Funnily enough, I think what struck me most and made me happiest about their entire love story was that when the Big Moments happened, Niles was usually trying to make them Momentous… and then they just happened quietly, naturally, and in ways that could never have been matched – let alone outdone – by the huge, elaborate plans he originally made.

When Niles was ready to propose marriage, he took everything to huge, dramatic excess. He had little people in angel costumes, a chorus, a guy in a medieval costume with a great long poot horn with a banner hanging from it, a five page proposal involving ridiculous metaphors and iambic pentameter, and Wolfgang Puck cooking dinner.

When Daphne got there, she was sick as a dog and just wanted a quiet evening in front of the fire with the man she loved. Of course much comedic gold was mined from Niles and Frasier’s efforts to get all the extraneous people (not to mention Frasier’s addition of live doves!) out of the apartment behind Daphne’s back so that Niles could bring it all together again at a later date.

In the end, he just realizes how full his heart is in that moment, pulls the ring from his pocket, and asks her to marry him. It doesn’t even matter that his proposal is interrupted by a long, juicy session of nose-blowing. The moment is perfect because it’s two people in love making the decision to be together for the rest of their lives.

A lot of people start out viewing proposals and weddings the way Niles does. Bigger is necessarily better, more elaborate means more proof of love… but I’ve never agreed with that philosophy. I think it’s the little things that make the process special, whether you choose to do things elaborately or without frills.

I have no beef, certainly, with those who choose to go all out with the details. Details are fun. Sometimes over the top is just who you are as a couple, and that’s great.

Just never let the hooplah overwhelm the most important things. Don’t imagine that it’s impossible to express your love on a smaller scale. Remember to take time to notice the little things that make things truly special.

Big or small, expensive or bargain basement, steeped in tradition or wackily personal, do it your way. Have the wedding you want.

But don’t let the style overshadow the moment. Keep your eyes and hearts open to the quiet things that hold the most meaning.

So I watched an episode.

The Santinis had been married for eighteen years (hey! that’s how long Mr. Twistie and I have been married!) but never got over the horror of their wedding day. You see, they hired someone to make the bridesmaids dresses who didn’t get them done in time. She had promised delivery on the day of the wedding to the church… and apparently nobody thought that plan to be potentially fraught with disaster.

The big day arrived, but the bridesmaids dresses didn’t, much to the consternation of all aware of the situation. For some reason passing all understanding, when the bride’s grandmother began foaming at the mouth about having the bridesmaids wear the groomsmen’s shirts, nobody pressed a cold compress to her forehead or called the paramedics. Instead, they listened to her.

And so it was that the bridesmaids marched up the aisle wearing the now bare-chested groomsmen’s shirts and matching high heels. One bridesmaid was tall enough that the shirt tails didn’t entirely cover her underpants.

Mrs. Santini left the church howling ‘I need a drink!’ and has been distraught over her wedding photos and video ever since.

Then Diann Valentine swooped in and fixed everything… eighteen years later.

I had some hope for this show, based on the fever dream that it might not wind up a painful hybrid of My Fair Wedding and Queen for a Day.

Also? While I detest My Fair Wedding with a passion beyond description, I do have to admit that when David Tutera gets done planning a wedding, it’s usually a pretty nice wedding. It may be provided with scads of eye-rolling and paternalistic weasel crap, but it’s a pretty event in the end. As much of a complete set of tools as Mr. Tutera comes off, he would never allow a groom to arrive at his wedding wearing a hat that was obviously too large for his head. Ms. Valentine picked that hat. Then she showed up wearing a gown that looked like something I saw Morticia Addams donating to Good Will recently.

And of course this show – like so many other wedding reality shows – wants you to swallow a huge dose of ‘see? it’s impossible to do this without a professional planner because you’re really just a gibbering idiot’ without even noticing you’re doing it. Valentine has said in press releases that if only these couples had had a real event planner on hand, these disasters would never have happened.

Okay, I can see how a planner might have helped in the case of the missing bridesmaid’s dresses. She could have counseled the couple to buy from a shop, or not give over the work to someone who didn’t intend to deliver before the actual wedding day. If the dresses didn’t turn up, she could have come up with a much better plan B than turning a church wedding into some sort of intramural strip club theme… but then again, so could one single random person with their head screwed on straight.

