FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

I Do But I Don't – Why The Way We Marry Matters

What do modern weddings, bigger and pricier than ever before, tell us about modern women? In I DO BUT I DON’T – Why The Way We Marry Matters (Da Capo Press; paperback, May 2007; $15.95) Kamy Wicoff explores the modern wedding through her own experience walking down the aisle and through interviews with over eighty women from Generation X and Y.  She finds that weddings are a window through which we can see a tremendous amount about modern women, caught between feminism and femininity, the 125 billion dollar wedding industry and their budgets, traditional ideas about marriage and their desire to change them, and the countless other contradictions that make “I do but I don’t” a phrase every modern bride instantly understands.   I DO BUT I DON’T is not another wedding “how to” book, but rather an essential guide to how the modern woman navigates through her wedding experience, and how the way she marries matters not just to her mother but to her future marriage, as each step of “wedding” establishes patterns in her partnership that will affect her the rest of her life.

In a poignant, personal, and boldly humorous look at the reality of the modern American wedding, Kamy centers the book around her own wedding story, as she attempts to reconcile her secure (she thought) self-image with the fun-house mirror reflection (“ersatz virgin, gift-wrapped girl, Kamy-Barbie”) encountered in the bridal shop, and takes her first steps toward the aisle and into confusion. Raised on messages of self-reliance and equality between the sexes, Wicoff is both blindsided and swept up by her role as Wedding Consumer, circa 1950, in the marital planning time warp she seems to have mysteriously entered.

“Going back through my wedding experience and interviewing other women about theirs, I learned that the way we marry matters,” says Wicoff. Together with her boyfriend/fiancé Andrew, she struggles to blend their personal wishes with society’s “demands” and re-fashion time-honored traditions to their liking, while straining to keep their relationship and her identity intact. With the benefit of hindsight, she looks back to bravely re-assess and explore the reasons they felt pressured to make certain choices and the cultural meanings behind all the trappings.  At the conclusion of each chapter, Wicoff also offers fresh ideas for today’s couples, suggesting ways to rethink each step of wedding, from the diamond ring to bridal botox to the monogrammed champagne flute.

Part scholarly research, part social touchstone, and part gabfest with more than 80 married and unmarried 23- to 45-year-olds, I DO BUT I DON’T is a multi-layered look at modern weddings, and modern marriages. Among the many topics Wicoff discusses are:

    * When Worlds Collide – What happens when independent, post-feminist women (and their men) confront long-standing big, fat American wedding customs;

    * Feminist and Feminine – Is it possible to be a new woman and a chosen woman, too?;

    * Myths about Marriage – Such as, women want marriage more than men (Wicoff’s poll-takers disagreed), women are responsible for making men assume “adult” responsibilities (women also have anxieties about becoming grownups), and men hate to shop;

    * Great Expectations – When mothers who have always quoted Betty Friedan and other feminists to their daughters suddenly want to enforce traditional etiquette on their weddings;

    * How Bridezillas are Born – Why extraordinary numbers of ordinary women feel moody, tetchy, and tense from the moment they slip on the engagement ring;

    * As Stuck as the Bride on the Cake – How to stay true to yourself and avoid the pitfalls of “bride as icon of womanhood”;

    * Brides Must Have Beauty, but Grooms Must Have Bucks – The ties that bind the grooms, such as: the man must propose, buy a huge diamond ring, prove himself as a provider, act like he doesn’t care about the flowers even if he does, and more.

A book that sheds light on so many aspects of a woman on the cusp of marriage, from body image to housekeeping to work to sex, I DO BUT I DON’T is a thoughtful and thought-provoking examination of how stereotypes and expectations about the institution shape our lives, and are meant to be broken. Smart and funny, and telling the universal truth like a trusted Maid of Honor, Kamy Wicoff has filled I DO BUT I DON’T with insights that will lead women and men, mothers and fathers, and friends of the bride and groom down a new and more fulfilling path.