding is really for--before they are suckered into matching Cinderella and Prince toasting flutes. show less