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A cure for wedding craziness
Wedding tale will help you keep your cool while planning the big day
Date published: 2/19/2006
By EMILY BATTLE When Hana Schank got engaged, she thought there was no way she'd get wrapped up in a world where cocktails match bridesmaids' dresses and young women prance around like fairy princesses in white gowns. But read Schank's new book, "A More Perfect Union," and you'll watch the New York Web designer fall head-on into the world of wedding planning. Schank morphs from a girl who walks into a bridal shop asking to see "not so bride-y" wedding gowns to a crazed monster who orders her brother to change softball T-shirts so they don't conflict with her wedding theme. Her first-person narrative of the year she spent planning her wedding will probably appeal most to women who are going through the process themselves. For this narrow group, it provides an alternative to the reams of wedding magazines, planning and etiquette books on the market, whose pages upon pages of "helpful" checklists are enough to stress anybody out. Reading Schank's memoir, brides-to-be can watch another woman go through the process with her sanity somewhat in tact, minus a few freak-outs. What makes this book more than just your average wedding-planning fare is the critique Schank makes of the American wedding industry as she encounters one wedding tradition after another. She addresses the materialism behind registries, and the way companies conspire to make you ask people to buy you that set of fancy china you'll never use. She calls the industry "one huge interconnected organism," and points out that it benefits greatly from scaring brides into obsessing over every little detail of their "perfect day." How else can you sell things like personalized chocolate bars and confetti made to match bridesmaids' dresses? Schank cites statistics that say the average American wedding now costs $22,000. Compare that to the annual median household income in Fredericksburg for 2002, which was $38,551. The book's description of the "fantasy butterfly theme" wedding Schank read about in a magazine made me wonder: Are engaged young women planning an event to celebrate the most serious commitment a man and a woman can make? Or are they planning the fairy-land third-grade birthday party their parents never gave them? At times, Schank's casual references to how smart and trendy she and her fiance are get a little old. I could have done without the repeated mentions that her fiance was reading "War and Peace" during the whole planning process. But overall, if you're planning a wedding, and you feel you need to be pulled back down to planet Earth after reading too many bridal magazines, pick up Schank's book. You'll find it's possible to appreciate the insanity of some of today's wedding rituals while still pulling off an event that can be the happiest day of your life. To reach EMILY BATTLE:
Read more stories about Fredericksburg Date published: 2/19/2006
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