by Eden Lalor

A few years ago, “The Oprah Winfrey Show” compared the fantasy of planning a wedding with the reality of its execution. At one point during the nuptial expos’, guests leaving a wedding reception were asked if they could recall the centerpieces. The most common response: Uh … flowers?”

Good guess, I thought to myself. The couple’s budget for centerpieces was then displayed in the studio, and I laughed out loud. The bride had fretted and worried over the smallest of details, but these guests with the wine-hazed eyes didn’t notice any of them. Thousands of dollars wasted for one day of pulling the fairy tale out of the book. Not for me, baby. If I ever did get married, I would elope to some distant city - just me, myself and my groom.

Flash forward to December 1999, when I got engaged. Suddenly, a ‘traditional wedding” had some appeal. It would please both our families, and it seemed more enjoyable than being jet lagged in Europe. As I informed my family, friends and co-workers of our engagement, I received “best wishes’ and then suffered through the barrage of questions - mostly from women. “When is the wedding?” “Where?” “What about your dress?” “Colors for the bridesmaids?”

And, oh yes, I was informed that “Everyone’s getting married in 2000.” I never knew I was so hip. Or so lost. I tried to keep up with the list of responsibilities: arranging the ceremony, planning a reception, buying a dress, picking out colors for the bouquets, choosing party favors, and, of course, selecting flowers for centerpieces. My mind began to spin. I grew frenzied. I would wake up at 3 a.m., my heart pounding, trying to visualize the centerpieces, and at that hour, florists don’t want to hear from you.

Not exactly the cool, laid-back urban chick hopping the next plane for Istanbul. I was losing sleep and Pete, my helpful groom-to-be, had begun to console me with pastries. Our first few planning discussions took place over cream puffs, which did not soothe my fear of drowning in the enormity of planning a wedding. For my sanity and my waistline, I had to find a different approach.

One morning, I grabbed a cup of coffee, settled down in an overstuffed chair, and admitted to myself that I knew nothing about planning a wedding. The first step is acknowledging there is a problem. The second is doing something about it.

I created a strategic plan. I would tackle this wedding thing the same way I sank battleships when I was a kid - one peg at a time. But first I had to learn what tools I needed, and what was at my disposal. So here, after many hours of research, are my found founts of nuptial information.

    1. Never underestimate the powers of the Web and the magic of magazines

With yet another cup of java in hand, I slid off the pillows (one pastry too many) and cranked up the computer, heading into cyberspace for a survey mission. Clearly, others had been here before me. A quick search for “weddings’ on Go.com gave me over 500,000 sites, including personal Web pages of the couples who trod the bridal path and lived to tell the tale.

I first ventured to Women.com, an on-line women’s magazine that covers everything from weddings to small businesses. Women.com provided a link to TheKnot.com, a wedding hub that provides a wide range of resources, as well as real life stories and a template to design your own personal wedding page. Offerings include pictures of more than 20,000 wedding dresses (20,000 dresses!), questions to ask before booking a photographer and a detailed timetable.

With 10 months until my big day, the timetable said that I was already six to 10 months behind in planning, which triggered my most basic fear that every photographer, musician and caterer in the greater D.C. metropolitan area was already booked. Not one to be daunted, I took a deep breath and trudged ahead, determined to learn more about my new responsibilities.

Next stop, WeddingPages.com. If you live in a major metropolitan area, this is actually the best guide. At WeddingPages.com, you can order a hardcopy tailored to where you live. With standard articles on the responsibilities of each wedding party member and the best places to honeymoon, this thick book of advertisements includes cake makers, photographers, car rental agencies and nearly every other local wedding-related business. It’s the Yellow Pages directory for weddings, but without the escort companies offering ‘discreet services.”

OK, Martha Stewart may be the Big Mama of Snob Central, but her website, MarthaStewart.com/weddings, and magazine Martha Stewart Weddings is - and I can’t believe I’m saying this- full of innovative and practical ideas. Forget the meticulously overwrought art projects in Martha Stewart Living that no one with a day job can manage.

In her quarterly magazine, Martha Stewart Weddings, the photographs are gorgeous and made me believe my wedding could be beautiful. Stewart (or the design interns she flogs) even gave me some ideas for alternatives to the standard flowers-in-a-vase centerpiece. The magazine also includes planning pages with a budget guide and timeline, and according to them I’m right on schedule. I’m not a convert, but hey, Martha’s on to something here. I may never admit this again, but I liked what I saw: a veritable palette of possibilities. It’s a good thing.

