Product Description

Original essays by Top Women Writers
Julianna Baggott _ Curtis Sittenfeld _ Catherine Ingrassia _ Elizabeth Crane 
Lara Vapnyar _ Lisa Carver _ Carina Chocano _ Rory Evans _ Jennifer Armstrong _ Elise Mac Adam _ Janelle Brown _ Daisy de Villeneuve _ Meghan Daum _ Amy Sohn _ Samina Ali _ Farah L. Miller _ Gina Zucker _ Kathleen Hughes _ Jacquelyn Mitchard _ Ruth Davis Konigsberg _ Lori Leibovich _ Julie Powell _ Jill Eisenstadt _ Anne Carle _ Amanda Eyre Ward _ Amy Bloom _ Dani Shapiro

Anyone who is intimated by the prospect of planning a wedding will laugh out loud and take solace in Altared. In this unexpected, heartwarming, thought-provoking collection, more than two dozen of our most perceptive and entertaining writers offer a wide range of takes on the modern wedding.  It's all here. Fantasies. Realities. Fond memories. A few regrets. From planning it to doing it and everything in between.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40533 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-08
• Released on: 2007-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Curran solicits tart tales from 27 writers, normally willful and independent women, who, for the most part, have taken reluctant swan dives into the consumerist culture of the bridal industry. Contributors including Curtis Sittenfeld, Lisa Carver and Amy Sohn never thought they'd catch the bridal bug. Still, they each get lost in the fantasy but come out the other end with a meaningful realization. The essays delve into the fraught conversations, negotiations and neuroses around wedding vows, dress shopping, etiquette, registries and budgeting. Sticker shock is a common theme, among women who subvert the wedding industry with a DIY approach (Rory Evans topped cupcakes with handmade clothespin bride-and-groom figures), and others who pay a price despite saving money. Julie Powell's entertaining experience trying "to make a meal for hundreds into an expression of who you are" illuminated an incontrovertible equation: "hundreds of guests + unreasonable expectations + catering – billions of dollars = rubber chicken." Some of the more heartfelt pieces include Jennifer Armstrong's story of how she called off her wedding, and Lara Vapnyar's poignant recollection of a $16 gown and the leap of faith that marriage entails. Brides-to-be or women who've been there will easily see themselves in these true stories. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review
“Darkly funny ruminations on getting hitched.” –People

“Refreshingly unsentimental.” –O, The Oprah Magazine

About the Author
Colleen Curran was engaged for three years before she planned her own wedding. Fearful of the process and confused by what it meant to plan a wedding, she set out to find out how other women view weddings today. Her stories have been published in places like Jane and The Dictionary of Failed Relationships. Whores on the Hill was her debut novel and is available from Vintage Books. She married her fiancé this past summer, after beginning work on this anthology, and is now happily married in Richmond, Virginia where she lives and works.

Customer Reviews

Watch out
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For the Bewildered Bride
I bought this book from a retailer instead of the wedding planner I had intended to get that day. These are all short stories from indie brides who felt (like me) that they cannot imagine a grandiose wedding such as the Instyle/Martha wedding. Most stories are good, some are not, but if you skip them I won't tell anyone. The moral of the stories is the same: weddings are not marriages. Glad to have skipped the planner.

A Great Read for the Married and Unmarried Alike
I'm not part of the target demographic for Altared, since I've never dreamed of "the big day" or really imagined I'd ever get married. So I'm not really sure what drove me to pick it up save for the names of some of my favorite writers, like Lisa Carver. What I liked most about Altared is that it's not just anti-bridal industry or full of horror stories, but features women grappling with both their weddings and the countless issues weddings make us question. Even when the bulk of the essay is about the actual wedding day, the authors manage to say something more profound as well. The authors certainly don't escape their own barbs or criticism, but they are ultimately hopeful and humorous (of her gay wedding, Anne Carle writs: "What I remember is panic, worry, cold feet, and sometimes total and utter numbness. A coworker asked whether I felt like Bridezilla...but I actually felt more like Groomzilla.")

Jill Eisenstadt's "To Have or Have Not: Sex on the Wedding Night" looks at a topic I'd never have thought was a question and humorously breaks down the myth that wedding night sex is a triumphant celebration. Even though there's a little bit of repetition about the evils of Bridezilla-mania, wedding magazines, and the like sprinkled throughout the anthology, those pale in comparison to the many diverse and touching stories here, from Anne Carle's "Weddings Aren't Just for Straight People Anymore" to Gina Zucker's tale of crashing her mother's wedding and Samina Ali's tale of two weddings, one arranged marriage, one chosen. Carle's piece also touches on children, who are woven throughout these essays as either future hopeful possibilities or already born family members, but her reasons for not having children with her wife, and instead opening up their circle to a wider community, made her vision of marriage and family quite an expansive one. My favorite section was "Getting Hitched," where Jacquelyn Mitchard gives any fiction writer a reason to believe in the power of words, intuition, and creative visualization in "First, Reader, I Made Him Up, and Then I Married Him." What's interesting is how for many of these women marriage and their weddings seemed to sortof spring up, rather than be endlessly plotted, making them aware only at the last minute that they have specific ideas and dreams for their big day (as do their mothers). There's a kind of lackadaisical approach, at least at the beginning, that immediately sets them at odds with their more perfection-focused peers. As they explain just when the hysteria sets in, or wryly laugh at their own ability to get sucked in, such as Janelle Brown's "The Registry Strikes Back," they show that while weddings are events that are planned (even in very brief spurts of time), part of the process can still sneak up on you.

Lisa Carver's uniquely solitary approach in her trademark style (she starts her essay thusly: "For me, getting married has always been like throwing up. I do it as alone as possible, feeling sick, drastic, and doomed.") makes for one of the best essays here, by a woman who's been there, done that, and come back again to both wedding planning and attending. Several essays such as Carver's and Lori Leibovich's, question whether being an "anti-bride" or an "indie bride" is not its own form of capitulation to opposition to the salesmanship that's been built up around weddings. And anyone who liked Julie and Julia must read Julie Powell's take on what goes into making that wedding standby, "Rubber Chicken" (hint: it's not chicken). Taken together, these essays are about, yes, weddings, but moreso about love, family, and figuring out what the essentials are when it comes to each. As Jennifer Armstrong's essay about her slowly fading, much-postponed engagement and eventual breakup, sometimes the best wedding of all is the one you don't have.