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.

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.

This collection of real life stories is absolutely hilarious! Almost every story leaves you chuckling a little at the rediculousness that is the wedding industry and our society. I think I could relate to something in almost every story as well. I am giving it to my sister in law who is recently engaged to help her see what people go through that she is not alone and hopefully show her how rediculous things can be and to not let it get out of control.