Diary of a Mad Bride

January 14, 2002
Amy Sarah Thomas, a magazine editor, is going to marry Stephen Stewart, a computer programmer—that is, if planning the wedding doesn't kill the romance. Told in diary form over the course of a year, with many iterations of a 70-point Things-to-Do list, Wolf's first novel seems determined to provoke an epidemic of elopements. The pre-wedding jitters are endless: obscenely expensive shoes and humiliating dresses, in-laws even more upsetting than one's own parents and siblings, bitchy co-workers and a stoned caterer, and the inevitable onslaught of redundant kitchen gadgets. At moments, there's an antic charm at work here, and the narcissistic Gram is a deliciously insidious little old lady, but Amy's narrative voice is more predictable and less funny than she seems to think. She's absolutely, positively never going to get married—and the next thing you know, she's engaged. She's absolutely, positively going to keep her name—until she decides to change it. There won't be chicken on the wedding menu, no way—and guess what? Punctuated by gift cards, thank-you notes and line drawings, this breezy novel emits plenty of hot air, but until the rhapsodic last scene, there's little bliss to enchant brides-to-be.

December 1, 2001
At 29, Amy Thomas is content being single, happily dating Stephen, and wondering what has come over her friend Mandy, who's getting married and spends all her time planning and talking about her wedding. Then, in the concession line at a movie theater, Stephen asks Amy to marry him, and suddenly she has her own wedding to plan, and it's overwhelming. Her wedding to-do list grows from a modest 20 items to a whopping 70, and Stephen is no help at all. Amy is devastated when she finds out that her parents and Stephen's parents will each give them only five thousand dollars. That puts the grand New York wedding she's been dreaming of out of reach, so she settles for having the reception in her parents' backyard. But she still needs a dress, shoes, a band, and a gazillion other things, and before she knows it, Amy has turned into the "mad bride" she's always rolled her eyes at. A frolic that will appeal to brides and bridesmaids alike.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2001, American Library Association.)