All it would have taken would be one person telling all the bridesmaids to run home, get their nicest dress in roughly the same length as the original dresses (or a similar color, or whatever was going to pull them together visually at the altar), and hurry back dressed in those. Would it have been utter perfection? No, of course not. You can’t guarantee that any five random women – even in 1992 – would all have tea length teal dresses in their closets. But would it have been a bazillion times better than what granny came up with? You bet your sweet bippy, it would!

So, yeah, not really absolutely necessary to have a wedding planner to come up with a solution. And I can’t think that having an event planner running the show would have helped in particular with the groom with a heart condition who flatlined during the vows. I’m thinking the paramedic best man at that wedding was a lot more useful. He got the groom’s ticker back on track with CPR.

So with all of this leaving a bit of a bad taste in my mouth, I have to say I love the story I ran across this morning about Mike and Nancy Rogers. The happy couple hails from Nova Scotia and this is a real photo of their wedding day:

See that burning building behind the beaming couple? Yeah, that was to have been their wedding venue, otherwise known as the late White Point resort.

The eighty-three year old mostly wooden building caught fire while Nancy and Mike were getting ready for their big moment in two of the outlying cabins on the property. The couple still wanted to get married that day, no matter where they had to do it. The quick-thinking staff moved the event to another outlying building that was in no immediate danger, and the ceremony went on as planned… or at least as close to as planned as possible.

This is the second marriage for both Mike and Nancy, and that might have made them just a bit more philosophical about the whole incident:

“Our last weddings were picture-perfect; nothing went wrong. But the marriages didn’t work out,” she says. “Rocky wedding, fantastic marriage is the way we see it.”

The general manager of the resort is also confident that they can rebuild and reopen. I wish them every luck with that plan!

As for Mike and Nancy, I think they’re creating their own luck. But I wish them well, too.

Somehow I don’t think they feel the need to call anyone in to fix what happened to them.

I’d like a word with you over here, if I may, just for a moment in between your busy schedule of exposing the ‘reality’ of weddings to us all.

Stop it. Just stop it.

What? You don’t know what I’m talking about?

I’m talking about the way brides (and the men you identify as the ‘woman’ in gay male couples) are portrayed in your shows.

It would be one thing if there were truly any variety in how you portray us. Then it would be about individuals. But as things stand, you have two ways of illustrating what it is to be a bride in modern America, and neither portrait is either flattering or accurate to the vast majority of women getting married.

On the one hand, you show us the adorably befuddled girl (it matters not if she is seventeen or seventy-three; she is still a girl in this version) who just can’t wrap her tiny brain around all the very, very, very difficult concepts involved in planning a wedding. She can’t tell a canape from a camellia and desperately needs a big, strong wedding planner(/salon owner/cake decorator/florist/etc.) to make everything happen magically despite her utter inability to contribute thoughtfully to the process. She is patted on the head and allowed to cutely dribble in a corner while the experts figure out the painfully difficult logistics of getting her married in a way that won’t embarrass her every time she opens her wedding album (assuming she can figure out how to do that) for the rest of her life. Thanks to the experts, she gets her magical princess moment that she could never have made happen by herself, the silly little thing.

On the other hand is the vicious, sociopathic, potentially homicidal whack job (who, again, can be any age from Diapers to Depends and is gunning for a guest spot as the unsub in the reality version of Criminal Minds) who doesn’t know a canape from a camellia, but will cut you if you point that out. She is unleashed upon an unsuspecting populace and allowed to make a mockery of her marriage before it begins. But once she ties the knot, she becomes magically docile (or at least it turns out she really, really, really [maybe] is in love with the hapless mope she’s been abusing on camera for the past two episodes of the show), so it’s all worth it in the end because she gets her magical princess moment.

You see my problem here? You can’t? Let me spell this out as simply as I can: you’re telling us that all women are utterly incapable of planning a party and staying rational at the same time. That’s the bottom line of all your programming. We have the choice of being thought of as helpless or god-help-us with nothing in between.

Can you imagine for one moment if there was a reality show about planning black tie charity events where every single client who walked through the door of the planner’s business was assumed to be a blithering idiot with no clue how anything at all is done? And some of the women I’ve seen on bridal reality shows being presented as drooling, brainless incompetents say they have jobs where putting on big parties and organizing conferences is simply one of their duties.

Trust me, anyone who can throw a major charity event or put together a large conference has more than the skills required to organize a wedding reception, whether they rely on hired guns or become DIY divas.

