According to Ms. Blank’s exhaustive compilation of lore and history on the subject, virginity is closer to not existing than most people realize. “It can’t be weighed on a scale, sniffed out like a truffle … or photographed for posterity,” she writes—and then proceeds to explore the topic from every angle, from religious doctrine to government policy.

Does it sound like a Mount Holyoke “Psychology of Gender” survey course? Gratuitous definitions of words like “dowry” and needless repetition of identical sentences in different sections make this tome feel at times like it was written to be split apart and photocopied for course packets. There’s no novelistic storytelling and little sense of the author’s personal journey in writing the book. But her survey is engrossing and informative, in part because she’s willing to do research both in the stacks of law libraries and in the back shelves of video stores.

“Virginity is for most people a transitional state that bridges the end of childhood and the assumption of full social adulthood,” she writes, although this definition, she acknowledges, too neatly ties sexual initiation with marriage. In the United States today, first sexual experiences (and procreation) frequently precede marriage; a woman can have legal sex long before she can legally buy a post-coital cigarette; and the idea that you’ll lose your virginity to the person you’ll love forever is the stuff of cheesy oldies. (Thanks, Meatloaf!)

Some ancient definitions of virginity actually seem more relevant to contemporary experience. In the 13th century, philosopher Albertus Magnus defined four kinds of virginity, including virgins who’ve taken vows of chastity and virgins who behave in a promiscuous manner though they haven’t technically been deflowered. In between are the many gray areas that make “virginology” an inexact science.

Any survey of virginity is also a survey of female oppression—from the vestal virgins ripped from their families as children by clergymen to the practice, both ancient and modern, of raping virgins in order to cure sexually transmitted diseases (n.b.: It doesn’t work). Controlling a woman’s sexual activities was long the surest way for a man to guarantee the lineage of his children, and, as marriage was often the best option for a woman to guarantee herself food and shelter, keeping her virginity for her husband—or making believe that she’d done so in any variety of ways, from faking blood to suggesting that a baby had been sired by a god—was frequently in her best interest. Though it can be instructive to see the Renaissance or the Victorian era or the Jazz Age through the lens of the hymen, there is no shortage of gyno-histories already in print (and Ms. Blank shows little interest in non-Western cultures—this book doesn’t really look east or south of Greece).

More interestingly, a history of virginity is also a history of lie-detecting. Short of catching her in the act or discovering that she’s pregnant, the best way to learn if someone is no longer a virgin is to ask her—but that’s never been the preferred method. Instead, efforts to decode the virginity cipher have ranged from measuring the woman’s head to timing the duration of her urination to testing the effect of male earwax on her vulva. The most bizarre virgin test is a tradition among the Spanish Roma women, who get a female village elder to use her finger to burst what they believe is a juicy grape that grows deep inside the vagina.

The broken hymen has, of course, been the standard marker for a lack of virginity in the Western world. Ms. Blank is at her best when discussing the details of this minute bit of misunderstood membrane. Found in a variety of animals from elephants to moles, the hymen is a leftover scrim in the spot where the separately forming external and internal vaginal organs join during gestation. In humans, it’s rarely the tightly pulled, drum-like sheath that most people imagine (and when it is, it’s considered a birth defect). In fact, the hymen is more often like a sieve or a flap. Some have blood vessels and bleed when torn; others don’t. Some even disintegrate in childhood.

Photos would have been a useful addition to this book, and they wouldn’t have hurt sales, as more than a few men would like to say they’ve seen a hymen. Ms. Blank calls lusting after virgins parthenophilia. “We have for so long lacked a term for this particular erotic attraction [because it’s] something our culture considers entirely normal, acceptable, and ideologically correct,” she writes.

