“Come live with me, and be my love,
                                                 And we will all the pleasures prove
                                                 That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
                                                 Woods, or steepy mountain yields.”

                                                 --Christopher Marlowe.


                                                 “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

                                                   --P.T. Barnum.


     I went grocery shopping the other day. After a quick turn through the dairy products section, I ambled past “Meats,” warmed by messages from the National Pork Council, and finally ended up at the magazine rack. The magazine rack is an interesting sidelight to any grocery shopping trip, laced as it is with publications covering every conceivable topic from horror films to quilting. But what really caught my eye were the women’s magazines; each purporting to offer today’s woman what she really needs to know from “Put Menopause to Work for You” to “Sex, and How to Avoid It.” And underneath these shameless paens to human insecurity, there they were:  the bridal magazines.

     Bridal Monthly. Bridal Illustrated. Bucket o’ Brides. Bride-o-Rama. Row upon row of them, each with radiant models gazing beatifically at the viewer, reminding me of nothing so much as my First Communion copy of The Picture Book of Saints, with its wonderfully ironic images of martyrs reposing in transcendent bliss as they are stoned to death or torn apart by jackals.

     But I digress.

     You see, I have recently developed an interest in bridal magazines, spurred on by an inkling to take that most important of steps:  marriage. I have fallen in love. After a romantic career marked by passionate ambivalence on the part of my intendeds, my term as a throwaway scratch-off ticket in the lottery of love has come to an end.

     And so it was that with lilac-scented thoughts in mind, I recently found myself in a mall with thoughts of purchasing an engagement ring. I am normally loathe to engage in shopping, but am even less inclined to do so when the object of purchase is something as foreign to my experience as a ring. I wandered with trepidation down the aisles of the mall, past the Gap, past the Gap Kids and the Buddy Squirrel, and past a gaggle of mallwalkers stepping sprightly in athletic apparel. I walked into a jewelry store whose motto, believe it or not, is “When It’s Forever”—leaving me to wonder where all the short-sighted folks go for their jewelry needs. I was met instantly by “Madge,” a saleswoman who immediately recognized my preference for Field and Stream over Conde Nast and led me to the engagement rings.

     “Sir,” she said, “I usually explain The Four C’s to our first-time customers.”

     The “Four C’s,” as any engaged or married man knows, by heart and against his will, are Cut, Clarity, Color, and Confidence. The fourth C is not, as I suggested to Madge, “Cost,” although she was pleased because this gave her a chance to go into “the two months’ salary guideline.” This guideline, in short, is the process whereby jewelers seize men’s finest sentiments and then sell them back to us.

     I decided to play ball, and informed Madge that my income is limited only by the number of  bottles I can return for deposit during any given period. Madge was more than a little taken aback. “But surely, sir,” she said, “isn’t your love for… um… Lori?… worth the most you can possibly afford?”

     She had a point there. It’s just that she and I reckon cost differently. To be sure, Madge was just doing her job. Yet somehow I could not help but feel that the tenets of capitalism have no place tampering with something as sacred as love:  the boat of my best intentions had run aground in a sea of consumer culture. I had walked into the store with intentions of symbolizing my affection for my beloved. Instead I stood at the counter feeling as if I had just bought a used car and was about to drive off in a cloud of smoke, with the salesman laughing in my wake. And so I left ringless, but not before Madge gave me her card and a copy of The Wedding Planner—compliments of the wedding industry.

     The word “industry” is no exaggeration. The Wedding Planner lists no fewer than 27 categories wherein retailers prey on lovers’ natural desire to be married. Categories range from “Invitations” and (of course) “Diamonds” to “The Reception” and “Beauty.” Upon reading “Beauty,” I discovered that my whining about shopping for engagement rings had been just that—whining. Women have the real hard part of the bargain.

     The Wedding Planner’s section on “Beauty” begins:  “Every bride wants to look her best, and with foresight and planning, she can be beautiful in everyone’s eyes”—implying, of course, that without the judicious use of spackling compound and considerable structural work, the wedding guests will flee from the church in horror. The section suggests that the bride-to-be meet with a consultant to discuss such topics as “cosmetic background,” “headpiece selection,” and—I’m not kidding—“hair history.” Apparently this is where the bride reveals that her hair was with Napoleon at Waterloo and was instrumental in passing the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

     By the time I finished “Beauty” and launched into “Receptions,” I was feeling a bit dizzy, and eloping was starting to look like a really good idea—maybe Las Vegas? I imagined a ceremony with an Elvis impersonator reading us our vows:

     “Do you, uh, Kurt here, take Lori tuh be yer, uh, lawful wedded wife?”

     “I do.”

     “Don’t be cruel. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
   
     After the ceremony, I imagined, Lori and I would retire to a small reception, there to dine on peanut butter-and-banana sandwiches, gorge ourselves on barbituates, and take our place on a row of crepe-bedecked toilets—wedding party in front—to die, like the King, on the throne. Given what I have seen of conventional wedding planning, this scenario not only seems more enjoyable, but also a good deal less ludicrous.

     But I’m being selfish here. As The Wedding Planner states, the wedding is not so much for the happy couple as it is for friends and relatives.

     Perhaps this has all been idle complaining.

    Maybe the important thing is that someday my beloved will walk, resplendent in white, down an aisle lined with smiling well-wishers. Lori and I will gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes, delirious with joy, and repeat those magical words:  “I do.”

     But I don’t have to be happy about it.