And then you get the third layer where some of the worst antics in the history of the show Bridezillas have been committed by women who claim to be wedding industry professionals! Almost every season there seems to be at least one ‘zilla who is a wedding planner who still can’t seem to figure out why anybody should expect her to feed her guests or invite her MOH’s husband. In this case, even if you are a professional, you are still utterly incompetent to handle your own wedding plans! Why? Because you are a bride, and brides can’t do this stuff on their own.

So wedding reality show creators, STOP IT!

The vast majority of women getting married today are reasonable people of at least reasonable intelligence. Many of us have already planned major social events of one kind or another and have some clue about keeping guests at said events entertained and fed. Some of us have already been involved in the planning of one or more weddings, and understand what’s involved. Even if we haven’t done that, most of us are intelligent enough to comprehend the basic concepts once they are presented to us.

Whether we hire professionals to carry out our plans or choose to keep control in our hot little hands or – the most common approach – do a little of each, we are adults. We have our own tastes, preferences, dreams, and nightmares. We are not interchangeable dolls for the wedding profession to dress up however they see fit at the moment. We are not rabid dogs. We are not cautionary tales.

People.

We are people.

And we’d like to be treated as such, thank you very much.

But while I was sick, I used the opportunity to scroll through some back episodes of Bridezillas on my DVR. Yeah, I know, it probably didn’t help me get better any quicker, but it’s easier to watch through a fog, I find. Still, there are enough unspoken cultural assumptions in the show that I find it valuable to me as a bridal blogger to watch the painful dog and pony show.

All the same, while I expect a bunch of abusive behavior on the part of the subjects (after all, that’s the point of the show) every once in a while someone comes along on that show who I think isn’t necessarily putting on an act for the cameras. One of these was Johanne.

Okay, some of her shtick was the same old, same old. Treat bridesmaids like crap and then complain they don’t love her, check. Scream at family members, check. Obsess over tiny details and claim they’re the ruination of her life, check. Repeatedly inform her fiance that he’s a useless, lazy, moronic loser? Check and quadruple check. I expect this in every episode from every Bridezilla.

But then came the tattoo parlor incident. Johanne informed her hapless love, Ed, that they were going to the tattoo parlor to get matching tattoos. Okay, it may not be my idea of romance, but it was clear from a single glance at both parties that they have no fear of the needle. I’m down with those who want them getting matching body art.

When they reached the parlor, though, Johanne had the artist blindfold Ed so he couldn’t see what his new ink was going to look like until it was too late. What Johanne had arranged (and the tattoo artist apparently merrily agreed to ink this into a man’s skin without his prior knowledge or consent) was to add the words ‘Property of’ to the tattoo Ed already had of Johanne’s name on his chest.

And while Ed was being permanently marked as simply an object in her life, Johanne was a few feet away not getting anything about property of anyone tattooed on herself. In point of fact, she spent that time sitting on the lap of the parlor owner and arranging to meet him for a pre-nuptial date!

When she went on said date, it turned out to be a threesome including the tattoo parlor owners’ wife, too. According to Johanne this was okay because she wasn’t actually married yet. Never mind that she’d been with Ed for twelve years, already lived with him, accepted his marriage proposal, and was two days away from tying that legal knot… it wasn’t really cheating since she wasn’t really married yet.

Riiiiiiigggghhhhht.

Ed almost didn’t show up for the wedding, and demanded his bride give him a little truth before they stood at the altar… but caved pretty much immediately without having learned the truth about Johanne’s pre-marital threesome. She did admit to having kissed a woman, but didn’t happen to mention how many body parts on said woman she kissed, the fact that her husband was also involved in the incident, nor the fact that they were guests at the wedding. Seriously? How tacky can you get?

Yep, it was a new low even for Bridezillas. I’m just sorry I saw it.

Oh, and see that huge head behind David? Yeah, that would be Scott’s boss, Conan O’Brien. Scott is the costume designer for Conan’s show. So when Scott and longtime love David decided to tie the knot while the show was in New York – where their marriage would be legal – Conan offered to marry them himself on the show. One quick ordination by the Universal Life Church later, he was legally empowered to do just that.

The grooms wore fabulous brocade jackets designed by Scott and – in Jewish tradition – were married under a chuppah. The one big question seems to have been which groom would smash the glass at the end of the ceremony. Two grooms, two glasses, no problem.

While the ceremony was largely light-hearted and did include several gentle ribs from O’Brien (You never designed me anything like that!), it was also a serious wedding ceremony. Both men got a bit choked up reciting their custom vows. When Scott vowed to “… fill your every day with so much love” I have to say I got choked up, too.

Go here. Watch the video, if you missed it on television. Bring a hankie.