It might be ideologically “correct” to want to make a virgin unvirginal, but this book raises the point that our government hasn’t spared virginity in its continuing effort to take control of what goes on between a woman’s legs. Taxpayers now pay over $300 million a year on programs that promote pre-marriage abstinence, reinforcing the idea that sexuality outside of marriage—especially for women—is bad, no matter how safe or consensual it might be. Ms. Blank makes a good case for the ridiculousness of this effort. She notes that in 2002, soon after the Centers for Disease Control started to report its findings that no pro-chastity initiative ranked among the top five sex-education programs when it came to reducing risky sexual behavior, the study was cancelled and the results mysteriously pulled from the C.D.C. Web site.

All in all, though, it’s not a bad moment to be a virgin. A friend of mine recently confided to me that she is a virgin at 24; she’s happy to have lived her life as she has, but she’s also eager to try out sex. “I feel like the rest of the world is in a club that I’m not a part of yet,” she said. However, unlike the virgins of some other eras, she knows roughly what to expect once she gets into the club. Few adult or teen virgins today in the West can avoid exposure to sex. What’s more, thanks to everything from women’s suffrage to modern birth control to tampons (which, Ms. Blank points out, have made vaginal entry “utilitarian”), her “first time” will likely come where, when and how she pleases, and it won’t be a public demarcation—positive or negative—of her value. Whether she chooses to post a story about losing her virginity on her MySpace page, or decides never to do the nasty at all, she’s lucky to live at a time when the choice won’t inevitably determine the shape of her life.

Anna Jane Grossman is the author, with Flint Wainess, of It’s Not Me, It’s You: The Ultimate Breakup Book (Perseus).

When my mom—a law-abiding, Annie Hall–turns-savvy-business-woman type—was chosen to be on the jury for the recent John Gotti Jr. case, my family became bizarrely intertwined with the Family. The trial ended two weeks ago in a hung jury.

But during the weeks that it lasted, jokes about cement shoes and sleeping with the fishes started to take on a whole new meaning at family meals and parties.

My mom, I should note for her own safety as well as mine, was one of the five alternate jurors—something like the courthouse version of “always the bridesmaid.” So while she wasn’t present for deliberations, she was there for the entire trial. Indeed, she became something of a den mother for the mob’s jury. Now that the trial’s ended and she’s been free to talk, her tales of the inner workings of the Cosa Nostra have satiated our Sopranos cravings, at least between episodes of Law & Order.

Mom, first of all, why didn’t you get out of this?

“I let fate take its course. On the one hand, I thought it could be fascinating; on the other hand, I felt that it would be self-indulgent as a business owner to not be in the office for six weeks. On the third hand, I didn’t know how to get out of it. What was I supposed to say?”

Well, I suggested you tell them your daughter up until recently worked at the New York Post. I’ve heard lawyers don’t pick people associated with papers.

“You wrote about weddings and restaurants, not crime.”

But still—I mean, I knew people who wrote about the Gottis. I also once met [the plaintiff, and head of the Guardian Angels] Curtis Sliwa.

“You met him at a matzo-ball-eating competition.”

So? I read one woman tried to get out of it by saying she’d worked in an office where she once saw the guy who wrote The Godfather.

“Yeah, that was dumb. It might not have been the brightest group of people. We had to fill out this 25-page questionnaire, and one question was: ‘Name three living people you’re not related to whom you admire.’”

Who did you put?

“Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Oprah. But a lot of people wrote ‘My mother.’ One guy put down Sean Combs and P. Diddy.”

That’s the same person.

“I know that!”

So, after you were picked, what happened?

“At the courthouse, they made us leave our cell phones and newspapers in a used cardboard Nabisco cookie box before directing us through a metal detector. One woman’s bra had an underwire that kept setting it off, and we thought that was pretty funny.”

Did you all get along?

“At first no one talked, because we weren’t supposed to know each other’s names. Then I brought in a coffee pot, and people seemed to really appreciate that. During lunch, people mainly played Su DoKu or did crossword puzzles. I knit, and some other jurors wanted to learn how to do it, so I brought in extra yarn and needles. I started to teach one woman, but just as she was getting the hang of it, she had to resign from the jury for personal reasons.”

And when you got sick, they didn’t dismiss you?

