The Olympic void is nothing compared with PND — post-nuptial depression. And with the end of the wedding season in sight, here come the honeyblues, says Lucy Tobin.
It is six days until my wedding. I know this because my Wedding Countdown app tells me so. And because my fingers are raw from ribbon-tying decorations, our John Lewis gift list number comes up more often than our phone number and for the past six weeks every evening has been spent on wedmin.
But while my fiancé sighs and moans as yet another evening is filled with a meeting or demand to tie more ribbon (“More? But my fingers are still frozen, claw-like, from the last batch. How can more ribbon exist in the world?”), I love it. Bridezilla? If I had a pound for the number of times that particular accusation had been hurled at me, I’d be able to rent at least one overpriced wedding chair cover. So I’m not surprised to hear of the latest ailment circulating on the London wedding world more frequently than a mushroom vol-au-vent: Post-Nuptial Depression. That post-wedding slump that hits some newlyweds so hard even a five-star honeymoon can’t rouse them.
Public utilities worker Katie Pickin, 28, got engaged to her boyfriend Chris, 33, a north London engineer, two years ago and married this June in a tithe barn — after extensive wedmin. “I planned everything myself,” she explains, “designed and hand-made the date cards and invitations, chose all the flowers, dresses and decorations. Everything matched my colour scheme, even down to the wrapping.”
The big day, she says, was “amazing” but soon afterwards post-wedding blues hit. “We got married on the Saturday, then on Sunday we opened our cards and presents, ate cake, and drank champagne, but I fell into a slump on the Monday,” says Pickin. “It felt horrible, as if I had no goal to work towards. We went shopping that afternoon and I just wandered about with no focus as I wasn’t ‘wedding shopping’ — so had no idea what I was looking for. I felt very down, and really struggled to be motivated to move on. It felt similar to having lost a family member as the wedding had been such an important part of my life and then it was gone.”

The overspilling stack of wedding magazines in the corner of my lounge reports that the recession may also have played a hand in the rise of PND, since austerity has brought on a surge in do-it-yourself work on nuptials — making that planning process even more all-consuming.

Personally, my fiancé and I had a sneak preview of PND after the Olympics finished. Every evening over the previous two weeks had been spent watching the Games (with wedmin simultaneously continued on our laps, of course) or over at the Olympic Park. “Is this what it will feel like the day after our wedding?” he asked despondently when it was all over — and all we had left to do with our non-wedmin time was plan what we were eating for dinner.

That’s exactly how Down felt once his own big day was organised. “There were hours of time spare that we had spent so long filling we weren’t quite sure how to amuse ourselves,” he says.

The sensible solution, according to the advice in my mountain of wedding magazines, is to make new plans and aims together — whether that’s a new home or holidays. Or perhaps, as my mum puts it, the key is “to remember getting hitched is actually all about the marriage, not the wedding”.

Pickin says she “took each day at a time, set myself new goals such as decorating our home and planning for a family” to get over her dose of PND. But she insists that, despite the slump, the wedding was still the best day of her life.

“The trouble is, most people don’t even think about what they will do after the wedding as they spend so much time worrying about that one day,” she adds. “Really, it is just you and him and nothing else matters.” I think she’s right. It might just be time to put down the ribbon.

How human traffickers are cashing in on the Chinese market for North Korean women—and how some victims escape.

Steven Kim, an American businessman from Long Island, New York, may be the world’s leading expert on the market for North Korean brides. He acquired this expertise accidentally. He likes to say it was God’s plan.A decade or so ago he was living in China, overseeing the manufacture of chairs he sold to retail clients in the United States, when he heard about a secret church that catered to the South Korean businessmen who worked in the Shenzhen industrial zone, not far from his apartment. It wasn’t registered with the Chinese government, as required by law, so it operated underground, billing itself as a cultural association. There was no sign on the door and no cross on the roof. The 100 or so congregants had learned about the church as Kim had, by word of mouth.

Kim, a practicing Christian, became a regular attendee. One Sunday he noticed two shabbily dressed men seated in a corner of the room. After worship, he went up to them, said hello, and learned to his astonishment that they were from North Korea. They had escaped across the Tumen River to northeast China and traveled 2,000 miles south to Guangdong province, a journey that took two months. They hoped to find a way to slip across the border into Hong Kong. “They came to church asking for help,” he says. “But the church would only feed them, give them a few dollars, and let them go.”

That was the start. Kim began to assist North Korean refugees clandestinely. He provided safe houses, food, clothing, and money; eventually he organized secret passage across China to third countries. Before long, he gained a reputation along the new underground railroad as someone North Koreans could count on for assistance. Many of them turned out to be women fleeing from the Chinese men who had purchased them as brides.

