White Weddings

Read this before the walk down the altar:
This book blows the lid off of marriage. What is suppose to be the most important day in couples life has turn into a frenzy of consumer glutteny. I was astonshed at how diamonds an american symbol of love is a an oppresive force for the people who mine them. This book will make you cry.

Ingraham's critic is too narrow:
I read this book while studying both contemporary North American and cross-cultural weddings and marriages. Ingrahms book describes the "white wedding" a white upperclass affair as discriminatory and exclusive. She focuses on the institution of marriage being perpetuated by old white folk and major corporations. Unfortunatley she does not expand into the universality of marriage. I do not recomend this book. It is narrow and inconclusive.

Ranting instead of argument:
I began this book expecting to agree with much of it but was very disappointed. The author is ranting instead of calmly stating a realistic argument. If I understood correctly, she believes that the Wedding Industrial Complex (with some vague notions of society and government) CAUSES women to desire marriage, view themselves as princesses and then spend as much money as possible on the wedding. Although her argument is far-reaching her facts are extremely narrow- (she spends a chunk of the book repeating herself with magazine advertising statistics). If her point was to let us know that many business owners within the wedding industry do not operate out of good will but are in fact out to make as much money as possible, point taken. But I knew that before I read the book.

Highly Recommended!:
Chrys Ingraham, in her book, White Weddings, shows a behind-the-scenes look on the wedding industry. She effectively presents to the reader the ugly truths about the diamond industry, racism in wedding catalogs, homosexuality, and what happens after marriage. This excellent book opened up my eyes to what goes on behind such a supposedly "beautiful" occurrence in females' lives. This book not only opened up my eyes to the wedding industry, but to other matters as well, such as child labor, animal abuse, and sex trafficking. White Weddings was an inspiration to me to go out and see what I can do to help change the world in order to make it a better place. Fortunately, there are people like Chrys Ingraham, who want to make the world a peaceful and just place for everyone to live in. I also highly recommend her other books as well! From: a very inspired student

A vitally important work...:
In writing this book Chrys takes great risk in exposing "Weddings", especially "White Weddings" as an unneccessary rite of passage -- She brings to light in vivid raw detail why our society 'views' them as normal. This is not a 'nice' book, a 'feel good' book, one that at the end you say 'oh how wonderful' -- instead it is an important piece that everyone needs to read. "Writing this book has been a wrenching experience." In having the privilege of being one of Chrys's students, I've had the opportunity to see first hand -- what a process writing 'white weddings' was. There is heart in this book, sometimes one of steal, but nevertheless one with enduring spirit. In Ingraham's epilogue she writes, "What allows us to imagine possibilities? To continue to live shrouded in romance is to participate in and benefit from such atrocities. Confronting the reasons for which we need romance is to see what it conceals. Critiquing the heterosexual imaginary is one step in that direction." I've never looked at the wedding industry the same since reading this monumentally significant text. Never before has Ingraham's work been as important as now.