A memoir of the weddings that Jen Doll has attended in her 20s and 30s, Save the Date is an odyssey of weddings. Wryly observational without any traces of self-pity or self-consciousness (despite throwing up into the reefs or throwing shoes), Doll's memoir is a fun, entertaining read.
The memoir captures the feeling of attending weddings in your 20s when it's a college reunion and a little surreal that peers are making such an important "adult" decision.
After a few weddings and over a few years, friends couple off and weddings become a bit more of a social chore.
The celebration of love and happiness (and open bar) are still there, but weddings become a reflection of Doll herself as she matures.
Never bitter or wishing that she was married, Doll reaches the point where going to wedding with a date becomes easier. Even if the date is someone she just met that night and that she was seated next to.
Because of Doll's wry personality, exuberance and love of a story as a friend proclaims about Doll, Save the Date is filled with entertaining stories, silly fights from younger days and drunken escapades throughout.
One of the more touching stories is a wedding the 30-something Doll attends as a guest of a 20-something man that she has been dating. All is fine until the after-party when Doll's date starts playing beer pong.
Reading the tale, I roll my eyes, but Doll talks about how she playfully sits and laughs with her date's friends as they watch the boys play beer pong before heading off to bed late into the night.
The reality though, Doll admits, is that fueled by alcohol, she approaches her date, throws the ping pong offered to her at the wall, and yells at him that she hates beer pong. She hates him. Then storms off.
Destination weddings, a wedding at city hall, and a wedding she attends as a reporter covering the first gay marriage in the state of New York officiated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Doll covers a lot of ground, never making the memoir too repetitive or even predictable, despite knowing that the next chapter will be about a...wedding!
A quote from the book that resonates with, and pleases me:
"One of the benefits to having a wedding in your midthirties or beyond is that a lot of the rules and traditional expectations cease to matter in the slightest. You have the confidence and the financial standing to do it your own way, and that makes it all the better."
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