Today he runs 318 Partners, a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to rescuing trafficked women in China. It’s named after Article 318 of the Chinese criminal code, the law under which Kim was arrested in September 2003 as he led nine North Koreans in a prayer meeting at his apartment. Convicted of helping illegal migrants, he spent four years in a Chinese prison. His home office now, on a quiet street on suburban Long Island, is a luxurious contrast to the Chinese prison cell he shared with a dozen felons. On the morning of my visit, his cellphone rings repeatedly with calls from South Korea, China, and Southeast Asia regarding a rescue operation in the works. It is not until lunchtime, when most of Asia is asleep, that his phone finally goes quiet.

But why import brides from North Korea? The answer is China’s family-planning laws. Ever since the one-child policy went into effect in 1979, Beijing has enforced it through fines, imprisonment, forced abortion, sterilization, and even, human-rights groups charge, infanticide. The policy has had its intended effect of slowing the rate of expansion of China’s population. But there has been an unwelcome side effect: an unnaturally high male-to-female ratio.

Women may hold up half the sky, in Mao Zedong’s famous phrase, but they are treated as second-class citizens in much of modern China. Many couples still favor sons, both to carry on the family name and support them in their old age. In rural areas the birth of a son heralds the arrival of an extra farmhand as soon as the boy is old enough to hold a hoe. Not so long ago in China, an unwanted baby girl might be drowned in a bucket at birth or left unattended to die. These days abortion is the preferred method, and ultrasound tests let couples find out the baby’s sex early in the pregnancy for about $12, well within the means of most couples. There are laws against using ultrasound this way, but they’re widely ignored. “Sex-selection abortion accounts for almost all the excess males,” says the British medical journal BMJ.

Other recruiters travel from village to village, keeping an eye out for potential brides. They spot a pretty young woman and follow her home. Kim explains what happens next. “When they see a widow with a beautiful daughter, they say: ‘Why do you leave your daughter like that? If you send her to China, then she can get money and have an education. Why don’t you send her?’ They keep talking and gain trust, and then—‘OK,’ the mother says, ‘I trust you. Take her.’ Then he takes the girl into China and sells her. This is one of the tricks.” Kim shudders. “Horrible.”

If trickery fails, recruiters have been known to resort to kidnapping. Hannah, another former bride, was a teacher in Pyongyang until she accompanied the mother of one of her pupils to the border region, hoping to make a little extra money. The friend was planning to purchase fashionable Chinese-made clothing from a Chinese salesman for resale in the capital.After they concluded the deal, the Chinese salesman invited the two women to dinner. The food was drugged. The two women woke up in a dark room, hands and feet bound, groggy from the narcotic. As Hannah struggled to come to, she heard her friend cry out: “Teacher, I think we’ve been sold!” They were inside China, destined for forced marriages. They never saw each other again. “I never knew such things happened,” Hannah told me.

The supplier’s job ends when he delivers the woman to the Chinese side of the Tumen or Yalu River. His fee, Steve Kim says, runs between $80 and $300 per woman, depending upon the quality of the “product” and the difficulty of the crossing. Out of that sum, the supplier is expected to cover any bribes he must pay to North Korean border guards for information about safe crossing points or an agreement that they’ll look the other way at a prearranged time.

At some point the woman realizes what is happening to her. She then has two choices: go through with the marriage or try to escape. This is not really a choice. The woman is on her own in a strange country. She knows no one. She doesn’t speak the language. As she quickly finds out, in escaping to China from North Korea, she has exchanged one form of bondage for another. Most accept the inevitable and agree to be sold. They reason, not illogically, that life with a Chinese husband, even an abusive one, is preferable to arrest, repatriation, and automatic imprisonment in a North Korean labor camp for illegally leaving the country. Nevertheless, the couple’s living arrangement will have no standing under Chinese law. Because the woman has no official identity papers, the marriage cannot be legally registered.

The rule of law—to the extent that it prevails in China and to the extent that a North Korean with no exposure to such a concept is capable of understanding it—doesn’t apply to North Korean refugees. If a woman has relatives in China, they often urge her, not without reason, to strike a bargain with a Chinese man who will feed and house her in exchange for her labor and sexual favors. If she contacts the police or other Chinese officials, she can expect worse treatment. If the police abide by the law, they will arrest her and send her back to North Korea. If they are corrupt, they will sell her to another bride broker.

North Korean brides are “thrice victimized,” says Ambassador Mark Lagon, former director of the U.S. State Department’s human-trafficking office. “They have fled starvation and human-rights abuses in North Korea,” he notes. “They are subject to abuse as undocumented migrants in China. And if they are sent back to North Korea, they face severe punishment, even execution in some cases.”

“I was being sold like a beast,” she said. “I remember these Chinese brokers would call us, those who were being sold, pigs. Well, I was the best pig they had. I was sold at top price.” Her first husband told her he had paid 7,000 yuan for her—then the equivalent of about $850. “He told me he would kill me if I did not listen to him.” But she soon got a reprieve of sorts: she was abducted and sold her to another man. “I found out that there are brokers who would take the people who had been sold and take them away and sell them again to a third party. I never knew that this buying and selling of people existed,” she said. “I was sold again and again.” Eventually she was arrested and deported to North Korea, where she was beaten and sent to a labor reeducation camp.She finally escaped again to China and made her way to South Korea. At the Washington press conference, she stood on a chair, lifted up her skirt, and displayed the deep furrows in her thighs, scars where she’d been tortured. She asked, “Why do North Korean women have to be treated like pigs and sold like pigs and suffer these things?”

