The OurWeddingDay.com Blog

Over at NY blog Gothamist there's this great post about a marriage proposal in the middle of the famed New York Marathon!

"This runner stopped along the NYC Marathon course, right after mile 16 (coming off the 59th St. Bridge into Manhattan) and proposed to his girl. He pulled a ring out of his pocket (I'm assuming it was a ring box - it was something black and square) and they had a few moments. I didn't think to get a shot of his bib number to identify him, so I'm hoping that people might link to this pic on Facebook or twitter in hopes that it'll get to this couple. I'm sure they'd love to have it. :-)"

Check out the full Gothamist post here.

We love that he carried the ring with him on the run and then stopped racing to pop the question!

Check out Anne Naylor's new article, "How Forgiveness in Marriage Builds Intimacy."

She writes, "How often do couples bury a hurt and let it rot the relationship over time? It can take courage to openly let your partner know when they have hurt you, so that you place yourself in the position to forgive them; for them to express their love and regret for the misunderstanding or incident. It should be easy with the one you love the most to be that caring and honest. But often, as was in my own case, it is not."

Check out the full article here.

She goes on to offer advice on how to accept and forgive your spouse.  Being more forgiving and accepting has to be a goal for us all, right?

Oh boy, it's time for one of our favorite blog series: Altarcations.

It's a weekly feature over at Gawker, in which Phyllis Nefler reviews The New York Times' "Weddings" section.  And we love it.

This week Halloween weddings make an expected appearance, as does a wedding which was fully described before it took place (spoooooky!), the introduction of the acronym "LOB" into the lexicon (it stands for "Level of Brutality"), and a whole lot more.

Check out thois week's Altarcations here.

Check out a video of the infamous Karen here.

We understand that wedding planning can sometimes be stressful, and so we always give brides-to-be the benefit of the doubt when they lose their cool.

But seriously, is official Bridezilla Karen just a monster or what?  We've weighed in on her before, and we've tried to be happy for her, but she just seems so mean!

Of course, congratulations Karen!  We wish you all the happiness in the world and in your marriage.  But now that the planning is over and you're out of excuses, maybe you should start sending apology notes with your thank-you cards.  Just a thought.

What are your thoughts on this season's Bridezilla?  What about Karen?

The New York Times published an article this week called The First Marriage, all about how the Obama's personal relationship is being affected by their professional and political life, and influencing other modern marrieds.  It's an interesting angle to explore: Can a couple truly be equals when one of them is the President?

Check out the full NYT article here.

Okay, very few of us will ever be (or be married to) a President.  Still, it's an interesting scenario to compare against the different responsibilities and power dynamics that exist in all marriages.

We're not a political blog at all; we just like to talk about love, romance, wedding planning and married life... and we think their married life looks pretty cool!  However you feel about Obama as our President, you have to admit that it's kinda great that he's keeping "date night" alive in spite of his schedule, and his opponents attempts to turn his life with his wife into something political they can attack.

Just in time for halloween!

The New York Daily News is reporting that church officials have called off the wedding of Lisa Panensky and Jim Nieves when they found out the happy couple would be dressed in costumes and walk down the aisle to The Munsters theme music.

Oh, yeah: the church in question is the same church referenced in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow!

You'd think they'd be used to such requests!  Then again, maybe that's the issue: Maybe they're sick of such requests!

What do you think?

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece this week about married Jews who take "birthright" trips to Israel have felt a strengthening of their marriage.

"A new study found that rates of marriage outside the faith were sharply curbed among young Jews who have taken "birthright" trips to Israel, a development that could hearten Jewish leaders worried about assimilation...

"While past studies have found that trip participants return with a greater appreciation of their Jewish roots, a study to be released Monday by Brandeis University researchers is the first to suggest that the trips also affect marriage behavior. Its results showed that 72% of those who went on the trip married within the faith, compared with 46% of people who applied for the trip but weren't selected in a lottery."

Read the full WSJ article here.

Check out a guide to Jewish wedding planning here.

Does religious faith of any kind affect your wedding planning or relationship?

Every blog in the world seemed to announce Ivanka Trump & Jared Kushner's wedding this weekend.  Ours didn't though, because we really didn't want to have to think about her annoying father.

But it's not fair, we know, to punish the daughter for the sins of the father, and now one of our favorite bloggers, Phyllis Nefler, has brought the whole thing front and center in her awesome, weekly Gawker feature, "Altarcations."

It wasn't all about Ivanka & Jared this weekend: Nefler reminds us that other people got married too!  There's Lori Schulweis, the infamous production coordinator for Regis & Kelly, a real-life "Ms. Manners," and a couple whose "Featured Video" was actually watched by someone!

Check out this week's Altarcations here.

We've provided guides on how NOT to be a Bridezilla a couple of times, but apparently we need to create a third guide... one that reminds brides to be not to publicly mock any disabled guests in attendance.

Wow.  This Karen is a real piece of work: first she hates "poor people," and now this!

Check out the video here.

We really don't like her.

The Telegraph is reporting a new "successful marriage" study, originally published in the European Journal of Operational Research.  Here's a taste:

"Scientists tracked 1,000 couples who were either married or in serious relationships over five years and then looked for patterns among those who were still together.

"They found that neither should have been divorced in the past, the man should be five or more years older and the woman should have received more education than the man.

"...Men and women choose partners “on the basis of love, physical attraction, similarity of taste, beliefs and attitudes, and shared values," but that using “objective factors” such as age, education and cultural origin “may help reduce divorce.”

Check out the full story here.

Of course, there's plenty to criticize about this study and how it's being reported on: Implying that intelligence and education are the same thing, and framing the questions almost entirely for the grooms-to-be, for starters.

Read a criticism of this study here.

But we still enjoy reading these studies.  It seems as though a new one is always coming out, and though we wouldn't base our husband choices on them, they usually make for a fun read.