I’d never been one of those girls who’d dreamt about her perfect wedding. The virgin-white dress, the exorbitant costs, the fuss over a big, shiny rock—none of it ever appealed to me. I wanted to find a lifelong partner, and a family sounded nice, too, but honestly? I never cared much about that piece of paper. So why did I just marry my boyfriend after pondering it for a mere two hours? One (evidently all-too-common) reason: health insurance.

I’m a regular watcher of TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress.” Why? I have no idea. If you’ve never seen it, the reality show takes place at Kleinfeld Bridal, a huge bridal store in Manhattan. Each half-hour episode follows three or four brides shopping for their wedding gowns. Usually, some hijinks occur. A mom is mean to a bride! Somebody cries! A husband sees the dress before the wedding! For sure, women have diverse tastes when it comes to what to get married in, from the totally conservative to the downright weird. But there’s a certain type of bride who likes a certain type of dress. She’ll start out by saying she wants a gown with a “wow factor.” Something that “glitters.” Something that’s “over the top!” Then, she’ll mention her favorite designer by name; invariably, it’s Pnina Tornai. Take this one, for example. It’s Aphrodite meets Liberace by way of silver lamé. Fug of fantastical? Sound off in the comments. More after the jump…

A wacky new study called “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” followed 2,500 couples who are married or have lived together for at least six years and discovered there are, gasp, lots of factors that lead to the success (or failure) of a relationship besides just falling in or out of love. For example — this is going to shock you — women who want babies much more than their husbands are more likely to divorce than women who marry men who want kids just as much as they do! People whose parents divorced are more than 50 percent more likely to divorce or separate than those whose parents stayed married. And people who are on their second or third marriage are 90 percent more likely to divorce than spouses who are both on their first marriages. One in five couples who have children before marriage, either from a previous relationship or their current one, will separate, compared to just one in ten couples who do not have children before getting married. Just one in ten? That figure seems to contradict the finding that a quarter of all relationships will end within six years and half within 25, but maybe I’m splitting hairs here. Age is another factor that determines the success of marriage — men who marry before 25 are twice as likely to get divorced as those who marry after turning 25, as are men who are more than nine years older than their wives. Stuff that doesn’t matter so much? A woman’s employment status, country of birth, religious background and education levels. [via Daily Mail]

If you use Twitter, you know that in the lower right-hand corner of your page, there is always a list of the top 10 “trending topics” that tells you what everyone is tweeting about. Sometimes everyone’s got “paranormal activity” or Taylor Swift on the brain, but oftentimes, people sound off on random topic ideas. Fun, right?

Well, things “a real wife ...” should do has become a trending topic on Twitter and just wait until you read the hardy-har-har list of things people have come up with! I know some people are being silly and joking, but it’s got to be some statement on gender roles if literally hundreds of people are suggesting “a real wife” should keep her man happy with food and sex. Or maybe these clowns are just confusing a real wife with “A Real Housewife”? After the jump, the most barf-tastic, as well as funniest, favorites.

At Monday night’s Rolling Stone party in New York City, Shakira made an off-handed comment to a NY Daily News reporter. “Yes, I’d love to have kids,” she said. “But I’m much too young to get married!” Cue the spin. “Shakira seems to have her priorities out of order,” reads an item in today’s issue. The reporter interpreted this quote as Shakira saying she was ready for kids, but not marriage. I don’t get that logical jump—she was just saying that she’d love to have kids, at some point in life. And I personally find it very cool that a 32-year-old woman who’s in a nine-year relationship says she isn’t ready to get married. (Though, if memory serves me correctly, she and Antonio de la Rúa have been engaged for a while, no?) It’s just refreshing that she’s not in a rush, like so many famous folks. The average American woman gets married at age 25.6—and I often wonder if the institution of marriage would look different if that number were a bit higher. What do you think? [NY Daily News]