Many North Korean brides have asked themselves the same thing, and some have made it to freedom. Kim relies on them to tell the friends they left behind in China. After brides escape, “they tell us there are 10, 15 more women like them in their village,” he says. “And then they call them.”

He lifts his hand to his ear, playing the part of a rescued North Korean woman calling from Seoul to a friend in China. “‘Yeah, I’m here. It’s so-o-o good. Why don’t you come?’” The bride who has escaped then gives Kim’s phone number or that of a colleague in Seoul to her friends. “If they want, they contact us,” he says. “That’s how it happens.” The next step is a phone interview with Kim. Does the woman fully understand the risks of escape? Is she willing to take the chance that she could be arrested and repatriated? If she has children with her Chinese husband, is she prepared to leave them behind?

If a woman asks for help and Kim agrees, he goes to work quickly. He figures out how much the rescue will cost and begins to organize his network on the new underground railroad. If the woman is still living with her Chinese husband, the first step will be to arrange for her to get to a secure location from which she can begin her journey.

Then he sends out a plea for money to his email list of supporters. Typical is an appeal from a January 2010 newsletter: “We have received another call for help from three trafficked North Korean women in China,” the newsletter states. “They are all from the same hometown in North Korea. According to the older woman named Choi, they have escaped from the captors [and are] hiding in a northern city of Jilin province. We ask your support in prayers and financially.”

The basement price of one of 318 Partners’ rescues is $1,300. Most cost much more—$3,000 or above. Money is so tight that Kim sometimes asks the rescued women to pledge to pay back $1,000 of the costs once they get to Seoul and receive financial help from the South Korean government. There is a rough symmetry in that figure. After all, $1,000 is roughly what a Chinese man will pay for a North Korean bride.

Brides are having to make other arrangements for dresses or receptions — in some cases both — with Jay’s Bridal about to go out of business and Villa East closing at the end of the month.
Jay’s Bridal announced July 31 that it would close Aug. 31 and spend its time in the meantime trying to make sure people with outstanding orders get their dresses.
But some anxious brides have complained that they are not getting their dresses or their deposit money.
Owner Paul Rhodenizer said the bridal shop has helped a lot of people, but he also advised some who paid their deposits by credit card to dispute the charge with their credit card company and told others they can file a claim with the court once he files for bankruptcy.
“I’ve been at it non-stop,” he said. “We’re doing everything in our power to help as many people as we can. There are people who are mad. It’s a tough business climate out there all the way around. We don’t have any alternative.”
He said some dressmakers no longer will send pre-ordered dresses to him, meaning brides need to go through another authorized dealer to get the dresses and possibly pay full retail again.
That is the case with Megan Anderson. She wrote in an email to The Sun that her dress sat in the warehouse of designer Maggie Sottero and that she had to pay for it again and have it sent to a bridal shop in Brooksville. In the meantime, she is disputing the credit card payment to Jay’s Bridal.
Other brides are exchanging custom orders for dresses already in stock, Rhodenizer said.

Hundreds of brides have contacted a mountain rescue group after fundraisers found a diamond ring in their collection bucket.
Since going public with news of the lost ring, Mayo Mountain Rescue has been inundated with calls, all from ladies desperate to claim the prize.
Robert Hunt, a member of the rescue group, said his phone had been ringing off the hook since going public with the find last week. However, he believes the majority of the calls are genuine and not just opportunists hoping to claim a free diamond ring.
“We’ve had hundreds of calls but nobody with the ring’s description.
“There are a lot of genuine people out there that have been calling up. What is surprising about this is the number of women who have lost engagement rings,” he said.
But despite the surge in calls — the ring has still not been reunited with its rightful owner.
The group has now put a picture of the ring on its website in the hopes that the owner might recognise it. But it is an inscription on the inside of the band that will seal the deal for the rightful owner.
“Whoever it belongs to will know what is written on the band . . . From the date inscribed in it, it belongs to someone who has been engaged for quite a long time.
“Last week we had quite a lot of calls, there were hundreds. I’m still getting calls every day but they have petered off a bit,” explained Mr Hunt.

Sentimental
Members of the Mayo Mountain Rescue Team where baffled when they discovered the ring in a collection bucket during a fundraising drive in Westport, Co Mayo, on Saturday, August 11.
Mr Hunt immediately brought it to a local jeweller who confirmed it was a bona fide diamond. The nine carat sapphire-cut diamond ring, set on a gold band, appears to be several years old and has signs of wear.
“The jeweller didn’t say what it was worth but we’re estimating it at around the €1,000 mark. It’s the sentimental value that is the real concern,” added Mr Hunt.
If the ring is not claimed for a year and a day it officially becomes the property of the rescue group. However, the group is hoping it won’t come to that. The owner of the ring can contact Westport garda station at 098 25555 or Robert Hunt on 087 1798426 for more details.

