Toss the Bride

By Jennifer Manske Fenske and Cleo Qian

Professional wedding planner Macie Fuller is having trouble saying "I do." White doves and wedding bells are all in a days work, as is the occaisional difficult client. But when her wealthy boyfriend Avery proposes, Macie's reaction shocks everyone. Will she become a monster in a white veil, she wonders? And more importantly, how can she be herself in Avery's purebred family? When?Macie comes around, it's not for the white dress or gift registry, but for love. She wants it for life. This is a warm and witty novel about finding romance on your own terms.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031233981X
• ISBN13: 9780312339814
• Release Date: January 2006
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.4" x 0.9" x 5.7"

Customer Reviews

Easy Read

Refreshing, light read and good for a lazy Sunday afternoon or a day at the pool. Highly recommend.

great characters, fun read

Anyone who's ever dealt with a difficult bride or planning their own wedding will appreciate the wild characters in this book. The author does a great job of introducing a new Bridezilla each chapter--she rounds out each character very quickly, so that the reader is hooked time and again. Throw in some smart observations about the New South and southern weddings, and it's a truly delicious book. I would have liked to have gotten to know the main characters Macie and Avery a little better over the course of the novel. But overall it was a fun read.

LOVED this fun read!

This was such a great book! It was one I had a hard time putting down at night...I really connected with Macie and couldn't wait to read about her next bride. I highly recommend it for an entertaining read.

Filled with southern warmth and charm!

Macie Fuller is an assistant to the most exclusive wedding planner in Atlanta. While "tossing brides" (getting them married off and out of the firm's hair) pays the bills, dealing with the various sub-species of "bridezilla" is sometimes overwhelming. To find a way of dealing with their quirks and peccadilloes, Macie assigns each a name based on their most outstanding characteristic: the horse bride, the greedy bride, the pink bride. Capable of managing the most explosive wedding situation, Macie is thrown when Avery, her long-term boyfriend, proposes. What follows is a captivating first novel by Jennifer Manske Fenske. I was immediately enthralled by an excerpt of the first chapter and had to read to the conclusion even though "wedding lit," a sub-genre of chick lit, isn't my usual preference. Such is the strength of this fun tale. Macie is a lovably flawed heroine, desperate to plan her own wedding while at the same time being disgusted by the excess of the weddings she plans for "the brides." In a telling comment, Macie reflects that rarely does she know the groom's name, as most society brides don't visualize their marriage, rather only the wedding. Manske Fenske counterpoints this dearth of grooms by humanizing Avery, fleshing out his story to a degree not often found in chick lit novels. The weakness found here is that secondary characters often appear as caricatures or cardboard cutouts. By reducing their stories to amusing anecdotes and cliches to serve as a backdrop for Macie's reflections on weddings, relationships and life, the author missed an opportunity to add depth and resonance to these reflections. The novel would have been strengthened by exploring the human side of the various brides and Macie's relationship with her future in-laws. The reader is quickly invested into Macie's story and worries along with her as she contemplates becoming yet another rabid "bride." I look forward to reading Jennifer Manske Fenske's sophomore effort and to watch her development as an author. Armchair Interviews says: Filled with southern warmth and charm, Toss the Bride is a delightful entry in the ever-increasing chick lit market.

Sweet story about a wedding planner

This is the story of Macie, a 27-year-old wedding planner in Atlanta, Georgia, where brides insist on sweet-tea spoons, 8 showers apiece and various other frills and furbelows. Although Macie loves her job, she feels that many of the brides she works with are vain and shallow, and wistfully wishes she could get married herself. Her boyfriend, Avery, is a trust-fund baby who doesn't seem to have a lot of her direction, and his mother seems to be on another planet, with her midday cocktails and siestas. Each chapter focuses on a different bride - for example, the vegan bride, the child bride, the pink-haired bride, the evil bride, the celebrity bride - and the pitfalls of her wedding day. My personal favorite was the vegan bride. Macie also has a friend, Iris, who owns "Cake Cake" and bakes the cakes for the weddings. There are many yummy descriptions of wedding cake. Rounding out the cast of characters is Macie's boss, Maurice, the smoothest of wedding planners who is having some marital problems himself. This was a sweet, touching story about Macie's often humorous job and her own troubled path to the altar. I can't really find anything I didn't like about the novel, and I recommend it to anyone who enjoys chick lit, even if you don't usually read wedding lit.