First meet Kerry Madden who, in "Our wedding vow — to my mother-in-law" gives a how-to on $120, low-key nups. (Granted, in, like, 1986.) Of course, there's the whole part about trying to out-run her mother-in-law, who wanted to put the kibbosh on the early marriage lest it sap the couple of ambition, but it all works out in the end!

It was easy to see why Frances worried about the pitfalls of early marriage for her children. On the night Kiffen and I married, after Frances and I cried and hugged each other, I promised her that we wouldn't lose our ambition. Kiffen and I have now been married nearly 23 years. We have three children. Our ambitions have changed and matured. But they haven't diminished.

Awww!

Frances, she of the 13 children and the ambition fixation, would be delighted with "Feminist brides saying 'I do' to creating own traditions!" See, these "ardent feminists" have no use for the "patriarchal wedding trappings" society demands. "But for those who have decided that "married feminist" is not an oxymoron" - yes, there are a few! And they name-check Jessica Valenti as one of these rare creatures - you can do stuff like wear hiking boots with your gown, and walk down the aisle with both parents.

Even the featured couple in the Times has their priorities on straight! "For Elizabeth Ashlea Wood and Gabriel Spektor Nussbaum, both 26, the immersion of teaching children in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans and making a documentary together further melded their hearts." Natch, the wedding is no production either:

...After a buffet of pulled-pork sliders and fried macaroni and cheese balls, friends and family paid tribute to the couple with a song and dance revue. Then Mr. Nussbaum stood and serenaded his bride with a Johnny Mercer song, "My Sugar Is So Refined."

But what of those worthy souls who don't make the "Celebrations" cut? Oh, dear. For them, we've got fake law firm "Glinder and Glinder," who stand ready to sue the Times for the emotional damage inflicted by such snubbings. Says the Village Voice, "expect a class action suit any day."

Our Wedding Vow — To My Mother-In-Law [Los Angeles Times]
Feminist Brides Saying 'I Do' To Creating Own Traditions [Chronicle]
Vows: Elizabeth Wood And Gabriel Nussbaum [NY Times]
Fake Law Firm Fights for Your Right to Appear in Times Wedding Section [Village Voice]

I'm hard on "Modern Love," but that's partially because when it's good, it can be really good. This week's essay, "A Student of Intimacy, Step by Step," is a particularly poignant one. Matthew Parker is a middle-aged man who has spent most of his adult life in prison for drug-related offenses. He's gotten clean and become a full-time student, but finds romance a more difficult challenge.

When I got out of prison in 2002, I was narcotics-free for the first time since I was a teenager, and achingly lonely. Yet I had never had a normal relationship, and I was clueless about how to get myself into one. My 11 years of forced celibacy in prison and decades of drug use had left me inept when it came to women. I sometimes had junkie girlfriends, but junkies rarely find love because their love is the narcotic. Everything else is secondary.

Parker tries online dating, but finds women are put off by his troubled past. So he looks farther afield: a site that sets men up with women from Colombia.

My girlfriend, Gerenith, is barely five feet tall, and is thin and beautiful, with long, curly black hair and lightly freckled brown skin. She epitomizes the hustle of Cali. Working full time for a condominium complex, she also studies business administration and finance on weekends. I love it when I give her money — to pay for a meal, say — and she shortchanges me. I pretend not to notice because it reflects a survival instinct that I am quite familiar with. Gerenith lives on about $60 a week. From this she must pay her rent, tuition and all the things that provide a modicum of comfort in a third-world country. Every peso counts.

Gerenith, however, is a professional woman and fiercely proud: she has joined the site because she doesn't like the macho Columbian culture of mistresses; she won't tell Parker she loves him for months, and insists on taking the physical relationship slowly. And, when he suggests they marry so she can come to America, she is insulted: “'Marriage is much more than a legal document,' she said in her fast-flowing Spanish. 'It is a joining of our hearts. And how would I finish my education? Nothing is more important than our education'.”

While the relationship bears little resemblance to what we are used to, and we are left hoping for, rather than certain of, its unlikely success, there is an immediacy to the essay that's lacking in so many of the personal accounts we read: you're left in no doubt of his sincerity, of the compromises life demands, and of the power of loneliness and love. Maybe it's just a coincidence, but this week's featured wedding in the "Vows" column touched on some of the same issues of mid-life love, loneliness and the possibilities of the internet. The account of the wedding explains that Christina Welykyj had devoted her life to work and a father ill with Parkinson's disease. It was only after his death that she felt able to pursue a social life:

Following her father’s death in 2001, Ms. Welykyj went to Match.com, through which her colleagues had found spouses, and eHarmony.com, another dating site. Ms. Welykyj, who goes to Mass every Sunday, joined church groups and attended adult education classes and a speed dating event. Still, she dated only sporadically.

After several years, Ms. Welykyj meets special ed teacher Brian Ante on CatholicMatch.com. “You have kept the best wine until now," says the priest who officiates at their Ukrainian Catholic wedding. Two stories of people taking initiative and finding their particular happiness: What a lovely way to begin the week.

A Student Of Intimacy, Step By Step [NY Times]
Vows: Christina Welykyj And Brian Ante [NY Times]

Last year Ms. Kraus decided to dedicate their latest novel, "Dedication" to her husband. No, she wasn’t married. But she was hopeful. 'I was creating a place holder,” Ms. Kraus, 33, said. “He was out there. I just hadn’t crossed paths with him yet.' She began behaving as if she was already in love. 'You carry yourself differently when you’re not alone,' she explained. 'I would carry myself at a party or a supermarket or a gym as if I was loved.' Then a month later David Wheir kissed her, and she no longer needed to pretend."

Okay, so clearly something about this is bothersome, but what?

1. So we're supposed to walk the streets in the same yoga pants and busted Chuck Taylors and expressions of total indifference to the male gender we'd be wearing if we had boyfriends who loved us? Because, you know, done.
2. Okay, I know I said "total indifference" but fuck if "Mr. Wheir" isn't totally fucking hot. Check the video.
3. All right, here's how it really happened: they were friends first, he'd flirt with her immaturely but he always had a destructive relationship with some girlfriend with whom he liked to suck face publicly — why do I suspect said girlfriend was working retail at the time? — and then Nicola was mean to the girlfriend the time she came with him to a dog's birthday party, which is totally not something I would generally pull, not that I would have a birthday party for a dog either, but still it's illuminating, to the extent that maybe if she had spent the party yakking with the girlfriend and ignoring David she not only would have secured herself a discount at the girlfriend's boutique but maybe might have hastened the process by which he came to the realization that any woman indifferent enough to his mammoth hotness to chat up his vacuous-ass girlfriend was not only emotionally independent enough to actually date, but sufficiently comfortable around shallow people to date him. Or maybe I'm getting ahead of myself. But seriously, what was she so intimidated by in his ex-girlfriend? Her movie starred fucking Scarlett Johansson.
(OT, but: did anyone else On-Demand Nanny Diaries? I love that Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti both star in that thing. Can't you just hear Linney being interviewed…"Well I loved working with him on John Adams but we couldn't exactly not work together again after the once-in-a-lifetime experience that was Nanny Diaries…)
4. The wedding service involved a reading from the book Eat, Pray Love.

Vows [NY Times]