The Wedding People by Alison Espach: Unpacking bridezilla
The average cost of a wedding is around £23,000, so it’s no surprise that we all act a little differently at them. Depending on our temperament, and perhaps how much money we ourselves have been forced to fork out to attend them, weddings can bring out the very best or the very worst in us.
Either way, our Wedding Guest version of ourselves is usually at least a little different from our normal persona. Perhaps they are kinder, perhaps they are drunker, perhaps they wear florals and say sentimental things their non-wedding counterpart would never. I for one love a wedding, but have certainly been caught grumbling at what can feel like the selfishness of their extravagance and imposition on others.
The premise of The Wedding People is unusual: 40-something-year-old divorcee Phoebe has checked into aspirational Rhode Island hotel in order to kill herself, but finds her attempt immediately thwarted amidst a wedding party. She has been stopped not by a concerned relative, nor dutiful staff member, nor even the discovery of a will to live. No. Phoebe is stopped by Lila, the uppity bride due to be married at the hotel, who is resolute she will not have a dead woman ruin it. It’s this premise, in its jarring combination of grit and airiness, that makes The Wedding People so compelling.
Through Lila, Espach unpacks the bridezilla trope with care and humour, making an unlikely defence for the much villainised archetype. To do so Espach invokes Mrs Dalloway, a novel which, on a basic level, is about planning a party. “It is so easy to hate Mrs Dalloway for worrying so much about her stupid party, the way it’s so easy to hate the bride,” Phoebe muses. “But in the end, everybody goes to the party and that’s the point… If the problem is loneliness, then in this way, and maybe only in this way, Mrs Dalloway is the hero for giving everybody a place to be.”
If you’re feeling grouchy as wedding season approaches, may I recommend you read this on your ever-so-inconvenient journey there.