I recently bought 3 books on wedding planning from Amazon.com (NOT something I make a habit of . . . my new year's resolution is to buy more organic and local, even if it does cost more.) Amazon pulled up a list informing me that people who bought Bridal Bargains also bought 50 Signs of Mental Illness: A Guide to Understanding Mental Health. Sigh.

I've had a hard enough time coming to terms with the idea of marriage. Ok, so it settles and stabilizes society. And it will be nice to spend my life in a relationship that never loses it's shared vision, despite being characterized by almost constant levity.

And of course nobody, NOBODY, should be denied the right to marry. But neither should nice people be stuffed into the extremely limited mold of American nuptial celebrations. My books recommend getting married outside, with sandals under your taffeta princess gown, for a non-traditional twist. Jesus!

We're planning a summer-camp style family reunion. Hopefully this will emphasize the one benefit of weddings I accept: having family and friends meet. Still, I've been approaching the planning process with the same enthusiasm I have for cleaning out the refrigerator. My reluctance comes from my fear of being judged by various people on the guest list. I fear older people in the family will be confused by the missing traditional elements. (My grandmother can be exceptionally piquing. When I graduated from high school she likened what I thought was a perfectly beautiful green linen dress to a gunnysack.) There are also several younger friends and family who LOVED planning their weddings and are unwilling to accept that being a princess is something I stopped aspiring to around age 8.

A couple kegs, cheap wine, and a weekend of summer-camp style color wars, complete with an epic game of capture the flag, is what we're going for. And Grammy is just going to have to grit her dentures when I wear my favorite green linen dress.