“No. I just kept orchestrating when I would cough or sneeze so I wouldn’t interfere with the interrogation. A few times, I coughed during a witness response and the court reporter had to ask for something to be repeated. But the judge had to ask things to be repeated a lot, too.”

Because of your coughing?

“No. A lot of the time, her attention was on her computer. She sat there eating matzo, drinking soda and typing. I kept wondering what she was typing. Notes? Or was she IM-ing someone?”

Well, were you paying complete attention the whole time?

“I tried. I drew pictures of everyone so I could try to keep track of who was who. They also gave us a book with 100 mug shots of all the people they were talking about. After a few weeks, it felt like it was a family photo album and I knew each person’s name. There were some really bad people in that book!”

Yes, I gather. That’s why they’re in the mob.

“It was like learning about a whole new culture. A topsy-turvy culture.”

What do you mean?

“It’s a society with its own behavioral codes within our society. Extortion is merely a tax to their own mob government. In our world, from the time you’re in kindergarten you’re taught to use your words to work out differences. But for them, there are three ways to deal with differences: hurting someone, hurting someone bad enough to put them in the hospital, and killing someone.”

You’re kidding.

“No! And socially they’re totally different, too.”

You’re kidding.

“No! Like, they’d say, ‘Why should I take my wife to a party when I can take my girlfriend?’ And when they baptize their kids, they give them mob godfathers who are clearly sinners. You know, John Gotti Jr. has five kids and the youngest is 5?”

So?

“Well, he’s been in jail since 1999, so I wondered how he has a 5-year-old. It made me think about conjugal visits and how weird that must be: ‘Hi, I’m here for my husband’s monthly screw.’ ‘Oh, sorry, ma’am. He already had someone come yesterday for that purpose ….’ ”

Right. Could you follow all the legal stuff?

“There’s this whole legal language that I’d never encountered before. Or maybe it’s a mob language? All the witnesses would say ‘I believe,’ which allowed for a less definitive statement. ‘Did you take a knife to your wife’s throat and threaten her?’ ‘I believe I might have done that.’ Also, they’d say ‘recollect’ instead of ‘remember,’ as in, ‘May I look at the evidence to refresh my recollection?’ It always sounded funny to me, formal and erudite, coming from these galoots.”

Did you feel at all nervous being in a room with all those mobsters?

“Not at all. A few people on the jury were worried about being recognized and followed, and at one point there was concern our photos would be taken with camera phones. But the judge assured us no one has phones. There was a time when one witness was late, and for a second I wondered if he’d been kidnapped or killed.”

Was he?

“No, he showed up. I couldn’t help but giggle to myself when he finally arrived.”

All in all, would you say it was a positive experience?

“It was an education. I’ve been dreaming about it a lot ever since I read about Gotti’s release. There were things that were just really funny: At the start of the trial, there was a ‘bang!’ from the loudspeaker and one of the jurors screamed, and then Gotti threw up his hands and said, ‘I didn’t do it!’ Everyone cracked up. Another time, I sneezed and Gotti said, ‘God bless you.’”

John Gotti Jr. blessed you?

“Yeah. You know, honestly, he seemed like a nice guy.”

When my mom—a law-abiding, Annie Hall–turns-savvy-business-woman type—was chosen to be on the jury for the recent John Gotti Jr. case, my family became bizarrely intertwined with the Family. The trial ended two weeks ago in a hung jury.

But during the weeks that it lasted, jokes about cement shoes and sleeping with the fishes started to take on a whole new meaning at family meals and parties.

My mom, I should note for her own safety as well as mine, was one of the five alternate jurors—something like the courthouse version of “always the bridesmaid.” So while she wasn’t present for deliberations, she was there for the entire trial. Indeed, she became something of a den mother for the mob’s jury. Now that the trial’s ended and she’s been free to talk, her tales of the inner workings of the Cosa Nostra have satiated our Sopranos cravings, at least between episodes of Law & Order.

Mom, first of all, why didn’t you get out of this?

