Cinderella Dreams (eBook)

The Allure of the Lavish Wedding

Cele C. Otnes, Elizabeth Pleck (Autoren)

eBook Download: PDF

2003
399 Seiten
University of California Press (Verlag)
978-0-520-93750-5 (ISBN)

Infos

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.

Inhalt

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

1. Romance, Magic, Memory, and Perfection
2. The Rise of the Lavish Wedding
3. The Engagement Complex
4. The Rituals of Wedding Shopping
5. The Wedding Weekend
6. From the Cabin to Cancún
7. Hollywood Hosts a Wedding
8. The Lavish Wedding Goes Global
9. Variations on a Theme
10. The Allure of the Lavish Wedding

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 17.10.2003
• Reihe/Serie: Life Passages
• Reihe/Serie: Life Passages
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Vor- und Frühgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie ► Volkskunde
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Pädagogik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
• Schlagworte: American Culture • Beauty • bridal • bridal industry • Cinderella • Consumer Culture • consumption • cultural rituals • diamond rings • discussion books • Historical • historical perspective • lavish weddings • Love • love and marriage • marriage • morality and virtue • Nonfiction • princesses • psychological framework • relationships • Romance • romantic love • Social Relationships • wedding culture • wedding gowns • weddings • wedding stereotypes • wedding traditions • white weddings
• ISBN-10: 0-520-93750-3 / 0520937503
• ISBN-13: 978-0-520-93750-5 / 9780520937505