Has a “Bridezilla” wedding culture sprung up in other countries, too?
I’m from England and I haven’t lived there for a long time, but I hear that some of the things that we’re talking about here are beginning to happen in Britain. It used to be that you could get married only in a church or in a registry office, but now the wedding marketplace has been deregulated. So people are having these extravagant country house weddings, as if they’re the landed gentry. And weddings in Britain, like everything in Britain, are more expensive. In China the wealthier, more sophisticated Chinese brides — instead of, or in addition to, having a traditional Chinese wedding — will have a Western-style ceremony, even though they’re not churchgoers. Because they’ve seen it in the movies! Weddings are part of popular culture and America is the generator of that. The spread is inevitable. That’s one of the things the book is about. American consumerism is a dominant force. What was the most outlandish product — which brides actually buy — that you encountered while doing
