Dear Madame Toujours,

I am a young woman, twenty-seven, and my lover (Herbert) and I are planning to get married in about six months and I am trying to plan the wedding. This is harder than I expected. We are thinking of having some kind of theme wedding. You know, a western wedding, or a hillbilly wedding where Dad walks me down the aisle with a shotgun over his arm, or maybe a nude wedding; I have heard that this is very touching. What do you think would make a good theme?

Sincerely,
Want to do something different

Chere Mlle. Different,

What is it that you are thinking? You are wishing maybe to kill your mother? Me, I am not understanding what for is the wishing to be different with the wedding. The wedding, it is not for the young people who are getting married. It is for the mother who is wishing that she had not been in the family way when she was married and so did not have the time to plan the big, fussy wedding.

It is for the father who is wishing that his baby girl, she was not grown up. For him you are wearing the silly, white dress that is like the one that you wore when you were the little girl. Your father, maybe he is wishing that he was not having to pay for the very big, expensive wedding, but the dress, it is the one thing that he is not minding to pay for. Especially, he is not wishing to see his baby girl in the nude with the bosoms and so on.

Now me, I am wondering why it is that you are wishing to get married at all. If, as you Americans say, you are getting the milk for free, then why is it that you are wishing to buy the cow?

Bien sur, in the old days when I was the girl, it was that the careers for the women, they were not exciting. You could be the washerwoman, the seamstress, the milkmaid, the prostitute. Yes, you could have the little business in the home that pays for the meals. You could be for yourself the employer, but there is not the advancement, the growth, the satisfaction of crushing the employees beneath the heels. So the woman, she married the man who was the most wealthy, and she bought for herself all the clothes and the jewels and the silly, little dogs that could make her happy.

So you can see that you are the very lucky one who is not having the need to be married. You can have the lover and the exciting career and grind the employees under the heels all at the same time. Unless it is that your Herbert, he is the very wealthy fellow? This is good. Especially this is good in the state which has the laws about the community property.

Bon chance, Mlle. Different, and repeat to yourself every morning, “His money, it is my money and my money, it is my money, too.”