What No One Tells the Bride

Warning: turbulence on cloud nine! What No One Tells The Bride is the inside scoop on what it's really like getting married and being newly married. Recently married journalist Marg Stark breaks the newlywed code of silence and discusses the profound changes brides often experience, in everything from their self-image to their wardrobe. Stark and 50 married women tell their stories, reveal marital truths, and offer great and wise advice. Being a bride is a subject practically embalmed in mystique. But underneath the blushing exterior of bridehood are some difficult truths. The most important truth to absorb is that conflict, disappointment, and doubt is normal. Often an impending wedding can cause anxiety or second thoughts. Forging a couplehood is a tough and complicated task, and your differences need to be addressed: money, family, use of time, parental roles, and many others. The worst thing you can do is pretend everything is just fine and dandy, obeying the taboo against admitting you're worried. The bride who accepts reality is in much better long-term shape. Ms. Stark's constant encouragement is a gift, a testament to the pains and pleasures of working it out and living through it all. The issues that cause identity crisis, anxiety, anger, regret, competition, confusion and power struggles are explored and attended to one by one. It's like having your best friend tell you all the things she and 50 other women have learned through the complicated process of entering into married life. It also includes a list of ideas that makes it abundantly clear that brides and grooms are working cleverly and secretly at their sex lives.