■

f Oprah or Phil ever decide
BY JANE WHITNEY
to raise America's conscious-
ness on the subject of Pre-
Wedding Syndrome, I'm
ready to tell the real story.
Anyone who survives plan-
ning a wedding with her
sense of humor intact and
new spouse in tow could take
a respectable crack at negotiating
peace in the Middle East.
First you should know that I was
thrilled to be getting
married last spring.
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After all, at my
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age I had joined
foocA... Auni . E.ana?
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the ranks of
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Salmon
((. oh) 8e
women who
Fr eel
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some studies
said had a better
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chance of being
attacked by ter-
rorists than ever
registering for
silver.
Before I con-
tracted a pro-
longed case of
Pre-Wedding
Syndrome (PWS),
the thought of
planning our
May wedding
exhilarated me.
For the better
part of 38 years
I'd been a wed-
ding junkie, end-
lessly choreo-
graphing my
dream wedding
— periodically
recasting the key
players, especially the groom, and part of the blissful package. (Would
revising details to reflect passages in Bride's magazine lie? You bet it would.)
That's why PWS is a natural for the
my life.
Since planning a wedding is lumped talk show circuit. It's shrouded in the
in with what's billed as the happiest same kind of secrecy as one of those
day of your life, I always assumed that still unshattered (but not for much
orchestrating the details would be longer) romantic myths. Go ahead,

It takes the skill
of a diplomat to
negotiate the intricacies
of nuptial plans.

ask a PWS veteran if planning a wed-
ding is fun. If she says yes, either she's
lying or you're chatting with Princess
Di.
I never suspected that as an inde-
pendent, mature, confident person I
would agonize over rental-flatware
patterns, or lose sleep while counting
up the pros and cons of poached ver-
sus mesquite-grilled salmon. I never
thought I'd involve myself in an in-
vestigative search for peach-
colored damask napkins
that would require
all the skill of a
Pulitzer Prize-
winning journal-
ist. And I cer-
never
tainly
dreamed
would become
c2e2
e7 Si
physically at-
i
tacked to a 35-
v/ \
pound coffee
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book
table
civ ° 0
d
called Weddings —
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a °
by K Mart's ma-
ven on entertain-
, a
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ing, Martha Stew-
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art — dragging it
C,
D
hither and yon
like a security
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blanket.
c
In short, I
c;)
a /
never thought
I'd spend a full
C2
month held hos-
tage in a self-
imposed time
warp where a
single day in
• . •
d
May took on a
life of its own.
My future husband kicked things off
with his proposal. In a charming varia-
tion on a DeBeers diamond commer-
cial, he dropped the metal ring from
our dog Max's collar into my glass of
champagne. When I gently suggested
he had missed the point of the ad, he

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The Jewish News

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