Magic Room - Why Weddings Make Us So Emotional - Emotional Health Center - Here Comes The Bride

div class="article" xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" xmlns:regexp="http://exslt.org/regular-expressions" xmlns:fb="http://w.facebook.com/2008/fbml" readability="88">

A wedding, in our culture, is one of the most significant rites of passage. A woman s journey down the aisle when the bride traditionally steps from the arms of her parents into the arms of the man she will marry is symbolic of major changes that will now occur in both families. The young ones leave the nest, and the family dynamic is forever changed as the newlyweds form their own family together.

The entire experience of planning a wedding is fraught with emotion joy, upset, and everything in between and perhaps nothing is more symbolic of the journey than the wedding dress itself.

In his most recent book, The Magic Room : A Story About the Love We Wish for Our Daughters (Gotham 2011), New York Times bestselling author Jeffrey Zaslow had a front-row seat at a place where 100,000 women begin their transformation from daughters to brides as they try on their dream dresses. And where, he says, parents are overcome by their memories of every moment in their child s life leading to the selection of the dress. His year of research at Becker s Bridal a mainstay on Main Street in Fowler, Mich., since 1934 allowed him to observe the time-honored tradition of shopping for a wedding dress. But at this family business, now run by the fourth-generation owner, Becker s is not just a place to shop for a dress. It is a place where dreams, hopes, and happily-ever-after seem so possible, and where strong, raw emotions flow like wine at a wedding.

Zaslow, a popular columnist for the The Wall Street Journal, and bestselling author of The Girls from Ames, is co-author of The Last Lecture with Randy Pausch (the Carnegie Mellon computer science professor who moving talk about life after a pancreatic cancer diagnosis) and Highest Calling with Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger (the pilot who safely landed a U.S. Air plane in the Hudson River in 2009). Most recently, Zaslow collaborated with U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and astronaut Mark Kelley on their memoir, Gabby (about their life after Giffords was critically wounded by a gunman last year in Phoenix).

The Magic Room is a more personal journey for Zaslow, a father of three beautiful daughters, who says his love for his own children inspired him to want to write a book about the love all parents have for their daughters. The bridal shop became the setting as he decided to tell that story through the eyes of the brides and the parents of Becker s.