Have you ever been one of those wedding people? Have you ever attended a wedding and wondered where the odd person out came from? Or seen the emotional disconnect between the bride, the groom and well, everyone else? Or wondered why people spend so much on destination weddings?
Well, if you haven’t before, you sure have now. Espach’s The Wedding People goes much deeper than the typical destination wedding bridezilla trope to feature more subtle or difficult themes like post-divorce depression, disconnected family dynamics, the corrupting power of casual wealth, and the strain between what you want and what’s expected of you.
Fill your glass of champagne and dive in using these book club questions for The Wedding People. This discussion guide will help you dissect the books themes with a synopsis, discussion prompts and selected reviews.
And if you want more like it, we’ve also got a few suggestions for related reads.
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The Wedding People Synopsis
(We always chose to provide the publisher synopsis because we feel that it’s worthwhile to discuss whether the official book description actually squared with your experience of the book.)
The Wedding People, Alison Espach
It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
10 Book Club Questions for The Wedding People
These questions have been tailored to this book’s specific reading experience, but if you want more ideas, we also have an article with 101 generic book club questions.
- Phoebe found that she “…could not go to work and stand at the office printer and hold her face in a steady expression of interest while her colleague talked at length about the surprising importance of cheese in medieval theology.”
Have you ever experienced a seismic event and then been unable to tolerate the mundane niceties at work or home? - Some reviewers felt that the author found the right balance between a serious discussion of suicide and the more jocular tone regarding the absurd wedding elements. Others felt that the balance was off. What do you think?
- Phoebe says to Matt “I just mean, a story can be beautiful not because of the way it ends. But because of the way it’s written.”
Do you agree? And if so, how was your response to the way in which this story was written? - Phoebe’s journey was triggered by a long list of last straws- her husband’s affair, the dead-end adjunct job, the infertility, the divorce, and the death of the cat. That’s a lot of straws! Which do you think were the most important ones? Or was it the cumulative effect that drove Phoebe to depression?
- Have you ever been tempted to chuck it all? To put on that party dress and a pair of pretty, but impractical shoes and just take off somewhere?
- Lila and Phoebe’s relationship makes an unlikely journey from adversarial (“you can’t kill yourself during my wedding!”) to one of mentor/mentee and trusted advisor. Was it believable for you? And why do you think that the characters were so willing to go with it?
- Let’s talk about Juice. Why do you think that Phoebe connected so well with her and the other adults either ignored or misunderstood her?
- Phoebe keeps complaining how “the wedding people” are always partying, how they’re so much louder than regular people, and how they’re impossible to get away from. She clusters them into an undifferentiated mass of “Jims”. What did the author intend to gain by lumping the wedding guests this way.
- Is Lila a bridezilla?
- Let’s assume that Phoebe takes that seasonal house-sitting gig. Will she and Gary get together? And where will Lila be in a year from now?
Selected Reviews for The Wedding People
(Use these selected Goodreads reviews to compare with your own experience of the book. Do you agree or disagree with the reviews?)
“This is definitely one of those books you read for the journey, not for the outcome. It’s pretty clear right from the beginning where this story is going to go, because how else would you have a story at all? To follow Phoebe as she meets these strangers, see how they touch her life at exactly the moment she needs it, while she in turn touches theirs, brings a lump to my throat and a flutter to my heart.”
“If I’m not supposed to judge books by their covers, why do they have such beautiful ones?”
“I’m all for using humor as a way to deal with the harsh realities of life; of using it to paint a more raw portrayal of the struggles of mental health; of using humor to combat the physical and mental struggles of suicide thoughts and depression. But what I’m not for is using suicide as a plot device to bring in the attention of readers only to throw it out the window and add in a loose tale of a woman finding herself giving life a second chance because she…made some friends and ended up crushing on the groom/husband to be. It’s weak, ignorant, and disappointing.”
“Have any of you turned into Phoebe, who stopped seeing her value, drawn into self-suffocation as if you have full of options, have so many talents you didn’t explore, a brain that holds encyclopedic knowledge but still seeing yourself from a cracked mirror perspective, dulling your motivations? This book is for all women who are stuck in the routine of life, preferring not to talk about their honest opinions, putting others’ needs first!”
“There were moments when I did resonate with the FMC but I wish some events were played out differently. Although I’m a big romance reader but this book didn’t feel like it needed the small romance subplot. Maybe a teaser for the future but the friendships were much more impactful.”
What to Read After The Wedding People
- For more New England: The Frozen River.
- For more weddings: The Guest List.
- For more marriage gone sideways: The Perfect Marriage.
Each of the above discussion guides has a non-spoiler synopsis toward the top of the article with a link to Amazon pricing and reviews.
Lies and Weddings, Kevin Kwan
This is a fun next read if you want more dishy rich people wedding problems. Rufus is the future Earl of Greshambury, which sounds all richy rich. But his parents have simply spent too much and their financial foundation has crumbled. His mother imperiously instructs him to find a prize catch at his sister’s own wedding. But it doesn’t go as expected. And that volcano on the cover…it’s real.
Read this one for book club and use our Lies and Weddings discussion guide.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
This protagonist isn’t quite suicidal. But she is profoundly depressed and exhausted from it. So she decides to perform an experiment by drugging herself as much as possible and trying to sleep for the better part of a year.
She finds a zany (incompetent) therapist to refill her supply of sleeping medicine without asking too many questions. Unfortunately, sleeping for a year isn’t as easy as it sounds when eccentric frenemies come knocking on your door.
The sharp blade of satire cuts deep in My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Without providing a “good” example of dealing with a mental health crisis, the novel asks us to examine our own beliefs about healing and supports individual choices over society’s prescribed responses to trauma.
Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk, Kathleen Rooney
Will Phoebe turn out all right? Well, Lillian Boxfish did…even after an unwelcome divorce and her own mental health struggles.
The action in this book takes place over one New Years Eve as octogenarian Lillian walks the length of Manhattan, narrating the highs and lows of her life. She was a working woman before her time, a complicated character, a reluctant mother and a woman who takes no guff.
This was one of my favorite reads in the year that I read it. I appreciated the book’s lack of stereotyping and the Manhattan setting made me want to visit NYC again.
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