cover image Your Wedding

Your Wedding

Yetta Fisher Gruen. Penguin Books, $9.95 (38pp) ISBN 978-0-14-046755-0

Gruen thoroughly covers the rites of marriage, from the initial meeting of in-laws to a second wedding after a divorce (including contingencies for dealing with acrimonious relatives on the receiving line). Along the way, she discusses Catholic, Protestant and Jewish ceremonies as well as interfaith possibilities that are mathematical in complexity. Every permutation of invitational address is explored, bridesmaids are told whom to walk with and where to stand, and parents are enlightened on that most important question: who pays for what? Gruen, who has worked on the bridal desk of the Washington Post for 15 years, brings a practical, matter-of-fact tone to her advice which, while it may not be humorous, has that sonorous ring of what is permissible and what is not. (June)