“I let fate take its course. On the one hand, I thought it could be fascinating; on the other hand, I felt that it would be self-indulgent as a business owner to not be in the office for six weeks. On the third hand, I didn’t know how to get out of it. What was I supposed to say?”

Well, I suggested you tell them your daughter up until recently worked at the New York Post. I’ve heard lawyers don’t pick people associated with papers.

“You wrote about weddings and restaurants, not crime.”

But still—I mean, I knew people who wrote about the Gottis. I also once met [the plaintiff, and head of the Guardian Angels] Curtis Sliwa.

“You met him at a matzo-ball-eating competition.”

So? I read one woman tried to get out of it by saying she’d worked in an office where she once saw the guy who wrote The Godfather.

“Yeah, that was dumb. It might not have been the brightest group of people. We had to fill out this 25-page questionnaire, and one question was: ‘Name three living people you’re not related to whom you admire.’”

Who did you put?

“Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Oprah. But a lot of people wrote ‘My mother.’ One guy put down Sean Combs and P. Diddy.”

That’s the same person.

“I know that!”

So, after you were picked, what happened?

“At the courthouse, they made us leave our cell phones and newspapers in a used cardboard Nabisco cookie box before directing us through a metal detector. One woman’s bra had an underwire that kept setting it off, and we thought that was pretty funny.”

Did you all get along?

“At first no one talked, because we weren’t supposed to know each other’s names. Then I brought in a coffee pot, and people seemed to really appreciate that. During lunch, people mainly played Su DoKu or did crossword puzzles. I knit, and some other jurors wanted to learn how to do it, so I brought in extra yarn and needles. I started to teach one woman, but just as she was getting the hang of it, she had to resign from the jury for personal reasons.”

And when you got sick, they didn’t dismiss you?

“No. I just kept orchestrating when I would cough or sneeze so I wouldn’t interfere with the interrogation. A few times, I coughed during a witness response and the court reporter had to ask for something to be repeated. But the judge had to ask things to be repeated a lot, too.”

Because of your coughing?

“No. A lot of the time, her attention was on her computer. She sat there eating matzo, drinking soda and typing. I kept wondering what she was typing. Notes? Or was she IM-ing someone?”

Well, were you paying complete attention the whole time?

“I tried. I drew pictures of everyone so I could try to keep track of who was who. They also gave us a book with 100 mug shots of all the people they were talking about. After a few weeks, it felt like it was a family photo album and I knew each person’s name. There were some really bad people in that book!”

Yes, I gather. That’s why they’re in the mob.

“It was like learning about a whole new culture. A topsy-turvy culture.”

What do you mean?

“It’s a society with its own behavioral codes within our society. Extortion is merely a tax to their own mob government. In our world, from the time you’re in kindergarten you’re taught to use your words to work out differences. But for them, there are three ways to deal with differences: hurting someone, hurting someone bad enough to put them in the hospital, and killing someone.”

You’re kidding.

“No! And socially they’re totally different, too.”

You’re kidding.

“No! Like, they’d say, ‘Why should I take my wife to a party when I can take my girlfriend?’ And when they baptize their kids, they give them mob godfathers who are clearly sinners. You know, John Gotti Jr. has five kids and the youngest is 5?”

So?

“Well, he’s been in jail since 1999, so I wondered how he has a 5-year-old. It made me think about conjugal visits and how weird that must be: ‘Hi, I’m here for my husband’s monthly screw.’ ‘Oh, sorry, ma’am. He already had someone come yesterday for that purpose ….’ ”

Right. Could you follow all the legal stuff?

“There’s this whole legal language that I’d never encountered before. Or maybe it’s a mob language? All the witnesses would say ‘I believe,’ which allowed for a less definitive statement. ‘Did you take a knife to your wife’s throat and threaten her?’ ‘I believe I might have done that.’ Also, they’d say ‘recollect’ instead of ‘remember,’ as in, ‘May I look at the evidence to refresh my recollection?’ It always sounded funny to me, formal and erudite, coming from these galoots.”

