5 Novels That Explore the Dark Side of Wedding Culture
By Mary Berman
When I set out to write a horror novel about wedding planning, I was prepared to conduct months of research into the ugliest parts of American wedding culture. In fact, I was rather looking forward to it.
But it turns out, you only have to spend a measly hour on wedding Reddit or WeddingTok to get a sinking sense of the horror I wanted my protagonist to face! The downright shocking cost, the piles and piles of Kafkaesque details (playlists, return addresses, napkin colors), and worst of all, the bizarre—and bizarrely heightened—demands of all your loved ones. Wedding planning can, indeed, feel like it’s eating you alive, made worse by the fact that it all feels so stupid.
But wedding planning is not the only element of wedding culture begging to be satirized in a novel. From the oft-vicious dynamics of bachelorette parties and bridal showers, to the chaos of a wedding itself, to the potential strain of a newlywed relationship once the fun part (is that what we’re calling it?) is over, here are five novels that explore the dark side of wedding culture.
You might not consider Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel a “wedding book,” but never forget protagonist Theo’s engagement to his friend’s sister, Kitsey. Kitsey and Theo’s engagement party is a significant turning point in the narrative—but, as is so often the case with real-life weddings, their union is founded not on love but on matters of class and money, the desire to please family, and the desperation to belong.
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Sian Gilbert’s novel about a luxe island bachelorette gone wrong is a perfect beach-read thriller. It also highlights three of the worst parts of wedding culture: (1) the heinous expense; (2) the way weddings burgeon beyond their allotted day to involve bridal showers and engagement parties and, yes, bachelorettes; and (3) the judgment of the people around you, who are supposed to be your nearest and dearest.
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It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
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Evan S. Connell’s 1959 novel Mrs. Bridge, and its 1969 sequel Mr. Bridge, form an impeccably fine portrait of a married couple in midcentury Kansas. India Bridge is a sweet, proper country club wife, and she is also, in a way she could never describe or even identify, slowly and inexplicably spiraling into despair. Her husband, Walter Bridge, is a workaholic lawyer who’s never once challenged the status quo and doesn’t intend to start now. Together, they swim in a society founded on unthinking adherence to rules and customs—customs like, for example, weddings.
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Part of wedding culture is, of course, what comes after. A novella in the collection Full Dark, No Stars, “A Good Marriage” follows Darcy, a middle-aged woman who has the sort of marriage people extol at their own weddings—simple and contented, just two human beings operating on the same wavelength. Except Darcy and her husband, it turns out, are not on the same wavelength at all. In fact, Darcy’s husband is operating on a very dark wavelength indeed.
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“Say Yes to the Dress meets Rosemary’s Baby” (Margie Sarsfield) in this fresh, darkly funny horror novel in which a woman finally agrees to marry the man of her mother’s dreams. . . only to discover that wedding planning will eat you alive.
If Ophelia Cohen learned one thing from her parents, it’s that getting married is a bad idea. But if she’s learning anything from her widowed mother’s dementia, it’s that dying alone is worse. So when she meets Luke—the man of her mother’s dreams—marriage suddenly doesn’t seem so crazy.
But none of Ophelia’s obsessive scrolling on wedding forums can prepare her for the nightmare of planning her own. Why is her mother-in-law going crazy over every detail? Why is Luke’s family so eager to host the wedding in their vineyard’s ancient chapel? And what exactly will Ophelia have to sacrifice if she and her mother both hope to survive her special day?
Shot through with wicked humor, pitch-black horror, and unexpected romance, Until Death is a deliciously dark and funny send-up of the wedding industrial complex—and a mother-daughter story unlike any you’ve read before.
“Recognizes the Gothic horror inherent to planning a wedding and creates from it a painfully incisive and genuinely haunting fever dream.” —Kay Chronister, author of The Bog Wife
“Completely unique, deeply unnerving, and deviously funny.” —Samantha Allen, author of Patricia Wants to Cuddle
“Grabbed me like a creeping vine and wouldn’t let go.” —Kerry Cullen, author of House of Beth
“Glistens with humor and horror. An electrifying and affecting debut.” —Samantha Hunt, author of The Seas
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