Our best man Jeff, out of sympathy, kindness, or jovial cruelty, gave me subscriptions to two bridal magazines, Modern Bride and Bridal Guide. As part of the deal, the first two issues were rushed to my doorstep. Thank goodness, too. How did I ever get through the day without those thin, blond cheerleaders swathed in white, smiling at me with those impossibly perfect teeth?

Although I enjoy seeing these 1 ” inch thick books appear in the mail every two months, the magazines really don’t have much variation: they all feature the same ads, the same dresses, the same budgets and the same checklists. There also are the standard real wedding stories submitted by real couples. Bridal Guide made an impression on me by choosing an interracial couple as the winner of its “Bride of the Year and Her Dream Home” Contest. Their love story was moving, but more importantly, this was the most color I had seen in six months worth of magazines.

    2. Poll your family, friends and co-workers

Why reinvent the wedding industry wheel? After getting what I could from websites and magazines, I actually began to pay close attention to the personal stories that people had shared with me (repeatedly, mind you) since we first announced our engagement. Every woman with a daughter or a marriage license related her own tales of wedding planning woes, such as ordering butterflies to be released at the end of the ceremony. Half were dead when the time came for release (note to self: no butterflies.) I asked for critiques of recent weddings they attended. I even asked about centerpieces, and once again, few could remember what had been placed on the table between the wine glasses and the bread dishes.

There was one exception: a grocer had provided pyramids of vegetables as centerpieces at his daughter’s wedding. What a glorious sight! Apparently, all the elderly aunts were seen trying to stuff broccoli and squash into their purses before leaving the reception. (Note to self: vegetables as party favors?) All of the various tips could be boiled down to this: families will guide most of the planning, but the rest you can make up on your own, and just about anything goes.

    3. Be honest about what you want.

Grab a bottle of wine, your notes and your groom, presuming he still wants to talk, and settle in for the night. Are you really looking for the fairy tale entrance under an arch of fresh flower blooms? Or is a sleek, classy affair more your style? The myth of the “white wedding” still guides the choices of most brides-to-be, but few retain the idea of being a virginal gift to a man. As we have learned, modern couples work to balance the traditions of two families while trying to create a day that really reflects their individual styles.

Instead of six bridesmaids and ushers, we are just having our best man and maid of honor. I have learned how to say, “That’s a good suggestion. We’ll keep it in mind,” when I probably won’t follow that particular advice. We are lucky to both have sane mothers who provide practical solutions and display patience. Ultimately, it is our show and the decisions rest on us.

We have already made the most important decision: where to eat. Choosing a location for the reception was the hardest part. Would we like to have the reception in an historic house, or maybe a hotel rooftop? Nope, we chose an Italian restaurant. Simply put: we love food (pastries anyone?). I keep thinking that we are throwing a huge dinner party for 100-plus people. We just have to stop by church before dinner. The ceremony will be short. We know what love is. We know we’ve got it. Let’s get to the food.

So, the planning continues as we head into the final stretch before the Big Day in October. I think I want candles as centerpieces, as Martha suggested, since the event is in the evening and it will give the room a nice warm glow. That nice warm glow is what we want our guests to feel all evening. By October I’ll be an expert in something that I hope to never, ever do again. These are very useful skills if I ever feel the need to change careers. I will be qualified to become a theater producer, political mediator, financial advisor or hey, even a wedding consultant. Then I can tell other people what to have for centerpieces. I wonder where I can find that much broccoli?

Eden Lalor is an obvious bride-to-be who lives, works and worries about her wedding in Washington, DC.

Sites Mentioned

Click to read what the  presidential candidates  say about marriage

Women.com
TheKnot.com
WeddingPages.com
MarthaStewart
ModernBride

Elsewhere on the Web
A Wedding Story
Amazing, but true. The Discovery Channel airs real-life stories about couples and features links to other wedding sites, including live images of a wedding chapel in Las Vegas.
Marriage A la Market
When did rational economic choice become the bedrock of the American family?
Inside the Love Lab
We’re in the control room of the so-called Love Lab, deep within a nondescript tan brick building on the University of Washington campus–the quantitative heart of psychologist John Gottman’s twenty-eight-year-old body of work. His goal is to solve that long-standing mystery: What makes some marriages thrive and others explode into shards of acrimony and loneliness?
Five Ways to Propose Marriage (fiction)
from Boston Review

From the Marriage Issue
Check out our list of marriage statistics.