If you’re planning a wedding—or, you know, planning a wedding in your dreams—The Red Sole Bride is a must-read for the bride who likes the finer things. Written by a Hong Kong bride-to-be, this online diary of her wedding planning process covers everything from a bridal shower tea party to 10 must-have wedding day portraits to monogrammed cigars for the boys. Written for the modern bride and not the blushing bride, there are iPhone wedding apps, chic bridal lingerie, and wedding dresses that shows off tattoos. Now I just need to find a groom ... [The Red Sole Bride]

Ask almost any childless women in her 30s to name five things that have been on her mind lately, and there’s a good chance she’ll mention her biological clock. It may not be the first thing she names — her career, the economy, saving for a house, her parents’ health, the health of her relationship, finishing her dissertation, fitting back into her skinny jeans, and finding someone to share her life with may be getting more of her attention; but for a vast majority of us, the idea of having kids is something we think about nearly as much, if not more, than almost everything else. After all, our biological clocks and the issues of when, whether, and how long we have left to procreate determine so many other variables in our life. And for those of us who wait until our 30s — a quickly growing number of us these days — it’s a decision we face when the stakes are especially high.

I was a little bit unsettled when I read a recent Cary Tennis column on Salon called “I’m 32 already. Time to get married!” I realized that I could have written the question myself (well, I just want to meet someone great). A woman is torn between wanting to meet a life partner and wanting to follow every fun, salacious flirtation that comes her way – because, after all, isn’t that the best part of being single? Tending to choose the latter, she knows that it will not ultimately get her what she wants.

If you thought your friend was about to make a mistake—say, buy a computer that gets a ton of viruses or stay in a really dodgy hostel in Rome—you’d try to convince them to do something different, right? Well, I feel a little guilty because I have a friend who might be making a mistake by getting married this summer and I tried to talk him out of it.

There are only two reasons why I’d move in and live with another girlfriend. We’re married and determined to fill a sweatshop with our nimble-fingered love critters. Or she cracks me in the head with a shovel, sews my mouth shut, replaces my eyeballs with marbles, and sits my stuffed body in the corner. Whatever you do, don’t move in with your boyfriend. What? It’s too late? Sweet Zeus, Odin, and Quetzalcoatl, winged serpent god of the Aztecs! I hope your cohabitation doesn’t end the way two (two!) of mine did – with helicopters launching off the roof amidst tornadoes of debris and smoke, a single individual hanging off the skids, flipping the bird to the person whose name is on the lease.

Post-failed engagement, I’m not sure how into the idea of marriage I am. I think it’s great for other people and maybe I’ll really want to get married eventually, but for now, I don’t really see it as the end-all, be-all of my romantic future. That said, I’m all about commitment and monogamy, just without a legal document decreeing it so. But according to a conversation on “The View” this morning, this kind of commitment—the wedding band-less kind—is not as serious. The gals were talking about David Letterman of course, and Whoopi kept exclaiming that during the time that Letterman was schtooping his staff, he may have been with Regina Lasko for nearly 20 years, but he hadn’t married her yet. And based on all the clatter Whoopi has heard around the Hot Topics table over the years, that made his cheating not as bad. I think that’s ridiculous.

On the season finale of “Entourage” this week, one of the characters, Eric, proposes to his girlfriend, Sloan, only it wasn’t a romantic get-down-on-one-knee proposal, so much as it was a seemingly spur-of-the-moment declaration of his commitment to her. “You’re never going to be able to commit — not to anyone,” Sloan accuses during a heated argument. “I’ll get in that car right now, drive to Vegas, and commit to you for the rest of my life,” Eric shoots back before pulling an engagement ring out of his pocket. It’s not exactly the kind of grand proposal women dream of, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s more than most of us get these days ... and if maybe that’s OK.

