Josh, our Reluctant Groomzilla, has taken us through the trials and tribulations of planning a wedding for nearly seven months. We laughed the whole way with our funny-man groom-in-training. But thanks to Josh and his bride-to-be’s superb planning, there isn’t much left to do before the fast-approaching wedding. So for now, Josh will be taking a blog hiatus to concentrate on other areas of his life outside of wedding planning (who knew there was more to life?). He’ll still post once in a while, though—check back for occasional guest posts from Josh as the big day approaches.

In Reluctant Groomzilla withdrawal already? Read along from the beginning.

Worry not, you’ll still get your wedding-planning fix: Today, we’re introducing Eleni, another local bride-to-be who will blog every step of the way to the aisle. Check back every Wednesday for her wedding planning posts!

First of all, if you read this column regularly, I apologize for not writing much lately. Basically, things have been pretty slow in the wedding-planning department. Kind of a summer vacation, you might say. We got most of the big things done already, and now we just have the small details . . . lots of small details.

We have ketubahs, kippahs, ceremony music, thank-you notes, transportation, programs, escort cards, welcome baskets, menu cards, and a slew of other things, but for the most part the big things are done. Somehow, I suspect that this is really the calm before the storm. I’ve noticed that my fiancée is a little more on edge about wedding stuff. I’m not sure if it’s because the to do list is longer or the countdown on our Web site went from three digits to two, but somehow this is starting to seem less like fun and more like work.

I think I may have mentioned that the reason I’m writing this blog is because our wedding planner passed my name along to the folks at The Washingtonian. Well, here is my problem . . .

The best comedy comes from pain and suffering. Before you disagree, think of how many of our great comedians come from a tragic background. Many more live their own lives in a tragic way and often meet tragic ends (think Belushi, Farley, Jeni, and Hedberg). In fact, comedy is often the way we can deal with the unpleasant things in our lives, because placing it in a comedic “wrapper” allows us to laugh while we process things we know are bad. Reality TV shows use this to great effect. The best ratings are when the “characters” are undergoing huge drama, not when everyone is happy and smiling!

Okay, I think I may have mentioned before that I find the whole process of choosing invitations for weddings to be entirely too complicated and expensive and not at all interesting. Well, that was when we were looking at save-the-dates. The other day, I spent a few hours of my life looking at invitations, and those thoughts have been reinforced.

I firmly belong to the Outlook school of inviting. This means that if it's not in Outlook, it doesn't exist as as far as I'm concerned. The best invitations are the ones that I get via e-mail, preferably with a link to download them automatically to Outlook. However, I was told that this is simply not acceptable in the context of a wedding, so off we went to spend good money on something that 50 percent of people are going to throw out, 45 percent of people are going to stick on their refrigerator, and 5 percent of chattering busybodies will actually care about and get all in a tizzy if it isn’t up to spec! According to the stationery person we're using, I'm not a “paper person.” Oh, well!

On picking out a cake with "queen of cakes" Sylvia Weinstock:

On the day of our meeting, I had no idea what I really wanted and my vision was blurred by thoughts of marzipan flowers, but I knew one thing for sure: NO CAKE TOPPER. I wanted one of those amusing ones you can get—you know, with the couple on cell phones or with the bride lassoing or bullwhipping the groom—but apparently those are not classy.

On the art of ice sculpting: 

They can work, if they are done in the right circumstances and fit with the overall theme. Modern/edgy wedding with caviar or martini station that has an ice bar—cool. Traditional wedding with heart-shaped, pink-lit ice centerpiece—NOT cool. 

Sylvia Weinstock, queen of cakes.

I’m sure you know the expression “piece of cake.” Well, as it turns out, picking a cake is anything but. However, the good news is that you get to have your have your cake and eat it, too! So, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette, let us eat cake (samples).

It all started with our reluctance to get a cake at all. The reason is that since we’re having a kosher-style wedding, we have to have a dairy-free cake because we’re serving meat. Now, taking the dairy out of a cake usually results in something resembling sugared cardboard, so we had decided to forgo cake altogether and serve an alternative dessert. Then we went to a wedding where Sylvia Weinstock had done the cake. It was actually glatt kosher (meaning super-duper kosher) and tasted fantastic, so off we went to meet Sylvia.

My post this week was going to be about our visit and tasting with the one and only Sylvia Weinstock. [Editor’s note: For those who aren’t as food-obsessed as our groomzilla, Sylvia Weinstock, nicknamed the “Queen of Cakes,” has designed cakes for Whitney Houston, Donald Trump, and many other celebrities.] I even promised I was going to write a whole post about her if she read my blog! With all due respect to Sylvia, however, something happened this weekend that is bumping her (although I do promise that she will be my next post).