You may now chug with the bride.
Toasting the bride and groom with Champagne is de rigueur. But recently, couples hip (or is that hops?) to craft beers are shaking up the wedding reception scene by insisting on serving the brews they love on their big day, every-thing from local ales to home brews concocted by the bride and groom.
It’s not unusual for stouts and Pilsners to flow at receptions or for rehearsal dinners to feature “beer flight” tastings of different craft brews. The high-end Baltimore caterer Chef’s Expressions offers hors d’oeuvres consisting of a shot glass of beer and a burger slider.
One couple even set up tasting stations with beers from around the world, said Anja Winikka, site editor of TheK-not.com. Another couple who met in Yukon served beer from Yukon Brewing in an ice-packed canoe.
When Julie Ho and Ben Rinn of New York City wed in April, they chose craft beers representing their Texas roots (Shiner Bock) and their college years at Johns Hopkins University (from Baltimore brewer Brewer’s Art).
A lot of weddings with beer you have your Coors Lights and your Bud Lights out,” said Ho, who hired Chef’s Expressions for the wedding at Johns Hopkins’ stately Peabody Library. “We definitely wanted to have good beers out because we do enjoy drinking good beer. And then we also wanted to make sure we included what we like.”

Fairmont State University and Pierpont Community and Technical College have kicked off their “Go Red For Woman” campaign.

Organizers are trying to raise awareness about heart disease which is the number one killer of women.

Activities will include a penny wars competition on the second floor of the Falcon Center.

The campaign will wrap up on Friday, which is “National Wear Red for Woman Day.”

“Friday we are encouraging everyone, not just on campus, but in the community, to come to campus to wear red in support of heart disease,” said Dr. Tara Brooks, of Fairmont State University.

The American Heart Association sponsors the “Go Red For Woman” campaign.

The Spring Bridal Extravaganza will be held Sunday, Feb. 5 at Meadowbrook Mall, according to a news release from the Meadowbrook Mall.

The event will be from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Officials said the event offers brides a ‘one-stop’ shop for planning their wedding.

Wedding experts will offer advice and demonstrations as well as offer free samples to those who attend, according to the news release.

Officials said the event will also feature a Bridal Fashion Show at 3 p.m. that will highlight gowns from Ever After Bridal and Oliverio’s Bridal & Prom Boutique.

WVAQ’s Lacy Neff will emcee the fashion show which will be followed by the Grand Prize drawings. Officials said the first 200 brides to register at the arch in center court will receive a free tote bag and will be eligible to win door prizes.

Dozens of brides got a jump start on their wedding plans at the second annual Forever Yours Bridal Show.

Blossoms Florist hosted a show packed with local vendors and prizes at the Milledgeville Mall.

For a $10 admission fee, brides got the chance to see a fashion show, enter into contests and win raffles.

Danielle Barnes got engaged last November and says this was her first bridal show. She says her fiance proposed to her on a trip to Tybee Island.

“He took me down to the gazebo and he said doubts in life don’t matter I just want to spend the rest of my life with you and then he got down on one knee and proposed.” says Barnes.

“There are a lot of vendors here a lot of local vendors there’s a lady over here that owns a fabric store in her house and she does bridal gowns,” said Barnes.

She says she was nervous to begin planning for her big day, but coming to the show eased her stress.

“There are a lot of ways that I can meet a budget and people are offering all kinds of specials and deals,”said Barnes.

The winning grand prize raffle ticket was a discounted floral package and a feature in DIY Weddings Magazine.

Jerrad Williams hit the ping pong ball across the table Sunday passing the time as his fiancée checked out what the Bridal extravaganza had to offer.

Williams, of Graceville, Fla., came to the event held at the Dothan Civic Center with his fiancée, Melissa Holley, to tie up some loose ends before their wedding in September.

Williams played a few games of table tennis in the man cave, a special area set up specifically for the men to hang out during the extravaganza.

“We’ve decided on a place, but wanted a few ideas on decorations and other things,” Williams said. “I had absolutely no idea they’d have something like this for the guys. I’m in no hurry. She’s in there having fun, and that’s all that matters.”

Stephanie Madden, the coordinator for the extravaganza, said the man cave included a 70 inch flat screen television showing sports, a pool table, and a ping pong table along with chips, sandwiches and cookies. She said the Highland Oaks golf course also had a putting green set up, along with a golf pro to give people tips.

Madden said it was the first year for the Bridal extravaganza to include the man cave. Madden, the marketing manager for the Dothan Eagle, said the event was sponsored by the Dothan Eagle, Loftin’s Party and Wedding Center and the Dothan Civic Center.

“I thought it would be kind of cool if the guys had a place to hang out,” Madden said. “I think the guys appreciated their little place to go, and watch some football and chill out.”

Madden called the event a success.

