Dear Dick: Go ahead. Buy it.

Some more advice for my friend, Dick - remember Dick? - who will marry in October.

Dear Dick,

Here is the cycle of wedding planning. You begin with a couple of images of intense emotion, even drama, in your imagination. That’s love and commitment prodding you with the sharp stick of risk. So you gamble on happiness. Intoxicating is the only word for it. The first dramatic moment – asking her to marry – goes off almost as hoped. Your expectations rise. You don’t notice them bouying you up, but they do.

What you imagine, what you feel, and what you can effectuate – see how they come together? Then come wedding magazines. Dick, I’m going to confess this so that you can come out, too. If TWIL’s appetite for these magazines was voracious, I never refused to flip the pages. I’d look at anything “bridal” printed on slick paper. Full of beautiful women rapt with emotion in elegant settings, they were full of great ideas. There, I said it. I tried to fight off writing that phrase, but no. I mean it. There’s the Spanish-inspired wedding accented in hues of sangria and and blood oranges. As the sun sets, the revelers carry on under crimson light and unending joy. It could be us. I could be you. Total cost of the magazine wedding: $80,000. Courage, man.

You’ll soon learn, Dick, what every wedding vendor wants you to have learned months ago. You can buy happiness. I resisted this, manfully, in every way. But listen. I haven’t become a drunken sailor on shore leave, but I’m converted. Go ahead and buy it. The happiness, I mean. But keep in mind that “happiness” is a cheap word. Getting a parking space or getting my way; these make me happy. That’s just, you know, human nature seeking it’s own level. I’m talking about “good fortune.” To be favored by the fates and gods and circumstance to find yourself with joy and honor and humility at once. Most people have the chance to be happy – fortunate – once or twice in their lives. And Dick, your wedding is one.

Here’s how it works. When you have spent all you can afford and others have spent great sums in gifts or travel or both, you will have nearly nothing left over. Reflect for a moment. The wedding is over, the tent comes down, the people go home, flowers die, memories fade (or are erased in the latter half of the reception), and you have, well, signs and symbols of the day. Rings, photographs, and souvenirs, such as the program. (And of course you have all those great gifts, many of which disappear into daily life – the pot, the waffle iron.) You can buy happiness if you do not focus on the things you’re buying.

When everything is past you will have bought a moment of time that cannot be repeated. Never again will these friends see you cracked open like a nut full of love and hope. And that meal? (Funny how anything less than $100 per serving begins to sound like a great deal, isn’t it?) This ancient experience of sitting down with the clan to share your excess out of affection, no other meal will be like this. They will not hear your vows again. They will not raise an eyebrow at some cute cousin or stylish aunt and reflect that youth and hope comes around again, and pronouce that it’s good. And conclude for a day that living, just living, is pretty damned good.

Only you can do this. Bring them in, show them love, sit them down to feed them well, and invite them to lose their senses a bit. Go crazy on the dance floor. Laugh until you cry with her dad, your mother, the brothers. Spend what it takes to bring all these base elements together and the catalyst that changes them to gold. It’s in the air, between beery breaths and perfect dusk. It’s good fortune’s inspiration granting more than you asked for.