When Kate Middleton married Prince William in 2011, hundreds of
millions of viewers watched the Alexander McQueen-clad bride and
uniformed groom exchange vows before the Archbishop of Canterbury
in Westminster Abbey. The wedding followed a familiar formula:
ritual, vows, reception, and a white gown for the bride. Commonly
known as a white wedding, the formula is firmly ensconced in
popular culture, with movies like Father of the Bride or Bride
Wars, shows like Say Yes to the Dress and Bridezillas, and live
broadcast royal or reality-TV weddings garnering millions of
viewers each year. Despite being condemned by some critics as
"cookie-cutter" or conformist, the wedding has in fact
progressively allowed for social, cultural, and political
challenges to understandings of sex, gender, marriage, and
citizenship, thereby providing an ideal site for historical
inquiry. As Long as We Both Shall Love establishes that the
evolution of the American white wedding emerges from our nation's
proclivity towards privacy and the individual, as well as the
increasingly egalitarian relationships between men and women in the
decades following World War II. Blending cultural analysis of film,
fiction, advertising, and prescriptive literature with personal
views expressed in letters, diaries, essays, and oral histories,
author Karen M. Dunak engages ways in which the modern wedding
emblemizes a diverse and consumerist culture and aims to reveal an
ongoing debate about the power of peer culture, media, and the
marketplace in America. Rather than celebrating wedding traditions
as they "used to be" and critiquing contemporary celebrations for
their lavish leanings, this text provides a nuanced history of the
American wedding and its celebrants. Karen M. Dunak is Assistant
Professor of History at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio.
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