“I think the weather played into it. If it’s raining people tend to stay indoors at home,” Madden said. “We’ve got such great local vendors. I think the brides were excited to come out and see what everybody had to offer. I definitely know there were more people than last year. The attendance was higher this year.”

Larry Anglin, of Enterprise, said if more fathers and boyfriends knew about the man cave at the event more of them might’ve attended.

“On the way inside I noticed a young man sitting in his car listening to the radio. That could’ve been me had I not found the man cave,” Anglin said. “It gives you something to do, and if they need me I’m close by. It has many of the things my man cave at home has. So it’s some of the same things I’d be doing at home anyway.”

Larry Anglin’s wife, Debra Anglin, said because of the man cave she and her daughter could take their time looking at all the vendors at the extravaganza.

Brittney Anglin, Larry Anglin’s daughter, carried a bag full of pamphlets with her.

“I think it was helpful,” Brittney Anglin said. “We did not feel so rushed because he had somewhere to go.”

I know more about weddings than your average bear. I also know a few things about getting divorced, starting a company, and exquisitely f-ing up your life while your parents and everyone else look on in shock and horror. And because of my messy, complicated, and admittedly ridiculous experiences with all of these things, I may just be able to save you some time and trouble when it comes to planning your own wedding — and more importantly, enjoying your marriage.

I got married on a sweltering hot day in July of 2008. Robert and I planned a big, expensive, perfect wedding. His family is Jewish, mine’s a mix of Jewish/Catholic/Lunatic. So we had all the bells and whistles of your typical American Jewish wedding: 47 food stations at the cocktail hour, a five-course dinner, a 10-piece band, and 200 formally attired, obscenely sweaty guests.

Planning this affair was stressful and stretched all of our resources to the max. We argued with each other, we argued with our parents, I think I even argued with the flower girl, and she’s 3 (but for the record, she was wrong). The wedding was beautiful, but by the time we rode off into the sunset, we were totally drained.

That experience inspired me to create Recycled Bride, an online marketplace where brides buy and sell gently used (and new) wedding dresses, decorations, and more. I wanted to help other couples avoid the stress of spending their future children’s college fund on a wedding. Robert and I were excited to run Recycled Bride together. I couldn’t dream of anything more picture-perfect than working with my new husband on our very own wedding business.

Oops.

Within months, we began to develop what they call “irreconcilable differences”. (We called it “F___ You!”) We separated before our first anniversary, and divorced shortly thereafter. And there I was, secretly coping with an embarrassing divorce while writing about bridal bouquets, wedding dresses, and everyone else’s happily ever after…on a website called Recycled Bride. It was like the universe was playing a cruel (but clever) joke on me, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the irony. So I did lots of both.

After a while, Robert and I found our footing as friends, and even resumed running the business together. But the only thing harder to explain than a swift divorce (see: Kim Kardashian), is a fledgling business that takes up all your time, but is pre-revenue (that’s a fancy web business word for “we weren’t making any money then”). I was working crazy hours with no income, and needed a solution that wouldn’t distract me from building the Recycled Bride empire. So I decided to earn extra cash by renting out my guest room to travelers.

My very first renter was Collin, a musician who wanted a cozy place to stay while he was in Los Angeles for a week. I pretended not to notice that he was cute. He pretended not to notice that I was pretending not to notice that he was cute. We fell easily into endless conversations, and then we fell in love. Collin extended his stay in California, and then extended it again, until we both realized that he was never leaving and he moved from the guest room into what’s now “our room”. Last week, we got married in a tiny romantic beach wedding with no guests.

The wedding was somewhat spontaneous, and we weren’t well prepared. We didn’t have a witness, so a random stranger on the beach ended up signing our marriage license. He may have been homeless. He may have been Mickey Rourke. We’re still debating, but it’s definitely one of those two. I wore stupid, pretty shoes, then twisted my ankle and stepped on Collin’s toe the minute we hit the sand. During the ceremony, raging beach winds turned my hair into a ridiculous bird’s nest. The wind was so loud, we couldn’t even hear the officiant, so instead of repeating our vows, we said “What!?” a whole lot. Afterwards, we got drunk on champagne at our favorite neighborhood restaurant, I ripped my dress, and then we rode off on unicorns into the sunset. It was…perfect.

In an ironic and totally unexpected way, I got my happily ever after. But I had to stop believing in glossy photos and “perfect days” to get here. I have an amazing husband, an ex who’s also a great friend and coworker, and a thriving business — and none of it looks anything like I expected. So when I talk to brides who are fretting about the imperfections, the awkward moments, the feeling that they’re somehow not living the “big day dream”, I wish I could bundle up all of my experiences, good and bad, and magically infuse them into every bride’s brain. Because I might have screwed up a lot (yes, a lot!), but I learned some good lessons. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Your wedding, your marriage, and your life will be filled with flaws, mistakes, inappropriate jokes, and unexpected plot twists. Embrace the weirdness of it all, and learn to laugh at yourself.

