I spent Memorial Day weekend in sweet home Carolina, for my brother’s wedding (finally!), after which I drive all over town to "sign stock."  Authors call these "drive bys."  Meaning, we drive by a bookstore and sign any books that they happen to have in stock.  My husband went with me for one and said, "Don't they ask for ID for that kind of thing?" which struck me as kind of funny.  You know, someone impersonating me???  Hmmmm....not that I would mind.  People like to buy autographed copies as gifts, so signed books make everyone happy.  So if anybody out there wants to go sign some books in my stead, I say, go for it!  I'm signing them, "Good luck, honey!" then my name.

On another note, I'll mention that it's very exciting to discover that a bookstore in Ventura, California, had eight copies of my book, whereas a major chain in Charlotte, NC (my hometown), only had 2.  Or none, in other cases…

Did I say that my book is called The Southern Girl's Guide?  As in, the South?  Yep.  Well.

In the meantime, lemme tell you about an author I met who has written a fabulously engaging book (if you’ll pardon the pun).  Hana Schank is an adorable gal who sat next to me (bless her heart) at the Southern Kentucky Book Festival a few weeks ago, where 100 or so authors spent the day trying to combat illiteracy by trying to persuade people to buy our books.  Her book is called A More Perfect Union: How I Survived the Happiest Day of My Life, and it's a wonderful examination of the bridal industry and its seductive power.

In this memoir, which takes place during the year between Hana's engagement and her wedding day, she describes the seemingly insurmountable pressure that a gal feels, the minute an engagement ring is slipped on her finger, to host “the perfect day.”  Barely aware that the bridal industry even existed, Hana, a successful businesswoman and journalist, wanted a small but elegant wedding.  As she began to plan, however, she found herself succumbing, despite her most stalwart intentions, to the need for the perfect dress, the perfect invitations, the perfect food and even the perfect ‘save the day’ announcement cards (which she ended up crafting herself, so they would be ‘just right’).

USA Today recently reported that the average wedding in this country costs $30,000.  So why are women so vulnerable to the seductive sway of this industry?  Hana pulls back the veil with startling acumen -- and one very engaging story.  Now, if you're put off by the occasional obscenity (or "cussin', as we say down South), you may want to steer clear.  Otherwise, do check this book out, as I know you'll find it quite interesting.  I especially enjoyed the behind-the-scenes peek at some of the Jewish traditions that she and her fiancé explored for their wedding, as well as the history of the many wedding traditions -- some of which are pure commercial invention, by the way.

Hana has an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and used to write for CBSNews.com.  I recently convinced her to answer a few questions about her book.  Here's what she had to say:

Tell me a little about why you decided to write your book.  
After I got engaged, I went to the bookstore to find a book on planning a wedding.  I thumbed through a few wedding planners and it was like I'd somehow stepped into a time warp and fallen into 1952.  The books all went on and on about how my wedding was supposed to be the happiest day of my life, how I'd of course been dreaming of this day since I was a little girl, and how perfect my wedding was going to be if I followed all 437 planning tasks.  Since I'd never given one iota of thought to my wedding up until my fiancé proposed, I was shocked to discover that the wedding industry was still talking to women this way.  And as I got deeper into the wedding planning process, it seemed like things only got weirder and more anachronistic.  So I started looking around to see if there was a book about how ridiculous all the other wedding books were -- something that said, "No, you are not a space alien, there are other women out there who, like you, have not been waiting their entire lives for their wedding day."  There wasn't a book that came anywhere close to that perspective, so I decided to start taking notes on my own wedding planning process, and the book sprang from those.
 
You really pull back the veil on the bridal industry with startling acumen.  What are some of the factors that have created such an incredibly powerful/influencing industry?  
The wedding industry has really exploded in the last fifteen years or so.  As I write in the book, I think that some of that explosion is connected to the high divorce rate.  The women getting married today were children in the seventies and eighties, when the divorce rate reached its peak, and many of us grew up saying "When I get married it's going to be forever."  But since none of us really knows which marriages will last and which will end in divorce, women have started looking for external ways to prove to their families and friends that their marriage will last, and the wedding industry has found an excellent way to profit from this.  Many, many wedding-related ads imply that bigger is better, the more money you spend the more likely it is that you'll have a successful marriage, and if your lipstick doesn't match your cocktails you are doomed to be an inadequate wife and will likely get divorced.
 
