When I was in college, I had a pretty good idea which man I was going to be walking down the aisle to. We’d been together a couple of years, and I started to hear wedding bells. So I started secretly buying wedding magazines — at the college bookstore, at the grocery store — always purchased somewhat shamefully like a pregnancy test, where you’re trying not to make eye contact with the checker because they’ll give you the look like, “Are you even engaged? Do you have a license to read that bridal magazine?”

I’d bring them back to the dorms and my friend Erika and I would dissect them, ripping out our favorite pages and keeping secret files in unmarked cardboard boxes under our beds.

Then I got engaged, and that really opened the floodgates. I subscribed to all of them — Brides, Martha Stewart Weddings, Portland Bride & Groom, Oregon Bride and more. And you know what? I never stopped getting them. I just kept renewing my subscriptions, because by the time the first ones ran out, I was in the wedding industry and I kept up on them. Now I have piles (literally piles — see the photos) of these things and sometimes I can’t bear to recycle them because they remind me of being young and excited about my wedding, which is something I see in a lot of my clients. It reminds me what that feels like.

So yeah, I love bridal magazines. Even though you’ll learn (if you subscribe more than a year, which almost no one does) that they basically publish the same four magazines every year with new photos. Oh, well. Keep ‘em coming. I’ll add them to the pile.