Did you feel at all nervous being in a room with all those mobsters?

“Not at all. A few people on the jury were worried about being recognized and followed, and at one point there was concern our photos would be taken with camera phones. But the judge assured us no one has phones. There was a time when one witness was late, and for a second I wondered if he’d been kidnapped or killed.”

Was he?

“No, he showed up. I couldn’t help but giggle to myself when he finally arrived.”

All in all, would you say it was a positive experience?

“It was an education. I’ve been dreaming about it a lot ever since I read about Gotti’s release. There were things that were just really funny: At the start of the trial, there was a ‘bang!’ from the loudspeaker and one of the jurors screamed, and then Gotti threw up his hands and said, ‘I didn’t do it!’ Everyone cracked up. Another time, I sneezed and Gotti said, ‘God bless you.’”

John Gotti Jr. blessed you?

“Yeah. You know, honestly, he seemed like a nice guy.”

Met: July 2002

Engaged: Feb. 26, 2004

Projected Wedding Date: Sept. 5, 2004

Steve Prince has plenty of WASP credentials (Exeter '92, Princeton '96, owner of several Griffin and Howe rifles), but when it came to courting Hailey Lustig, he relied on the good old-fashioned Jewish guilt that sluices through his veins. "I'm looking forward to taking you out, but I was sort of bummed out that you canceled on the day of our date," he told the sassy, olive-skinned blonde, who had bailed because she felt like extending her stay in the Hamptons.

"I don't want to be lectured ," Ms. Lustig bellowed into the phone. "Lose my number."

How did they get from this inauspicious beginning to planning a Labor Day weekend wedding romp in Muskoka, Ontario, where Ms. Lustig's parents have run a summer camp for 33 years?

"I admired it. You knew what you wanted," said Mr. Prince from Greenwich, Conn., where he's a portfolio manager at a hedge fund. His disembodied voice was floating out of the speakerphone in Ms. Lustig's Times Square office, where she works as the publisher of Show People , a lifestyle magazine for the theater industry.

Both 30, the couple first shared ceviche on the roof of Seventh Avenue's Sushi Samba, after being set up by a mutual friend. Ms. Lustig was enjoying the single life and far from bedazzled by the curly-haired, bespectacled Mr. Prince-hence the telephone testiness when he called for date No. 2. But when he tried again in the winter, she remembered he was funny. "Call me back in a month," she ordered.

After a long-delayed rendezvous at Roc in Tribeca, Ms. Lustig kissed Mr. Prince on the cheek and said, "You can call me again." After that, "everything just unfolded," he said. In December, he moved from the Upper East Side to the Archive Building on Christopher Street, where Ms. Lustig had lived for a year, enabling an upgrade to a two-bedroom.

The pair was casually browsing at the Fred Leighton boutique during the Christmas season ( danger! danger! ) when Mr. Prince asked the counterman what kind of ring he thought Ms. Lustig might like. That counterman, who turned out to be Mr. Fred Leighton himself, took in Ms. Lustig's pink Polo cable-knit sweater and corduroys with a practiced eye. "She's a classic girl, so she would want a classic ring," he said, producing a 3.3-emerald-cut diamond with substantial trapezoids.

"Me and Fred had a moment," she said.

Soon after, Mr. Prince began bombarding his sweetie with e-mails from "topsecretadmirer@yahoo.com," telling her to ditch the "boring live-in." One cryptic message led her back to Roc, where Mr. Prince formally proposed, giving her a version of the Fred Leighton ring he'd found in the Diamond District, and announced that they were leaving for St. Bart's on the morrow.

The bride-to-be, who has been known to accost Broadway stars in the Pax Wholesome Foods across the street from her office, waving her quarterly publication in their faces and telling them, "We have this great magazine and you need to be in it," said Mr. Prince has made her nicer. "He is the guy that everybody likes," she said. "I am not that person."

