Rating: 
Summary: The book White Weddings may not be pure
Review: I started out reading Chrys Ingraham's White Weddings with positive attitude. I am very interested with how the "white wedding came about". As she went on with the book there were a few problems that did not settle with me. Number one she often used the words wedding and marriage interchangeably. These words are two very different in definition and shouldn't be used in place of one another. The second thing that I found very hard to handle with her book is that she often would make broad generalizations that would have no factually information to support the idea. Finally when you read the epilogue she says, "writing this book has been a wrenching experience. Without realizing how fully I've been sutured to dominate heterosexual culture, I have frequently found myself engaged in a variety of internal struggles. Tears would be streaming down my face as I empathized with the characters in a movie while, at the same time, I would be taking notes critiquing the heterosexual imaginary." It seems to me that she wrote this book as a statement of how she feels and her opinions. This is great if it is therapy for her but should not be taken as fact or the answer for other people. The one educational part of the book was the section about how white weddings are capitalized. Sweatshops are terrible and it is a horrible feeling to know that people work in awful conditions to make your wedding dress. This is however should not be the main reason to critizes white weddings, but a reason to make changes. This book was a start of a good idea but in the end turned into someone else's opinion and platform. After reading this book no one should feel bad about the choices they make for their own weddings just because they don't fit with what Chrys Ingraham's believes. A person should make decisions based on what feels right for them.
Rating: 
Summary: I'd rather chew aluminum foil.....
Review: If I had not had to read this book for a class on Weddings, Marriage, and Family: A Feminist Perception, there is NO way I would have ever had bought this book. Ms. Ingraham wants half the world's population to not marry AT ALL. Yes, there are excellent issues she brings up regarding sweatshops, racism, corporate greed, etc., but to deny a little girl a dream of wanting to be a princess for a day is ridiculus! She uses weddings and marriage interchangeably which gives a wrong impression. This book was the last straw for my EVER wanting to take another feminist course in college.
Rating: 
Summary: A vitally important work...
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Great topic, poorly executed
Review: This book made some very good points and was a necessary exploration of the ingrained "normalcy" of marriage. I do feel, however, that the book lacked substance and repeated the same thing in a different way. This topic definitely deserves much greater attention and perhaps with more attention, we will get better and more thoughtful writers. I also was driven insane by the shape of the book. Besides making it physically difficult to read, it turned a supposed academic study into a novelty book
Rating:
Summary: About time!
Review: This book reads like "The American Way of Death" for the bouquet-tossing set. Media manipulation, gender expectations, and the pursuit of money above all else -- this book has it all.
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