2. Planning a wedding is just like starting a business. You have a budget and need rent space, hire employees, and create something that delights your customers/guests. If wedding planning with your partner isn’t fun, you probably shouldn’t start a business together.

3. Wedding photos lie. Especially the ones on blogs, in magazines, and on Facebook. Pretty does not equal happy, and happy is way more awesome.

4. Everybody has gross morning breath. That’s kind of unrelated, but not necessarily. It just a thing that’s true.

5. There are no signs or omens. If your dress arrives late or it rains on your wedding day, it has no bearing on the quality of the life that you build, every day, together.

Would relationships be easier with a “clear-history” button?

Yes, and no. I am the soon-to-be wife to a man who has previously done “the marriage thing” with another woman. Yes… as much as I hate to say the word… he has an ex-wife. If you are one of the many women who realize their first marriage will be to a divorced man, I feel sorry for you. No, really, I do… as we all will have many more challenges than if we were marrying a man without previous marital attachments. Inevitably there are times when every relationship will deal with ghosts from the past, but this is a special situation — only intended for the right woman. That’s you.

Remember that everyone has a past — even you. Oftentimes we forget that although we haven’t been married before, we do have a relationship past. Think about this: although you may have not been legally married to a person from the past, that you (at one time) could have seen yourself as Mrs. X. Certainly now, if you are anything like me, you selectively choose to ignore this fact — especially when faced with a heated issue in your current relationship. I’m not a psychologist, but with a Doctorate in Jurisprudence, a multitude of counseling and mediation experience in a variety of settings, and a keen sense of self-awareness, I am confident in my qualification to assess this type of behavior as a defense mechanism that we have the right to use. I’m as guilty as you. So here is how I let my past almost-screw up(s) help me: They reminded me of my growth. And that’s a powerful thing. And better yet, there’s the fact that you are marrying a man that has experienced that same growth, and maybe more. View this as a strength to your relationship, and more importantly, as a testimony your upcoming marriage. Think about it: History usually repeats itself… if you don’t learn from your mistakes.

Why is learning from your mistakes so important in marriage? Numerous studies cite research results indicating even higher divorce rates for second marriages. I speculate that the odds are against the success of second marriages when one or both parties fail to realize their own past screw-ups! I bet we would see a decline in second marriage divorces if we measured how many women have first marriages to previously divorced men (and vice-versa), as well as second time around couples who actively self-reflect on what makes their present dreams supersede their past failures.

Remember that you are the right woman for your soon-to-be husband. If you weren’t, he would probably not be divorced… (Unless he is a cheating or deceptive bastard with other issues that I pray you wouldn’t tolerate). People get married for any reason you can think of, but the most common thing I hear, is that at its deepest roots, a divorce is usually caused by the youthful misunderstanding of any/all of those reasons. Simply put: you are not the cause of your fiancé’s previous divorce (if you are, stop reading), he would not be happier in his previous life, and he realizes he screwed up before. Lucky you… you get to be THE ONE. Hopefully your hubby- to- be makes you aware of these facts whenever you may appear in doubt, but when in doubt remember this: You were probably meant to be together, from the beginning.

I know more about weddings than your average bear. I also know a few things about getting divorced, starting a company, and exquisitely f-ing up your life while your parents and everyone else look on in shock and horror. And because of my messy, complicated, and admittedly ridiculous experiences with all of these things, I may just be able to save you some time and trouble when it comes to planning your own wedding — and more importantly, enjoying your marriage.

I got married on a sweltering hot day in July of 2008. Robert and I planned a big, expensive, perfect wedding. His family is Jewish, mine’s a mix of Jewish/Catholic/Lunatic. So we had all the bells and whistles of your typical American Jewish wedding: 47 food stations at the cocktail hour, a five-course dinner, a 10-piece band, and 200 formally attired, obscenely sweaty guests.

Planning this affair was stressful and stretched all of our resources to the max. We argued with each other, we argued with our parents, I think I even argued with the flower girl, and she’s 3 (but for the record, she was wrong). The wedding was beautiful, but by the time we rode off into the sunset, we were totally drained.

That experience inspired me to create Recycled Bride, an online marketplace where brides buy and sell gently used (and new) wedding dresses, decorations, and more. I wanted to help other couples avoid the stress of spending their future children’s college fund on a wedding. Robert and I were excited to run Recycled Bride together. I couldn’t dream of anything more picture-perfect than working with my new husband on our very own wedding business.

Oops.

Within months, we began to develop what they call “irreconcilable differences”. (We called it “F___ You!”) We separated before our first anniversary, and divorced shortly thereafter. And there I was, secretly coping with an embarrassing divorce while writing about bridal bouquets, wedding dresses, and everyone else’s happily ever after…on a website called Recycled Bride. It was like the universe was playing a cruel (but clever) joke on me, and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at the irony. So I did lots of both.