"Hailey has a tough exterior," said her fiancé. "But inside, she's like oatmeal."

-Anna Schneider-Mayerson

Alison Albeck and Joshua Lindland

Met: January 2003

Engaged: Oct. 5, 2004

Projected Wedding Date: June 26, 2004

Love in one act! Nonprofit theater wonks Alison Albeck, 25, and Joshua Lindland, 27, got engaged after a mere 30 days of dating. "When you know, you know," said Mr. Lindland, a board member of the Subjective Theatre Company who ponied up a 1.4-carat emerald-cut diamond flanked with 14 baguettes while the couple was skating at Rockefeller Center.

They first became acquainted at the opening of Love/Sad , an Off Off Broadway "performance piece" based on The Little Prince and produced by the sleek-haired, svelte Ms. Albeck's theater company, Studio 42 (she's also a senior executive at TheaterMania). "He's the kind of person who, when he looks you in the eye, you feel like you're being noticed," she said.

At a meeting of the Off-Off Community Dish four months later, Ms. Albeck was intrigued to see the chiseled, dirty-blond-haired Mr. Lindland carrying a motorcyle helmet and talking about money and financial planning in a way that sounded … like he had some. "I thought maybe he was an actor with a trust fund," she said. (In fact, Mr. Lindland works in product management at Fiduciary Trust Company International.)

Nine months later, she was at Joe's Pub-a major theater-wonk hangout-when her drinking companion's boyfriend's roommate dropped by: Mr. Lindland encore ! He sat down super-close. "I remember my knee was touching his, and I had to concentrate really hard to just make sentences ," Ms. Albeck said. From the bathroom, she tipsily called an old Vassar classmate to gush. The drinking companion left. The new twosome smooched. They compared their Scandinavian heritage-she's half-Danish, he's half-Norwegian. They had so much in common that they didn't realize Ms. Albeck's Coach pocketbook was being lifted. In it were her keys to her Murray Hill pad … which meant she had little choice but to return with Mr. Lindland to his place in "whatever that hipster part of Brooklyn is," she said. (Williamsburg, we think .) They "just talked" all night, and then he gallantly bought her a MetroCard so she could get to work the next day. "Neither one of us wanted the other to think it was going to be some kind of one-night stand." he said.

"I thought I'd just chalk it up to a good New York story." Ms. Albeck said.

Seventeen days later, as he was feeding her Norwegian chocolates, they concluded that they should really spend the rest of their lives together (even though they hadn't yet been through one menstrual cycle). They moved into a West Village one-bedroom duplex the following month and are planning a ceremony at St. John's Episcopal Church in the bride's native Larchmont, with a reception to follow at the Larchmont Yacht Club.

"I think both of us are getting more than we ever thought we'd get," said Ms. Albeck of the swifty union, adding, "I think people are scared of giving up their freedom, but I think you should only be scared if you're not getting what you want ."

"She's someone I can imagine doing anything with," Mr. Lindland said. "If I got a job offer to go to Cambodia, I know that as long as it were with her, it'd be fun."

-Anna Jane Grossman

Met: September 1998

Engaged: Jan. 3, 2004

Projected Wedding Date: June 21, 2006

Peter Loureiro, an actor who has built a career on his eerie resemblance to Christopher Walken (he has a one-man play called Citizen Walken and re-creates Annie Hall's creepy brother Duane in the long-running Off Broadway show Who Killed Woody Allen? ), is marrying Michelle Cutler, a graduate student in film direction at N.Y.U.

Both are yoga nuts and both put in time "finding themselves" in Berlin during their twenties. They were fixed up by Poodles, the receptionist of Screw publisher Al Goldstein and a longtime friend of Ms. Cutler, who is 33. Mr. Loureiro, who is "34 or 44" depending on the part, is a seasoned waiter who also spent a decade as an off-and-on producer for Mr. Goldstein's weekly sexcentric one-hour cable program, Midnight Blue .

