Rating:  Summary: not for all brides (or wives) Review: I was recently given this book as a gift at a wedding shower. As a bride-to-be I thought it might be fun to take a spin on the humorous side of post-wedding life, i.e. what happens after the honeymoon is over. Jenny Lee claims that no one ever told her what life was like after the wedding and so she set out to write a book to right the wrong she felt. "I Do. I Did. Now What?!" is at times funny; at other times the reader feels like the eavesdropper of a dirty-laundry airing session.Lee sets out by telling the history of her relationship with her husband and fills her memoirs with both humorous and bland anecdotes. Several of these are ones that readers can relate to - coping with the adjustments of living with another person and their not-so-neat habits. And the book does have several chuckle moments. Yet perhaps because I've never been the stereotypical girl who loves to shop and loves shoes above all else, I found Lee's "humor" sometimes ingratiating. And that also means that this book isn't a "one size fits all"; not all women are like what is portrayed in Lee's writing. "I Do. I Did. Now What?!" is a quick, sometimes witty read, something like a memoir in the chick-lit genre. Yet in spite of her dedication to her husband, I found myself feeling sorry for him sometimes. In several of her anecdotes she mentions how her husband takes her and all that she does for him for granted. I doubt she realizes that her husband must also be a saint in order to put up with some of her habits and idiosyncracies that grated on my nerves just reading about them. There's no new, big stand-out advice that hasn't been said at one time or another; yet Jenny Lee sometimes manages to make the old somewhat entertaining.
Rating:  Summary: Can't stop laughing Review: Jenny Lee is either living my life or watching me, because this book is so perfect and funny. I keep reading excerpts to my husband because they are almost exact replicas of situations the two of us have had. This book to a quick and hilarious read. Can't wait for more from Jenny Lee.
Rating:  Summary: Funniest Read I've Had In A Long Time! Review: Jenny Lee kept me grinning from ear to ear for days after I finished her book. The anecdotes on her newlywed adventures are downright hilarious. Even though I'm always a bridesmaid, I think this would be a great gift for jittery brides-to-be.
Rating:  Summary: My big fattening Greekorean wedding and its aftermath Review: Jenny Lee rode the English major book publishing wagon, then jumped into the internet marketing bubble. And as that bubble was deflating, she got hitched, and took good notes on her life as a newlywed. The results are hilarious. In seven chapters (maybe a seven year itch sequel?), each titled for one of the marriage clauses ("for richer or poorer"; "in sickness and health"), Lee recounts the mostly petty, irrational (a.k.a. serious) but funny incidents that make up couplehood. The book opens as the Vera Wang wedding dress comes off and the $500 silk negligee stays on for a whopping span of 3 minutes. After 5 years of dating him and contemplating marriage, kids, and even real estate(!), they're hitched. Now what? A lot of laughing on the reader's part. Her physician husband is mostly oblivious to the things that set her off and the domestic duties she performs. She rents a parking garage for their car, yet unbeknownst to her, he spends 30-90 minutes sometimes circling the block like a vulture, waiting for an on-street space to open. Her husband thinks nothing of circling the block, but can't understand why she would want to go one hour out of the way to purchase a special lipstick. She freaks that he uses gobs of her extremely expensive shampoo, not realizing its cost; but maybe he has a sweet reason for using it. There are fights over Scrabble, orange soda, name changes (change? Hyphen? Slash?) and "what's for dinner?", but the love remains. I wouldn't be surprised to see some scriptwriters lifting incidents from this book for their sitcoms. Essentially this is a very funny owners manual that should be read by all newlyweds and their parents.
Rating:  Summary: So True Review: Jenny's account of the first two years of marriage cannot be more accurate. I think I may have married her husband's clone, because he would always leave a dirty knife on the kitchen counter I had just wiped down a million times, the bathroom looking like a hurricane just happened to pass through, and dirty glasses everywhere from under the bed to one of my sock drawers. This book had me laughing out loud and looking back on those first two years of marriage with amusement. Definitely a good read, whether you're married, engaged, dating, single, or simply desperate.
Rating:  Summary: I Do. I Did. Now What?! Life After the Wedding Dress Review: Ms. Lee may be bright and independent, but there's certainly no evidence of that here -- the voice sounds like it came from a writer of teen feminine product commercials, and the subject matter is mind-numbing. Sharing shampoo? Not maxing out the credit card with shoe shopping trips? Having disagreements about housework? If these are things that never occurred to Ms. Lee before marriage, then perhaps she shouldn't have gotten married in the first place. Her complaints and concerns sound petty, spoiled, and whiny, and give readers the sense that they're reading about an 18-year old sorority brat instead of a real, live grown-up woman in the real live world with a (gasp!!) real, live husband. I certainly hope that the perspective of this book isn't representative of many women's, because people who think like this as they enter a marriage aren't destined to stay married for long. It would behoove Ms. Lee to work on her sentence construction and use it to present an original idea or two, while leaving the grief over lost fairy tales to the high school cheerleading team. Any bride-to-be who has an ounce of self-respect should steer clear of this fluff.
Rating:  Summary: Hilarious and touching - a delight to read Review: My fiancee and I read this together, it's witty and full of sage advice. We both enjoyed reading it, even though Lee is definitely a girly girl. Ms. Lee provides valuable insight that is otherwise unavailable to soon to be wedded couples (and newly weds for that matter).
Rating:  Summary: Not funny, not helpful Review: My wife picked this up at a garage sale. Even though the seller said she didn't like it, my wife thought it might be funny. She put it down after a few chapters, saying it was stupid. I took a look at it, thinking I might learn something about the female mind. I don't know about the dude that said he liked it, but I can't name one guy who'd enjoy this book. There's just not a lot there. I disagree with the reviewer from L.A. who keeps writing glowing reviews about it. The book wasn't funny and it wasn't helpful - at least for us, and we got married last year.
Rating:  Summary: Read if you have a sense of humor, if not, you should skip! Review: Okay, so I'm not going to try to get into a piss match here with another reviewer as that would not be "polite" --but I would like to say that to have my review called into question as "suspicious" is a little annoying to me (see Chicago reviewer) the article I read was in Daily Variety on a Tuesday in January... go find it. What I'm suspicious of is whether or not certain reviewers even have a sense of humor-- this book is hilarious and those who find her whiney and self-centered are right! Because she is, but hey, aren't we all? Name me one woman who doesn't obsess about her weight. What makes this book so fresh is the fact that she's at least brutally honest about the things that she thinks about, her fears, her terror of maybe she's not cut out to be a wife... I think some people are missing the boat when it comes to the point of the book... which is a comedic look at the mundane details of a new married life, or perhaps as it's more obvious, some people are just missing a sense of humor. This book isn't found in the self-help section... so those w/out the ability to laugh at others and themselves should go find something else to read.
Rating:  Summary: Not self-help per se Review: Okay, this is not a self-help book per se. I think some of my fellow reviewers have missed the mark. Lee doesn't set out to give us deep insight into what makes a marriage work. This book is about making us laugh. And Lee succeeds in spades. However, there is truth behind the laughs and that's where those of you looking for self-help here can find it. At its heart, this book stands for the proposition that marriage is a difficult undertaking of finding boundaries and making adjustments. However, laughter can make that process easier. Married people, keep your sense of humor or develop one quickly. That's the gem of self-help to be distilled from Lee's book.
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