As Long as We Both Shall Love

In As Long as We Both Shall Love, Karen M. Dunak provides a nuanced history of the American wedding and its celebrants. Blending an analysis of film, fiction, advertising, and prescriptive literature with personal views from letters, diaries, essays, and oral histories, Dunak demonstrates the ways in which the modern wedding epitomizes a diverse and consumerist culture and aims to reveal an ongoing debate about the power of peer culture, media, and the marketplace in America.

In this well-researched and often entertaining examination of the symbolic meaning of the wedding ceremony in the post-WWII US, historian Dunak (Muskingum Univ.) argues that the evolution of marriage ceremony mirrors national cultural changes over the past several decades., It's easy to poke fun at the frou-frou, the Bridezillas, and the chocolate fountains. Karen Dunak prefers a more sophisticated undertaking, reading the desire for a lavish wedding as a personal and political statement of the American Dream. She traces the rise of coupledom and the decline in maternal authority and approval of neighbors and relatives to postwar affluence. . . . Dunak's innovative research ranges from plumbing the personal recollections of the happy couples to the emergence of the public belief that even when a president's daughter married, it was all about them., Persuasively argues that widespread acceptance of the idea that each white wedding canand perhaps shouldhave at least one element of unique self-expression has insured the continuing popularity of formal weddings. Without the option of some measure of variation, the 'cookie-cutter' white wedding would have become a stale and outmoded ritual. Instead, it remains a popular rite whose familiar general contours make it a comfortable and welcoming ceremony for Americans of diverse backgrounds but whose individualized details allow it to express the unique characteristics, interests, and perhaps politics of the couple at its center., Dunaks diverse, interconnected narratives show how the American wedding offers a universal promise of love and happiness while also providing participants with an opportunity to publically perform their values and aspirations. [] Dunaks book is historically illuminating and highly readable. Through the authors account, we see how the weddings malleability has allowed it to endure as a meaningful rite of passage and beloved site of expression and individuality, one that is deeply tied to an ever-changing American culture.

Karen M. Dunak is Assistant Professor of History at Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio.