Once you come down from cloud nine, it’s time to start thinking about the wedding day. Use the first few weeks of your engagement to dream big.

Start by envisioning the wedding of a lifetime. Imagine all the glorious details without regard to cost. Reality and budget can be dealt with once your actual planning time gets underway. This is the time to hope beyond your wildest dreams.

page 5, Weddings 101, Honor Books

Now, you might be saying, “Miss Road Trip, why you gotta be like that; what’s wrong with a little daydreaming about the big day?”

Allow me to explain.

It’s not the day-dreaming, its the qualifier that you not worry about what you can afford. It’s sets a bride (or groom–or both!) up for one of 2 scenarios:

Option A: Bride-to-be dreams up this elaborate fete full of every awesome thing she’s seen in movies and online, only to be disappointed that her castle in the sky has to be shrunk down into a subterranean split-level. That disappointment rears its ugly head at every appointment and decision-spot along the way and she’s a holy terror of ‘zilla proportions trying to make silk out of shoelaces.

Option B: Bridey knows she can’t afford the wedding of her dreams in the conventional sense, but that’s why they invented credit, right? Right! So the credit cards get maxed out, savings eradicated, maybe even some hijinks in fiance’s name or going behind Daddy’s back. The result is the same: blockbuster wedding and your own personal deficit as you start off your new life mired in bills and fighting over why there’s no money. Because there will be fights.

Money, after all, is one of the biggies when it comes to reasons marriages fail. Not the lack of money, necessarily, but the fighting over it.

Gathering ideas, sure. Seeing what’s out there, what’s trending, what’s new since you last attended a wedding? Absolutely. Hoping “beyond your wildest dreams” that some fairy wedding planner is going to sprinkle you with magic dust and make your Cinderalla dreams come true? Recipe for disaster.

But it is what the Wedding Industrial Complex would have you swallow hook, line, and 2nd mortgage-sinker.

Lest you think, though, that I’m totally bashing this little 6.99 gift book, I did find a few gems within its diminutive covers. Namely these quotes from Ogden Nash:

June means weddings in everyone’s lexicon,
Weddings in Sweedish, weddings in Mexican.
Breezes play Mendelssohn, treeses play Youmans,
Birds wed birds, and humans wed humans.
All year long the gentlemen woo,
But the ladies dream of a June “I do.”
Ladies grow loony, and gentlemen loonier;
This year’s June is next year’s Junior.

page 42, Weddings 101, Honor Books

The organ booms, the procession begins,
The rejected suitors square their chins,
and angels swell the harmonious tide
of blessing upon the bonnie bride.
but [sic] blessings also on him without whom
there would be no bride.
I mean the groom.

page 119, Weddings 101, Honor Books

These Nash poems made me wonder if he had anything else to impart that might be more suitable advice for the marrieds or soon to be. One of these might be fun for the next time you need a witty saying for a card or even a toast:

A Word to Husbands

To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

(for my fellow April-babies)

Always Marry An April Girl

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true —
I love April, I love you.

(a sweet, but lengthy sentiment)

To My Valentine

More than a catbird hates a cat,
Or a criminal hates a clue,
Or the Axis hates the United States,
That’s how much I love you.

I love you more than a duck can swim,
And more than a grapefruit squirts,
I love you more than a gin rummy is a bore,
And more than a toothache hurts.

As a shipwrecked sailor hates the sea,
Or a juggler hates a shove,
As a hostess detests unexpected guests,
That’s how much you I love.

I love you more than a wasp can sting,
And more than the subway jerks,
I love you as much as a beggar needs a crutch,
And more than a hangnail irks.

I swear to you by the stars above,
And below, if such there be,
As the High Court loathes perjurious oathes,
That’s how you’re loved by me.

Have you come across any interesting quotes or verse lately?