Books to Get You Through Wedding Season

Girls in White Dresses best encapsulates the physical and emotional exhaustion of wedding season, as it follows three bridesmaids preparing for their best friend’s wedding. Through weekend getaways and bachelorette parties, the trio of women juggle their increasingly complicated love lives with wanting to support the bride all the way to her big day.

No matter how disastrous your wedding can be—no matter how much you disagree with in-laws, or run into exes you thought you might marry, or try to bury the hatchet only to see it backfire—it can never be as bad as the Red Wedding from A Storm of Swords.

Here’s another wedding disaster for you to not live vicariously through. After her betrothed leaves her at the altar mere minutes before their wedding, Miss Havisham never gets away from that day: she remains locked in her mansion, spending decades wearing her moldering wedding gown and leaving her wedding cake uneaten.

When Lottie’s boyfriend proposes a trip instead of marriage, she decides that she’s going to get hitched—to an old flame. That leaves her sister Fliss to chase them down on their honeymoon and sabotage the wedding night so they can get the marriage annulled. A frothy book poking fun at outdated wedding traditions.

Those who enjoy hate-reading overly effusive wedding announcements will appreciate the chapter in Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children in which the New York Times lovingly describes a high-society wedding, down to sunlight smiles, lilies, and an overabundance of chiffon. It’s just one section of this richly textured novel, but it’s completely memorable.

Lily Wilder’s fiancé is the ultimate groom: a brilliant, handsome archaeologist who gladly put a ring on it. Lily’s a big-shot lawyer who knows how to toss back a drink, and the lead-up to her wedding is full of—er—questionable decisions. (Think Bridesmaids with more tequila.) A lovable train wreck who’s reinventing what it means to be a bride, you’ll find yourself cheering for Lily to figure it out, one way or another.

The second book in Kevin Kwan’s wickedly glamorous Crazy Rich Asians trilogy finds Rachel Chu on the eve of her wedding. She’s got it all: an impeccable diamond, a fabulous dress, and the love of her life. But she doesn’t have a father to walk her down the aisle—that is, until a chance accident uncovers her birth father’s identity. A story of family and unbelievable riches, it’ll put the dazzle back in your wedding season.