I’m not even engaged and I frequently have thoughts like, “I have to tone my upper arms so they look skinny in my wedding dress!” How screwed up is that?!?! A blogger who actually is engaged and “sick and tired of seeing ads for ‘wedding weight loss,’” started up a blog where brides of all sizes can contribute wedding pics. We hope it’s a relief for blushing brides-to-be needs who’re sick of all the body-hating noise from shows like “Bulging Brides.” [This Is What A Beautiful Bride Looks Like]

Weddings can get kind of crazy. Sometimes daddy drinks too much and makes an awkward toast, or your great grandmother shows up and misplaces her false teeth while you’re cutting the cake. Other times the bride slaps a cop and spends her wedding night in jail. Wait, what!? I know it sounds crazy, but that is just what happened to a bride in Barcelona. The reception got a little wild and the bride and groom’s families started fighting. When the cops arrived to break it up, the newly wedded woman grabbed a po-po by the neck and smacked him. So much for sex on her wedding night. A jail cell is hardly a honeymoon suite. [NY Daily News]

This is more proof that you buy the dress to fit the bride—you don’t try to fit the bride to the dress. Samantha Clowe, a 34-year-old woman in England, was always overweight, and was determined not to be a “fat bride” at her wedding. So she tried a diet program called LighterLife, which had her eating specially prepared soups, snacks, and shakes everyday for a total of only 530 calories a day for 11 weeks. She did lose a lot of weight. But then her fiancé found her collapsed at the top of the stairs in their house. He called an ambulance, but she was pronounced dead soon after from heart failure. So, so sad. And a cautionary tale. [Daily Mail]

My husband and I are married not because I said, “I do,” but because he said, “I’ll do it.”

Most of the time, we hear bad things about brides—they’re dressing their friends in unflattering polyester blends, or freaking out over a misplaced zinnia in a bouquet. But get ready for a bride who’s a real American hero. Last night, Georgette Clemons was leaving her wedding reception when she saw smoke coming from a nearby house. She ran in and saved an entire family, which included pulling a woman out from the heavy smoke who didn’t want to leave without her animals. By the time the firefighters arrived, Georgette was outside, folding up her blackened wedding dress. Okay, please tell me someone is starting a comic based around a bride superhero. Her garter belt could become a slingshot and her veil, a parachute! Seriously, we have a best-seller on our hands. [Yahoo!]

This week, I received a letter from a woman who’s having commitment issues about her friend’s wedding. Here’s what she has to say about her cold feet:

“I met up with my old college roommate to celebrate her engagement. Although I hadn’t seen her in years, when she asked me to be a bridesmaid, I totally said yes. Clearly, I was drunk. The worst part is, now I’m remembering what a friggin’ control freak she is. I’ve pretended to give a hoot at countless dress fittings and didn’t even complain that the dresses she picked for us were hid and $500. But now she wants her bachelorette party to be a week long vacay in Vegas. I’m not made of moolah, or time off from work. I know this is like he most special day of her life. But it’s not mine and I want out! Can I quit? She’s already driving me crazy and her wedding isn’t til October. I do still want to be her friend, just once her bridezilla days are over.”

The first year of marriage is the hardest, I’d been told many times by my friends. While I wasn’t sure if I was prepared for the uncertain road that lay ahead, I certainly felt like I’d gotten fair warning and couldn’t expect to be surprised by the challenges that would come once I entered marriage. Once the wedding is over, it’s the two of you, making a life together, and that’s not easy for anyone.

So, I felt ready to encounter squabbles and misunderstandings and the taking-for-granted that comes when you know someone really well and expect to be around them for a long time. When something came up, I could tell myself, “OK, this is normal.”

But there were some other parts of newlywed life that bummed me out, stuff that I never thought would have mattered to me ... until it did. 

There was one point during my wedding-planning process that I was afraid I was losing my mind and becoming what I feared and hated most—the bridezilla.

The next best thing to having your own wedding is getting invited to one by your boyfriend. There’s something about a man who wants you on his arm at a celebration of love—with the added lubricant of an open bar. So when my boyfriend Mike asked me to be his date to his friend’s big day, I was so excited I nearly went into debt over a pricey cheese plate present and a new dress with matching lingerie—not that I planned on keeping it all on that night.

Kids grow up so fast these days.  By 3rd grade, I had definitely played pretend bride, but a girl in Yemen was forced to do it for reals. At the bold age of eight, her parents married her off to a man over four times her age. It’s all fun and games until someone gets raped and beaten. Abandoned, alone, abused, what is a girl to do? Be her own superhero. Nojoud Mohammed Ali (no relation to the fighter) is a champion!  After escaping her husband’s home, she managed to find her way to a courthouse and asked for justice.  Thankfully, in court last week, she secured her freedom and is now possibly the world’s youngest divorcee, but definitely the world’s bravest baby girl. [ABC News]

That’s right: free cake!  And you don’t need to go to Costco on the weekend to get a bite, you just have to go to Brides.com. The site is running a national designer cake contest and will give away the nominees—which are sure to taste as good as they look. The confections draw inspiration from designer Christian LaCroix and pop artist Wayne Theibaud to a chef’s grandma’s wallpaper. Although the website has finally found a better reason to marry than a green card, er, I mean love, the price tags may make you sicker than eating the whole thing solo—which is probably why they’re only giving the cakes away to brides. So, unfortunately, this sugar-lovin’ single gal can’t apply unless some sucker proposes soon. But, if you’ve already won someone’s heart, you can also win a cake by voting on your favorite entry. Dang, some girls have all the luck! [Brides.com]