Father of the bride

With Spencer Tracy as his guide, this dad looks toward his daughter's wedding with mind and heart open

I have become the village idiot. I have become the father of the bride.

My daughter is getting married in 250 days, give or take. In popular culture, the FOTB is a comical figure, someone who stands by in bewilderment as the arrangements and drama swirl around him, aware that there are impressive financial consequences in the offing, but otherwise confounded. Think Spencer Tracy (1950). Think Steve Martin (1991). As for me, these portrayals are true in part and untrue in part.

True: I am baffled by much of what is happening. Thank God my wife speaks caterer.

Untrue: I am not bellowing about the cost of the ... how did the Martin Short wedding planner character pronounce it in the '91 remake? ... the "kek." I don't think I'm bellowing. An occasional, very, very low-key wince. I'm trying to behave.

True: I am dealing with rising daddy angst.

It will likely hit me hardest at the very end of the aisle, I know, when the preacher's question will form a prompt for my only official task in this enterprise. In the 1950 movie, here's the soliloquy that rushes through Spencer Tracy's mind.

Who giveth this woman? "This woman." But she's not a woman. She's still a child. And she's leaving us. What's it going to be like to come home and not find her? Not to hear her voice calling "Hi, Pops" as I come in? I suddenly realized what I was doing. I was giving up Kay. Something inside me began to hurt.

Anyway. I got that to look forward to.

A little background

My Hilary is 21 and will graduate this December (a semester early, thank you very much), from UNC-Chapel Hill, with a double major in romance languages and psychology. She is smart and musical (she was drum major of the high school marching band). She is funny, opinionated and organized. She has the curly brown hair that resembles mine, before I lost it. Her intended, Travis, is a computer science major at N.C. State. He is also smart and a worker. He can fix things, like cars, plumbing and data networks. He directs the music at the church, plays guitar and has a quiet sense of humor.

My wife and I were talking to a caterer the other day who mentioned that she is doing an increasing number of weddings for brides and grooms who met in those newfangled ways: Some of her clients met on eHarmony. A number found each other on Match.com. Some at It's Just Lunch.

Hilary and Travis met the oldfangled way, in middle school. It's Just Recess.

But they didn't start dating until about three years ago. Things started getting increasingly serious, and then Hilary went to Mexico for several months to study and ramp up her Spanish. They missed each other something terrible, she in Cuernavaca and he in Clayton. A few days after she got back late last year, he produced a ring and a proposal.

How, I wondered, did he know what kind of ring to buy, since Hilary is, uh, particular? Well, sometime during the courtship, Hilary had made sure he knew. "Girls do things like go to Web sites and design their own rings," she explained to me. "And I showed him what I had and said, 'If I get married, I'd like that ring.'"

"Real subtle," recalled Travis.

Like building a sub

A wedding is a big, complex, occasionally scary project, with jobs that have to be done in a certain order. For example: You can't send out the invitations until you figure out the guest list. You can't book a reception hall until you figure out the date. I was describing this profound insight the other day, drawing an analogy to the construction of a nuclear submarine. You have to build the hull before, I said, you can install the reactor room and the fuel rods and such. "Are you likening my wedding to a nuclear submarine?" asked Hilary after one complete eye roll. Not exactly. The assembly of a submarine has less potential for drama. There is no TV show titled "Subzilla."