The Privileges by Jonathan Dee opens with a description of  the young couple getting married and their friends as, “Adults pretending to be children pretending to be adults,” which I think is probably the best description for twenty-somethings I have ever read.

Sixteen Candles is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I might have identified just a bit too much with the perfect teenage rage  Molly Ringwald feels as her family forgets her sixteenth birthday because her sister’s getting married. I still swoon over Jake Ryan. Also, the bride on muscle relaxers? Makes me howl every time.

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close is a nearly perfect novel about that time in your life when you feel a lot of your friends are getting married, moving on and just maybe you’re being left behind. It also has got the best first line of any wedding novel out there.

The Graduate  has (spoiler!) a wedding in it that doesn’t happen – complete with a slap happy Mrs. Robinson and a bride fleeing her groom on a bus. Katherine Ross’ longing gaze in her veil and dress in the final shot makes me tear up every time.

Kill Bill has the best wedding-cum-massacre ever, and while Uma Thurman’s vow on her wedding day isn’t one of eternal love, it makes for one hell of a movie.

Father of the Bride is one of my all time favorite movies, but that may be because of an unbridled obsession with Diane Keaton. And Franck. And Nancy Meyers’ kitchens – we all want to have that kitchen when we grow up, don’t we?

The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers is one of those novels that burrows deep into your heart and doesn’t leave. Told from the perspective of the defiant twelve-year-old Frankie during the weekend of her older brother’s wedding (she thinks if she helps out enough she’ll go on the honeymoon with the new couple), it’s a heartbreaking and wonderful coming-of-age story that perfectly captures the bittersweet agony of adolescence and the power of a family’s love. I need a tissue.