You went into this process determined not to be like “other brides.”  What happened?  
I think I succeeded, no?  Okay, no, I did end up becoming obsessed with my wedding and pretty much having a nervous breakdown when the woman we bought gift baskets from for the guest rooms said she couldn't put apples in them.  However, I did manage to keep it together on my wedding day for the most part.  I think that I slowly got sucked in.  If you read enough magazines telling you your wedding has to be perfect, after a while you start believing it.  And, ultimately it seemed easier to just give in and do it the traditional way.  I wanted to get married in a purple dress, but that would have involved searching through potentially hundreds of stores for the right shade of purple, as opposed to going to a few bridal salons.  I didn't want to walk down the aisle holding flowers, but I didn't know what to do instead and I didn't want to give it that much thought.  So maybe laziness won in the end, and I just let the wedding industry have it's way with me. 
 
Writing your book, you conducted a lot of research about the history of bridal and wedding traditions.  How did you go about doing this, and what made you want to include that?  
The wedding industry is big on presenting their way of doing things as the proper way, as though it's the only way that anyone throughout the entire course of human history has gotten married.  I knew that couldn't possibly be the case, so I became curious about just how old these venerable "traditions" were.  It turned out that most of them weren't old at all - just another construction courtesy of a wedding industry that wants to sell more veils and Jordan almonds.  Surprisingly, there aren't that many popular books about wedding history, so a lot of my research came from academic papers.  I also read a step-by-step guide on how to become a wedding planner.  It didn't offer any history, but it did give me a good sense of how wedding planners are told to talk about weddings.
 
What concerns you the most about the bridal industry and its influence on women?  
To me, the fact that the bridal industry has such a powerful grip on women is indicative of a larger cultural shift going on in our society right now, a sort of anti-feminism masquerading as feminism, where women are subtly being told that no matter who they are, they must value being a wife and mother above all else, even if they have careers that they love or want to spend their time doing something other than figuring out what their table centerpieces should look like.  I grew up thinking I would be President of the United States.  And then suddenly, when it came time for me to get married, it was made quite clear to me that all this time I was supposed to be SAYING I wanted to be President but actually WANTING to be a princess.  It's very subtle, and to some extent that's what makes it so sinister.  On the surface it's like "Feminism for all!" but behind closed doors, women are thinking, "If the bridesmaid dresses aren't perfect then something is wrong with me as a woman."  Some women love planning their weddings, and that's fine. They should have the opportunity to plan away.  But your wedding shouldn't determine your self-worth or your perceived value as a human being. 
 
Do you think things are likely to change?  If so/not, why?  
Right now, it looks like things are getting worse.  Bridezilla has become a stock character on a lot of TV shows and in the movies.  And on shows like My Super Sweet 16 on MTV, you'll see teenagers acting exactly like Bridezillas on their wedding day, as though they're practicing for their turn as a bride.  I've seen websites where teenagers are obsessing about their hair months and months in advance of their proms, just like brides do.  No one is really out there trying to figure out what's making otherwise normal women act like crazed lunatics when it comes to their weddings, and a lot of the time women are afraid to admit to themselves that something is not quite right. 
 
What lessons do you feel like you learned, personally, during this experience?  
It sounds corny, but I learned to be true to myself.  I got sucked into trying to please everyone else with my wedding, including the all-knowing bridal industry, as ridiculous as that seems.  And, while I ended up with a wedding that I loved, I would never again want to experience the year of horror that preceded it.  Two years later, when I decided to become a mother and became pregnant with my son, I came in contact with another mega-industry that likes to tell women how to live: the pregnancy and baby industry.  But that time around, I decided from the start that I would do it my way.  I never bought a pregnancy magazine, and I have yet to buy a parenting magazine.  So far, so good. 
 
Looking back, what would you do differently?  
Eloped.  No -- I'm kidding.  In retrospect, I think I took the most difficult path.  I could have said, forget it, I'm going to get married barefoot on a beach.  Or I could have just given into the bridal industry and spent a year of my life doing nothing but planning a wedding.  I tried for the middle path -- planning a big wedding but trying to do it my own way.  I think it would have been better to have taken one of the other options, even if it meant letting the bridal industry run my life.  Also, I wish I'd had more fun with it.  At the time, everything assumed an importance totally out of proportion with reality.  I didn't sleep for weeks because I was worrying about finding the right dress.  I mean -- come on!  
 
What kind of advice would you give a newly-engaged bride?
The most important thing is to find the right guy -- not the right dress.  Especially because, after your wedding, you'll never look at the dress again, but you'll see the guy ALL THE TIME!

A More Perfect Union: How I Survived the Happiest Day of My Life (Atria Books, paperback, $13.00) is available in paperback. For more information, visit www.HanaSchank.com.