After a while, Robert and I found our footing as friends, and even resumed running the business together. But the only thing harder to explain than a swift divorce (see: Kim Kardashian), is a fledgling business that takes up all your time, but is pre-revenue (that’s a fancy web business word for “we weren’t making any money then”). I was working crazy hours with no income, and needed a solution that wouldn’t distract me from building the Recycled Bride empire. So I decided to earn extra cash by renting out my guest room to travelers.

My very first renter was Collin, a musician who wanted a cozy place to stay while he was in Los Angeles for a week. I pretended not to notice that he was cute. He pretended not to notice that I was pretending not to notice that he was cute. We fell easily into endless conversations, and then we fell in love. Collin extended his stay in California, and then extended it again, until we both realized that he was never leaving and he moved from the guest room into what’s now “our room”. Last week, we got married in a tiny romantic beach wedding with no guests.

The wedding was somewhat spontaneous, and we weren’t well prepared. We didn’t have a witness, so a random stranger on the beach ended up signing our marriage license. He may have been homeless. He may have been Mickey Rourke. We’re still debating, but it’s definitely one of those two. I wore stupid, pretty shoes, then twisted my ankle and stepped on Collin’s toe the minute we hit the sand. During the ceremony, raging beach winds turned my hair into a ridiculous bird’s nest. The wind was so loud, we couldn’t even hear the officiant, so instead of repeating our vows, we said “What!?” a whole lot. Afterwards, we got drunk on champagne at our favorite neighborhood restaurant, I ripped my dress, and then we rode off on unicorns into the sunset. It was…perfect.

In an ironic and totally unexpected way, I got my happily ever after. But I had to stop believing in glossy photos and “perfect days” to get here. I have an amazing husband, an ex who’s also a great friend and coworker, and a thriving business — and none of it looks anything like I expected. So when I talk to brides who are fretting about the imperfections, the awkward moments, the feeling that they’re somehow not living the “big day dream”, I wish I could bundle up all of my experiences, good and bad, and magically infuse them into every bride’s brain. Because I might have screwed up a lot (yes, a lot!), but I learned some good lessons. Here they are, in no particular order:

1. Your wedding, your marriage, and your life will be filled with flaws, mistakes, inappropriate jokes, and unexpected plot twists. Embrace the weirdness of it all, and learn to laugh at yourself.

2. Planning a wedding is just like starting a business. You have a budget and need rent space, hire employees, and create something that delights your customers/guests. If wedding planning with your partner isn’t fun, you probably shouldn’t start a business together.

3. Wedding photos lie. Especially the ones on blogs, in magazines, and on Facebook. Pretty does not equal happy, and happy is way more awesome.

4. Everybody has gross morning breath. That’s kind of unrelated, but not necessarily. It just a thing that’s true.

5. There are no signs or omens. If your dress arrives late or it rains on your wedding day, it has no bearing on the quality of the life that you build, every day, together.

Now go forth, and be married!

Women, according to recent studies, are more informed and level-headed than men in the vehicle showroom — a place long-considered an arena for gladiatorial gamesmanship.

“Men tend to rely on what is assumed they know and what they believe they know,” said Sergio Stiberman.

“When women approach car shopping, they believe in the importance of asking all the necessary questions, even if they think they might know the answers,” he said.

Stiberman, for one, respects the different angles his wife Keila takes on purchases and the depth and variety of questions. “She’ll ask questions that I’m afraid to ask myself or that I have too much of an ego to ask,” he said.

“We have that attitude that we should know, and if we ask, we’re outing ourselves and we might not be as strong as we projected ourselves to be,” he added.

Many men revel in the gamesmanship of car buying that many women just aren’t interested in. “Men get all excited about going out to buy a car and talk about how they’re going to one-up the salesmen and get a great deal,” said Anne Fleming, president of Women-drivers.com, a consumer ratings site. “I’ve never heard or seen any comments from women like that.”

Women do more research and, as a group, are considerably more pragmatic in their vehicle choices. They tend to be more concerned about safety issues and reliability than horse power and acceleration.

In the LeaseTrader analysis, 95% of women listed safety performance as their biggest concern during the shopping process, followed with 94% interested in the incident history of the car.

Men, on the other hand, at 83%, rated driving performance among their top issues with engine performance at 75%.

Nearly 74% of men ranked aesthetics a major issue, at No. 3, compared with just 46% of women — dead last among the top nine concerns — who did.

The style differences also are evident in purchasing history. Women tend to favor vehicles such as SUVs or small compact crossovers and four-door sedans. Men are more apt to buy a truck and certainly have more preference for sports cars than women do, according to Edmunds.com.

“Women tend to be more pragmatic and more economical in their car choices,” said Jessica Caldwell, a senior analyst at Edmunds.com.

Consider this: Last year Porsche saw a whopping 21% increase in year-over-year sales of its cars to women, albeit from a low base, Caldwell said. But of its total receipts, a commanding 71% were gleaned from sales of the four-door models the Cayenne and Panamera, what some might describe as more practical cars.

Women also want back-up proof. Women, for example, order vehicle inspections some 67% of the time when they’re buying a car compared to 55% of men who do so, according to LeaseTrader.