Scott, David, mazel tov!

As is to be expected in cases like this, rumors and blame are rife throughout the media. Kardashian responded with a flurry of tweets denying that she married for the publicity and money (she assures us all the money from her wedding gifts will be donated to the Dream Foundation… though I do believe Miss Manners would council her to consider returning them to the family members, friends and well-wishers who gave them if they are still in good condition, and the last time I checked, cash has a pretty significant shelf life) and assuring us she married truly for love.

“We filmed Kourtney giving birth, Khloe getting married, break ups, make ups, our best moments and our worst moments,” she writes. “These were all real moments. That’s what makes us who we are. We share, we give, we love and we are open!”

… and that’s kind of the thing, Kim. When you choose to live your life so very publicly, people will insist on having opinions about your life. It’s part of the contract. And some of those people will not think terribly highly of you, especially when you have a gigantic, public, media circus wedding followed by a marriage that lasts less than three months.

Kardashian insists that she just got ‘caught up with the hoopla and filming of the TV show’ to the point that she didn’t know how to break off the relationship. And I will say that Kim Kardashian is not the first bride to utter similar words of regret and confusion in the wake of a brief, disastrous marriage. I’ve heard more than one bride say that she really wasn’t sure when she was standing at the altar, but didn’t know how to stop the train at that point.

Look, what you or I think of Kim Kardashian as a person isn’t that important. Frankly, I prefer to think of her as little as her painfully public existence allows. But I think we can all take a moment to learn a Life Lesson from this sordid little tale: if you’re not really sure of the relationship, Don’t Get Married Anyway. A good friend of mine got married anyway. She’s now in the middle of a divorce and bemoaning the ten years she wasted on a marriage that never for one day made her truly happy.

If at any point along the way you find yourself seriously feeling trapped, unhappy, or fearful about being married to the person you said ‘yes’ to, slow things down. If you’re standing at the altar and the words ‘I do’ start to choke you, it’s still not too late. Don’t get married until you’re certain it’s what you want, and this is the person you want it with.

Your happiness matters.

But some wedding disasters are worse than others. While I would advise any bride to forget about a missing bouquet, a slightly embarrassing best man’s speech, or a brief technical malfunction with the sound system… there are some problems that are much more difficult to ignore.

And that’s where I Do Again steps up to make delayed wedding dreams come true. This is for the folks who really had serious disasters happen. This isn’t ‘we couldn’t afford a pretty party’ here. We’re talking weddings hit with hurricanes, venues destroyed by fire at the last minute, participants who had serious medical emergencies while standing at the altar, and seamstresses who make off with every gown for the entire bridal party. This is for serious disasters only.

Event designer Diann Valentine and 1-800-FLOWERS founder Dave McCann choose deserving couples and redo their I dos in grand style. In five days they organize everything to delight the couple and give them happier memories. The second season will be starting on WETV on November 13 at 10pm (9 Central).

So why watch another ‘celebrity planner makes it all soooo much better than a silly bride and groom could’ show?

Well, if nothing else, it’s a great perspective granter. After all, even if a lot of things did go wrong at your wedding, your groom probably didn’t have a heart attack.

Sometimes it’s useful to realize that things could have been a whole lot worse.

On a recent episode of Four Brides, one of the couples in the competition held their wedding and reception at the zoo. I was struck immediately by how charming a spot it was for celebrating. When guests arrived, they got to play at the zoo for a while before heading to the ceremony location. Once the couple had been pronounced legally spliced, the guests took a scenic tram ride to the reception area, where a giraffe peered over the wall into the festivities as if to request its own slice of wedding cake. All in all, it looked like a fun time. In fact, that’s the couple that won the honeymoon prize. I feel sure it was in significant part because of their fabulous location.

Some zoos have great entertainment and photo ops on their facilities that don’t directly involve animals, too. For instance, this is the Endangered Species carousel at the Lincoln Park Zoo:

I don’t know about you, but I think that looks like a lot of fun!

Of course not every zoo is set up for weddings. And not every zoo that is will have a package that you can afford and will be happy with. But if you’re looking for a slightly different venue, call or visit the website for your local zoo, wild animal park, or aquarium. You might just be surprised what they can do for you.

So yes, there are shows where I can see the payoff. It might not strike me as worth the downside, but I can see where someone else would consider it a reasonable price to pay.