Yesterday, I came across a wedding story in the Washington Post that caught my eye: “In the End It’s a Fairy Tale.” Who doesn’t like a happy ending? It was the wedding story of interior designer Kerilyn Fox, 34, and chef Peter Russo, 38. The bride describes their path to the altar as “part fairy tale, part ‘Jerry Springer’ episode.” They were together; they broke up. He proposed; she turned him down. She moved in with another man; finally, she left the other man for Russo. Fox says they were “meant to be,” adding, “In the end it’s a fairy tale. I’m marrying the man of my dreams.” The story is accompanied by a photo slide show, and while they seem like a happy, well-matched couple, I couldn’t help but notice Russo looks to be morbidly obese. That got me wondering: Would you marry the man of your dreams ... if he was obese? Put your thoughts in the comments. 

NOTE: The Washington Post requested that we take down the photo. So we did.

The good news: my boyfriend has engagement rings on the brain. The bad news: he’s been reading the Freakonomics Blog on the New York Times website. Why is this bad? The Freakonomics economists solve puzzling economic capers of day-to-day life, most recently tackling what a “bad investment” it is for a man to give his girlfriend a diamond ring:

Q: It doesn’t seem rational for a young man to give his girlfriend an expensive engagement ring when he proposes. My thought is that the most efficient use of that dollar is to invest it into something that a young couple would value most e.g. a down payment on a first house, etc. The diamond market is a monopoly and diamond prices are manipulated so that prices are always high. Can you construct a concise and logical argument that young men across the world can use to not buy diamond rings? After all, you already are offering the most valuable thing that you have (your heart) to your soon-to-be bride. In this age, why is a token like an overpriced rock still needed?

In response to this penny-pincher’s question, economist Tim Harford replied, “I tend to agree with you.”

Uh oh.

You’ve got the ring, you’ve set the date. You’re dreaming of your beautiful wedding gown and the lovely slow walk down the aisle. The reception place is booked, the flowers and favors ordered, the menu confirmed, and the honeymoon destination set. Add to this the fact that “you’re so completely in love” and all you focus on is the wedding day.

You’re all ready for your wedding; but, are you ready for marriage?

The “M” word is something that many couples don’t really consider until after the honeymoon. With all the dizzying preparations surrounding the planning and executing of a wedding, the reality of married life takes a back seat. Sometimes its “seat” is so far in the recesses of your mind that you find you and your partner have prepared for everything, down to the minutest detail, except the actual marriage itself. Continue reading...

“Marriage doesn’t really mean anything to me. I feel like in many ways marriage is more for the families [of the couple] than for the people involved, so I don’t gravitate to it. But I’ve also said that the minute that Jen is like, ‘You need to marry me,’ I’ll be like, ‘All right!’ We are both on the same page.”

—Jon Hamm, on why he and longtime girlfriend Jennifer Westfeldt haven’t gotten hitched [Elle]

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, was published in 2006, and her followup book was touted in the back of at least 200,000 copies of the book. Tentatively titled Weddings and Evictions, it was described as a memoir about Gilbert’s “unexpected journey into second marriage” and was supposed to hit shelves in 2009. But Gilbert scrapped her 500-page draft of the book and told her publisher she needed more time. What she had wasn’t working.

Because Eat, Pray, Love had been such a huge success, staying in the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list for 57 weeks, Viking wanted the followup to come out as quickly as possible. But her editor gave her another year, and this second draft, now called Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage will be published in January.

The man I was engaged to was my first real adult love. It was mutual, it was committed, and it was mature. But there were other “loves.” Adam, the long-haired hippie in 8th grade, who held my hand once and played the acoustic guitar; Rob, the twenty-something video store employee, whom I stalked for the entire summer before I turned 15; Jesse who gave me emotional support when my parents divorced the summer after freshman year of college; and lastly, Aidan*, a fellow staff member at my college newspaper whom I fell for—HARD—my senior year.

“I also feel sorry for the other woman. I am sure she is a fine person. It can’t be fun for her, though I do sometimes question her judgment. If she knew the newspaper had those E-mails back in December, why did she want him to come in June? But I can’t go there too much. All I can do is pray for her because she made some poor choices.”

— Jenny Sanford, in an interview for the ever-important September issue of Vogue, speaking of Maria Belén Chapur, the Argentine woman with whom her husband, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, was discovered earlier this year to be having an extramarital affair. [via WashingtonPost]