Michelle Bilodeau - The New Wedding Book: A Guide to Ditching All the Rules

The wedding industry was in need of an overhaul long before the pandemic, but as 2020s pared-down nuptials made clear, the elaborate, expensive, and painfully orchestrated Big Day is not required for celebrating love. As they make clear in The New Wedding Book, Michelle Bilodeau and Karen Cleveland get that big time. A modern-day guide to getting hitched (and doing it your own way), The New Wedding Book is crammed with helpful advice on everything from ethical diamonds to engagement photos to why its totally okay to throw diamonds and engagement photos out the window. The authors understand that everyone has different dreams for their nuptials but also that these dreams can give us more stress than satisfaction. In other words, its a wedding book that doesnt buy into all the wedding hype. How refreshing!

Carley Fortune, executive editor, Refinery29 Canada

Planning a wedding can be a nightmare. Youve got guest list pressure from relatives and seating arrangement drama, bills piling up from the caterer and photographers to interview, all while contending with expectations that youll also find the perfect venue, perfect dress, perfect flowers, perfect first dance song, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Even the most seemingly level-headed couple can get swept up in the wedding industrial complex. Let this book be your armour.

Robyn Doolittle, Globe and Mail reporter and author of Crazy Town: The Rob Ford Story and Had It Coming: Whats Fair in the Age of #MeToo?

In a world where weddings are being reinvented out of necessity, The New Wedding Book helps you consider the meaning of the day and how to make it yours. It asks the best questions practical and philosophical and also serves as a guide to conflict-free communication with the ones you love. An exhale of a read for anyone planning a wedding after 2020.

Meredith Goldstein, Love Letters columnist, the Boston Globe and author of Cant Help Myself: Lessons & Confessions from a Modern Advice Columnist

Think of Karen and Michelle as the friends you bring to your wedding dress try-ons who actually care that your dress is you but for your whole wedding. Theyll give you that nudge you need to ditch that stuffy tradition you never really liked and tell you why it was probably rooted in an outdated sexist custom anyway. A must-read for anyone who doesnt want the cookie cutter all-white Pinterest board, The New Wedding Book is here to usher in a new era of brides (and grooms). Think less I do and more you do you!

Sara Levine, editor-in-chief, Betches Media

Weddings should be like fingerprints: a bit messy, legally binding, and symbolic proof of who you truly are. This book beautifully captures the nuances and natural bends on the winding road toward happily ever after, forks and all. Because there is no perfect wedding, no perfect marriage, and no perfect union. I love the notion of releasing oneself from these societal pressures and instead celebrating love in all its wild formations.

Mosha Lundstrm Halbert, fashion director and Vogue contributor

Relationships are not one-size-fits-all, so why should weddings be? This book outlines the many ways you can make sure that your big day is not another generic pre-scripted event but a dazzling reflection of your unique love.

Cynthia Loyst, bestselling author of Find Your Pleasure: The Art of Living a More Joyful Life

This book is mandatory reading for every modern woman who wants to actually enjoy her journey to marriage. Its the best time in history to be a woman with ambition and societys wedding culture has some catching up to do. You are holding a hilarious and heartfelt permission slip and guide to plan your wedding and life on your terms.

Charreah K. Jackson, coach and author of Boss Bride: The Powerful Womans Playbook for Love and Success

Were in an age of redefinition, when so many traditional institutions are getting a much needed update, and the wedding business is no exception. Ive always been cringed out by the classic North American wedding standard, but this book takes an industry steeped in capitalist excess, heteronormativity, and conformism and shows skeptics like me that getting married can actually be an accessible, personal, and *gasp* romantic process, after all.

Amanda Montell, author of Wordslut: A Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language and Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism

Women have rewritten every part of our lives, except how we marry. This line from Michelle Bilodeau and Karen Clevelands delightfully disruptive new book, The New Wedding Book: A Guide to Ditching All the Rules, struck me with the force of a ten-pound bouquet to the forehead. Its just so true. The cultural conditioning implicit in what Bilodeau and Cleveland call the wedding arms race is both insidious and infantilizing. Thankfully, the newly engaged now have an excellent guide to navigating the minefield of restrictive, often inherently misogynistic rituals previously filed under tradition. The New Wedding Books mission is empowering, and its tone is lively. Most importantly, its advice is practical: once youre all fired up, TNWB provides useful tools for how to shrug off the weight of other peoples expectations and actually follow your heart. My favourite part of this wonderful, modern, extremely timely book is the personal love stories that are so vivid you can practically taste the spun sugar. Essential reading.

Laura deCarufel, editor-in-chief, the Kit

A GUIDE TO DITCHING ALL THE RULES

MICHELLE BILODEAU & K AREN CLEVEL AND

Copyright Michelle Bilodeau, Karen Cleveland, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purpose of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.

Publisher and acquiring editor: Scott Fraser | Editor: Robyn So

Cover and interior designer: Laura Boyle

Printer: Marquis Book Printing Inc.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: The new wedding book : a guide to ditching all the rules / Michelle Bilodeau, Karen Cleveland.

Names: Bilodeau, Michelle, author. | Cleveland, Karen, author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200393464 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200393537 | ISBN 9781459747111 (softcover) | ISBN 9781459747128 (PDF) | ISBN 9781459747135 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: WeddingsPlanning. | LCSH: Weddings.

Classification: LCC HQ745 .B55 2021 | DDC 395.2/2dc23

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada.

Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.