Melissa asked me if I'd look at a wedding magazine after dinner tonight. She and her bridesmaids are going to get measured for dresses in Jonesborough this weekend, so she wanted me to look at bridesmaid's dresses.

I agreed. Secretly, I wanted to say, "Look. I'll like most of these. Mostly, I don't have an opinion on this stuff. I can stand about five minutes of this, but that's it."

But I didn't say that. I figured it wouldn't last long. How long could it take to skim through a bridal magazine? Obviously, I had never looked at Modern Bride. It's 706 pages! It's The Computer Shopper of wedding crap. It's the Sears Roebuck catalog of wedding porn.

We started skimming Modern Bride. Page 1. Followed by Page 2, which inevitably precedes Page 3. Only 703 pages to go!

"Why don't you look through it, and bookmark the bridesmaid's dresses you like and show them to me later?" Nope. I thought the navy dresses were nice. So were the burgundy dresses. And the lavender dresses. And the sage dresses. All fine, honey.

Only two kinds of dresses got a rise out of me. The red one ("it's kind of whorish, isn't it?") and the deep/hot pink/magenta ("it looks like bad lingerie").

Other than that, we looked at lots of dresses, lots of bridesmaids, and lots of brides. Blonde brides. Brunette brides. Asian brides. The model who looked like Courtney Love. The model with the bad nose and the Frankenstein forehead. Now that I think about it, there were no no black brides. Do they have a separate but equal bridal magazine?

Melissa showed me what a "chapel length" dress looks like.

Me: Man, that's long.
Melissa: It's not as long as a cathedral length dress.
Me: Is there something longer than that?
Melissa: Yeah, it's called a long as hell dress.

We looked at bouquets, and Melissa says she's thinking about roses. I chuckle.

Melissa: What are you laughing at?
Me: What if you throw the bouquet and whoever grabs it gets a fist full of thorns?
Melissa: You don't throw the real bouquet. The florist makes a second bouquet for you to throw. You save the real bouquet and have it freeze-dried.

What I don't know about weddings would fill a book. I lasted for 30 minutes, and made it through all 706 pages. I'm a good fiance. Heck, I even checked the dictionary to see how to spell bridesmaid (it's one word) and fiance (it's one "e" for the guy and two "e's" for the gal). If I ever have to get married again, it's going to be a breeze.