But Bridezillas? The first few seasons there was a note at the end of the show that the couples featured got something like a three night stay at a honeymoon resort. I know I heard a rumor somewhere along the line that the couples get videotapes of their weddings, but I’ve never seen anything official that either confirms or denies said rumor. And these days the final credits say nothing about that honeymoon, either.

So I have to ask myself… what are these women getting out of the experience other than a chance to appear on national television as an object of derision and ritual scapegoat? After all, the point of the show is to behave as horribly as humanly possible for the amusement of others and the whitewashing of lesser bridal naughtiness on the parts of other brides. And they don’t appear to even be getting a honeymoon out of it anymore! Not that the honeymoon would have made it worthwhile to me in the first place.

In fact, I can’t think of anything that show could give me that would make up for being a national object of horror and disdain. Frankly, I stand firmly with Iago on this one: “But he that filches from me my good name robs me of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.”

Okay, they aren’t filching anything. Women are lining up around city blocks for the chance to hurl their good names to the four winds and anyone with a basic cable package. I’m just not sure why.

But I’m going to ask here and now, what would be your price? Do you even have one? What do you think could tempt you to audition for Bridezillas?

Okay, okay, I admit it. I’ve always had a bit of a thing when it comes to Tori Spelling. Pretty much my favorite tacky pleasure (and I do have more than a couple) is watching Tori Spelling get gutted like a fish on Lifetime Movie channel. The best part is the impassioned speech at the end about how everyone – including the victim – is to blame in her death with one, lone exception: Kellie Martin who actually does the gutting. Love it!

So when I came to the conclusion that I could no longer put off checking out Tori & Dean: sTORIbook Weddings (Yes, they really do spell it with a lower case s, an i instead of a y, and her name all in caps. I did not make that up), I was prepared to spend the time longing for Kellie Martin to make an unscheduled appearance and not be guilty again… but maybe of slapping Tori in the face with a moldy mackerel rather than outright murder. What? I’m not a total monster! I’m not really in favor of murdering anyone at all.

All in all, it wasn’t quite that bad, though there were a couple moments when I had a lazy desire for a spork to consider using on myself.

Look, don’t come to this show looking for wedding planning tips. It doesn’t really have any to give. You might see a color scheme or a design detail that you want to work into your own celebration, but that’s about it for the hardcore wedding planner. Logistics, costs, instructions, tips for setting priorities… yeah, there isn’t any of that. It’s purely a love letter to Tori for being fabulous.

In fact, Dean is pretty much a wash here. He tells Tori over and over that she’s wonderful, but in practical terms… well, in the episode I saw he made some boxes for rose petals for the guests to shower the bride and groom during their recessional, and he took the bride race car driving to help her build her decision making skills… or maybe just because he likes driving fast cars. We didn’t see much footage of the event, and the bride seemed little better at making up her mind about anything afterwards, so maybe it was just an exercise in ‘we have to show Dean doing something to justify his presence on the show’ after all. I hope he does something on another episode, but I’m not sure I’m going to bother to find out.

So with all this negativity and bile, do I have anything at all positive to say about the hour I spent watching this show? Surprisingly enough, I do. As much as I detest shows dedicated to fawning over a celebrity for being fabulous, there was one thing about Tori’s wedding planning service that I really, honestly did appreciate: her attitude.

This is entirely separate from the show’s attitude. The show is having a special private moment with the fantasy of Tori Spelling. It’s kind of embarrassing. Tori, however, does seem to have her priorities straight: she’s all about giving the couple the wedding they want. There are no fights with Tori about whether the couple’s vision is tasteful or not, whether it could be better if only they would allow Tori to make the major decisions for them. No, in fact her biggest frustration in the entire process (even bigger than trying to find the bride the Vera Wang gown she wanted that has been out of production for a couple years) was that the bride was very good at saying no to things she didn’t like, but really, really bad at explaining what it was she did want. And if the bride was faced with an imperfect but not awful (in her eyes) option, she couldn’t make up her mind even if Kellie Martin was fast approaching with a sharp implement in her hand.

In the end, of course, Tori cracks the bride’s code, figures out what Brenda wants, the wedding is everything the couple wanted, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Will I watch again? Probably not. Did I enjoy the show? Well, as I said there was one small aspect I really did like… but I don’t see a lot of point to the whole exercise. It’s not about wedding planning, and even if this show did manage to poke a small hole in my unreasoning hate on for Tori Spelling, it has little to offer other than a fawning fondness for her that I’m not especially interested in sharing.

If you decide you want to check it out, though, you can tune in to Oxygen on Wednesday night, 11pm 10pm Central.