“Die, Bridezilla, Die!”

There has been a long and highly productive critical association between feminism and marriage (on one hand) and between feminism and popular culture (on the other). ² It is surprising, then, that intersection of these high traffic areas— particularly in relation to weddings—is so deserted: very little feminist research attends to weddings as they are represented in popular culture. As Chrys Ingraham says, “[c]onsidering the magnitude of wedding culture and wedding industry it is both shocking and mystifying that so few have studied weddings.” ³ Several inferences might be drawn from this. First, we might surmise that weddings are simply beyond the feminist pale, that wedding culture, if we can call it that, is beneath feminist contempt. Alternatively, and more recently, we might assume that wedding culture—and perhaps marriage, too—is no longer a site needing feminist intervention: that all is well in twenty-first-century Brideland. While each of these propositions has a certain appeal, both must be rejected. More importantly, the framework that sets these “for” and “against” options up as exclusive alternatives must be challenged. It is the task of this chapter to explain why and how popular wedding culture is more complex and interesting than these alternatives allow, and to do so using the 2009 movie Bride Wars (directed by Gary Winick).