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GUEST: Rebecca Mead, author of “One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding,” staff writer at The New Yorker

In an era of ever-increasing personal debt, the average American wedding costs nearly $30,000 to put on. The opulence and expense of today’s weddings has led to the term, “Bridezilla,” inspiring reality television and watercooler tales of brides gone mad. But is it really the American bride at fault, or the aggressiveness of the American wedding industry? Staff writer for The New Yorker, Rebecca Mead embarked on a 3 year investigation of the $161 billion wedding industry, resulting in her new book, “One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding.” To understand the evolution of the wedding to its current state, Mead interviewed wedding industry professionals and attended weddings in Las Vegas, Disney World, Aruba and a wedding town in Tennessee. What she found were cynical profit motives behind the moneymaking ploys that are designed to take advantage of the most profound fears, and happily-ever-after fantasies of brides-to-be. Goods and services providers alter marital traditions—and even invent new ones—to feed their bottom line. Stores vie for bridal registry business in hopes of gaining lifelong customers. Women swoon for what retailers call “the ‘Oh, Mommy’ moment” in boutique fitting rooms—an unsettling contrast to the Chinese bridal gown factory workers who make them possible, sleeping eight to a room and scraping by on 30 cents an hour. Part investigative journalism, part social commentary, Mead’s wry, insightful work offers an illuminating glimpse at the ugly underbelly of our Bridezilla culture.