So the Biscuit and I chose a day for our wedding. April 1, 2006. Feel free to make whatever jokes seem apprpriate--I'm just satisfied to have the date nailed down. I think this wedding planning has been hard on the Biscuit. She's rock solid and really good with logistics so I had thought she'd be able to handle the whole rigamarole pretty well. But two weeks into it she's showing signs of wear. I think it is the combined burden of doing 99% of the wedding planning, worrying about mother/job/education issues I only partially understand, and (inexplicably!) dieting for her wedding dress try-outs. It really doesn't seem like there's that much to a wedding. Find a church, find a banquet hall, and send out invitations. All the other stuff is frills and it seems the emotional cost of addressing all these frills far outweighs whatever they add to the celebration. I mean it's going to be five hours out of our lives--its not worth the pain. I think we're going to come in under $15k. I'm so relieved. I find expensive weddings to be in really poor taste--one of the worst manifestations of our materialistic culture. What a corruption of something that should be personal and sacred. Nevertheless it seems the 25 or 50 or $75, 000 wedding is pretty standard. Thank God that's not me and the Biscuit. U-561