They first locked eyes on 23rd Street, outside the Screw offices, where Ms. Cutler was going to visit Poodles. Alone in the elevator, an aroused Ms. Cutler thinking she might see the cute guy again upstairs wriggled out of her baggy T-shirt and into a clingier striped one that she happened to have in her handbag. Five minutes later, Mr. Loureiro approached her at Poodles'desk."You switched shirts?" he said. Busted!

Before meeting for a threesome with Poodles at the Lower East Side bar Max Fish, Ms. Cutler committed another sartorial flub. She had just gone to the gym and didn't have time to change. "I was like, Eww, I'm going to meet this guy and I'm all gross! " she remembered. "But then I'm like, 'You know, if this is the guy for me, he won't care! I don't want to have to go home and put on makeup and the whole thing just to have a beer !'" You go , sister girlfriend!

After a few rounds, Poodles tootled off, and the duo went for sushi and sake at Sapporo, then repaired to Ñ, the Soho tapas bar where Ms. Cutler tends for extra cash. Later, they made out in the foyer of her apartment building-but her roommate had a strict "no sleepover" policy. "Why don't we get together tomorrow night, and I'll come over to your house?" Ms. Cutler suggested. Gee, that's fast , Mr. Loureiro thought. "O.K.!" he said.

Six months later, she moved into his East Village two-bedroom. The relatives approved. "My mom said the other day that having dinner with us is like dining with Elaine May and Mike Nichols," Ms. Cutler said. "Can't get a word in edgewise." They were with his siblings at a waterfront restaurant in New Hampshire near his sister's house when she suddenly experienced a public love surge. "I was like, 'God! I'm so in love with you! I want everyone to know!'" By the end of the evening they were engaged, and are currently shopping for engagement rings-for both of them. "I hate that just women are supposed to wear an engagement ring," said Ms. Cutler, possibly the last feminist in Manhattan.

Because of a mutual interest in Vikings, they're considering a pagan ceremony in Scandinavia near the Arctic Circle on midsummer's night. Don't count on any Saturday Night Live "the Continental"–style antics on the honeymoon. "Christopher Walken has to stay out of the bedroom," said the bride-to-be.

Dan Shanoff and Margery Miller

Met: July 2001

Engaged: Sept. 30, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: Oct. 3, 2004

ESPN.com columnist Dan Shanoff, 31, is planning to marry Fordham Law student Margery Miller, 30, at a nature and beach resort in her native Florida-but not without some consternation.

"When it came to Florida teams," said Mr. Shanoff, a loyal fan of his home state Maryland, "I grew up anywhere from agnostic to hostile."

The sporty twosome met on a blind date when Mr. Shanoff-having not yet discovered the lucrative world of journalism-was getting his M.B.A. from Harvard. He was summer-interning at ESPN when a female classmate recommended that he call the dark-haired, sweet and peppy Ms. Miller, a longtime friend of hers from her Harvard undergraduate years.

Mr. Shanoff suggested that they meet for dinner at the early-bird hour of 5:30, which you'd think a Floridian would be into, but nooo …. "He was on old-person time," said Ms. Miller, "because he was living with his grandma in Midwood."

"I just wanted to meet early to ease into the date!" protested Mr. Shanoff.

All was forgiven, however, when the handsome, big-cheeked guy strode into the lobby of her West Village building. "I was just like, 'Yeah, O.K., that's it, I'm done,'" Ms. Miller said. "It wasn't like some bad romance novel; I didn't swoon . There was just something about him that was right for me-something correct about it."

Before dinner at Malatesta Trattoria, she asked if he'd mind going to watch a pickup game at the basketball court on West Fourth Street. Would he! "I lucked out," Mr. Shanoff said.

Two weeks later, when he left to bum around Europe for three weeks, he sent her lots of "Wish you were here"–type e-mails. One day, she replied with the news that she was flying into Milan for an impromptu five-day visit. "I told him it was a cheap ticket," Ms. Miller said. "But actually what happened was that my mom was so excited that I was so excited about this guy-after being pretty bummed out about the dating scene in New York-that she was like, 'Well, don't tell anyone, but I'll pay for half of it."