Like much of the world these days, the Internet has become a great equalizer for car buying, which ranks among the biggest financial decisions in a person’s life.

Women have long complained they were ignored or intimidated by salesmen, according to Women-Drivers.com. Nine out of 10 car sales associates are men.

Now, however, women walk into showrooms primed with scads of information about models, pricing, financing, options, most even know what the inventory position of a dealer is, according to Kelley Blue Book’s Market Intelligence reports.

Some 76% of women consider websites a valuable asset to the car shopping process compared with 70% of males, the KBB report said. What’s more, 51% of women visit a dealership’s site as part of the research compared with 46% of men who do, while 70% of women look at inventory versus 64% of men. Women are more inclined to purchase a certified pre-owned car from a dealership than men, 29% to 18%, while men are more trusting, at 32%, buying a car from a third party than women, 22%.

Before the Internet and its hundreds, maybe even thousands of automobile sites about buying, leasing, ratings, pricing, cost calculating, safety, insurance, mileage and any other number of car issues, women would visit from five to seven dealerships before settling on one, said Women Fleming, who also calls herself a car-buying advocate.

Blushing brides from all over got the chance to check out some local wedding show goods this weekend.

The Wedding Dreams Forever Memories Bridal Fair took place Sunday at Seven Feathers.

Hundreds of brides and even a few grooms got to view more than 60 local vendors.

Everything from food to flowers, dresses to DJs and more, were on hand to help brides plan their dream wedding.

The vast majority of vendors were local, and organizers say the event was a great way for a bride to make sure her wedding helped the local economy. “I think that’s what’s important. You keep it here in town, and you know everybody gets a chance to be a part of it,” said event organizer Leia Dalton.

She also adds that the event was perfect for the bride who wasn’t quite sure what she wanted. “There’s tons of ideas here. Everybody is networking together, there’s all kinds of ideas you can pull from all different vendors.”

The show began at 10:00 a.m., and capped off with a wedding show.

Hotel in Boston, MA Offers FREE Bridal Bootcamp With Advice From Top Wedding Experts, Giveaways and More.

Planning the perfect wedding comes down to one word: DECISIONS. And from photographers to cake frosting, there are plenty of decisions for the happy couple to make. To help newly engaged couples snap their weddings into shape, the Boston Marriott Long Wharf, home to the finest Boston Harbor wedding venues, is proud to offer free, private access to the city’s top wedding experts in a Bridal Bootcamp session on Thursday, February 2.

Hosted by Certified Wedding Planner Andrea Murphy, the FREE Bridal Bootcamp “Passionate Planning” session will focus on infusing the wedding day with touches of romance, from stunning sweets displays to pre-honeymoon escapes. The session will feature insider tips and expert advice from top Boston specialists including:

        --  Rachael Gross, owner of lolagraceEVENTS and voted "Boston's Best
            Wedding Planner" by the Improper Bostonian
        --  Edna Dratch-Parker, owner of EFD Creative - Event Planning &
            Design and recipient of BizBash's "Social Event Planner of the Year"
            award
        --  Christine Mansella from Infinite Events, which won the Wedding Wire's
            Bride's Choice Award in 2010, 2011 and 2012
        --  David Sargent, a concierge and on-site romance expert at the Boston
            Marriott Long Wharf

“Engagement should be an exciting time and we are thrilled to launch this one-stop shop that will make the planning process seamless and stress-free for Boston couples,” said Murphy. “Bridal Bootcamp classes will be the perfect opportunity to meet top local vendors, share ideas and feel inspired.”

Starting at 6PM, the two-hour session in the private dining room of the Waterline restaurant at the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel restaurant in Boston will also feature complimentary sips and bites for guests — and one lucky couple will win a free weekend getaway at the hotel, including one complimentary overnight stay at the hotel and breakfast for two at Waterline restaurant. This will be the first class of a Bridal Bootcamp series scheduled to take place throughout 2012.

Each 2012 Bridal Bootcamp will include a guided tour of the stunning new Harbor View Ballroom space, the crowning jewel of a four-year, full-hotel, multimillion dollar renovation, which boasts floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto a seasonal, outdoor patio, all with a breathtaking, 180-degree views of the Boston Harbor. The Boston Marriott Long Wharf offers more than 20,000 square feet of flexible Boston Harbor wedding space to fit events — and bridal imaginations — of nearly any size.

About the Boston Marriott Long Wharf Located within short walking distance of Faneuil Hall, Quincy Market, and the Boston Aquarium, the Boston Marriott Long Wharf hotel is also just minutes from Boston Common, the Boston Children’s Museum, and the TD Banknorth Garden. This convenient Boston harbor hotel features 397 rooms and 15 suites on 7 floors, as well as over 20,000 sq. ft. of total meeting and event space for weddings, conferences, and more. It also offers easy access to Logan International Airport, Amtrak’s South Station, the MBTA’s subway and commuter rail and I-93.