They met on an Italian train platform. "For lack of a better cliché, it was so Casablanca ," said the aspiring Jimmy Breslin. "It just turbocharged the relationship. Five days together in Italy was like 1,000 dates in normal life."

After nabbing his M.B.A., Mr. Shanoff returned to New York; a few months later he moved into a Columbus Circle one-bedroom with Ms. Miller and decided their living room would be the best place to drop to one knee. This was before the arrival of Whole Foods, however, so the poor bloke had to travel all the way downtown to find the perfect proposal dish (Chinese cashew chicken and broccoli with beef from Charlie Mom). He loaded up on wedding magazines, then donned a suit and sat around waiting.

When Ms. Miller returned from class, she spotted a telltale copy of Martha Stewart Weddings in the corner. Giggles. Tears. "It was the coolest reaction I'd ever seen," said Mr. Shanoff, who then sunk a two-carat round diamond with baguettes in a platinum setting (from Mom) onto his beloved's ring finger. Double, double!

Met: 1985

Engaged: Dec. 13, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: May 9, 2004

Let's get physical … in perpetuity! Paul Virtue, 40, a personal trainer, plans to marry Stephanie Foster, 42, a yoga and acting teacher, in an intimate ceremony on the island of Maui.

The aptly named Mr. Virtue has soulful dark eyes, cocoa-colored skin and romantic tastes to match his muscular arms. "As a kid, I used to fantasize about Nadia Comaneci," he said.

But as an adult, he was having little luck meeting the girl of his dreams. For years he'd shared a karate class and a mild flirtation with a woman named Stephanie Foster at World Seido Karate on 23rd Street, but they hadn't been in touch since he got his second-degree black belt. One spring day, perusing the fitness rack of his local video store, he came across a tape called Stephanie Foster's Master Series Yoga with the striking brunette on the cover. "She was never attracted to me," he thought morosely.

Three weeks later, he was on his way to Whole Foods when he noticed Ms. Foster emerging from a screening of Raising Victor Vargas , en route to a yoga class.

"Steph!" Mr. Virtue said. "How are you! Married? Kids?" She shook her head no. "Waiting for me?" he said. "There's a church down the street, you know." Hi-ya!

The toned Ms. Foster was more flattered than freaked. "I had always thought he was just a very nice boy," she said. "An amazing athlete. Strong, graceful, agile. Just beautiful to watch."

Mr. Virtue pressed on, asking her to go out sometime, even if it was just for a glass of water. "It was strange because she'd never really been affectionate toward me, but we both felt a physical shift," he said. "Then she kissed me on the lips when we parted, and I remember going across 23rd Street and I was in a different world. I can't believe I wasn't hit by a car."

At dinner at a West Village bistro the following week, they discussed martial arts and matters of the heart. "He was just so open about the way he felt-his fears, his insecurities," said Ms. Foster, also a black belt. "I complimented him on his karate and he nearly fell off his chair."

And she just kept on knocking him out. "You get used to people, but I never get tired of Stephanie," Mr. Virtue said.

One night, soon after he moved from Chelsea into her midtown one-bedroom, they went to see the since-closed Anna in the Tropics on Broadway. When the show was over and the audience had filed out, Mr. Virtue lifted Ms. Foster up with his aforementioned manly arms, set her on the edge of the stage and took out a white gold band containing a single diamond (he bought it through the relative of a client). "We both started crying," he said. "I couldn't get the ring on her finger." The tears continued to flow on the subway all the way to their celebration dinner at Bouley.

The sinewy sweethearts are preparing for the wedding with regular workouts at a Synergy health club (and for the marriage with occasional kung fu kicks). "She's my archetype woman," Mr. Virtue said. "We sit around and have conversations that mean things … but also surf together and lift weights."

Thomas Howe and Alison James

Met: May 6, 2001

Engaged: Dec. 6, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: April 9, 2005

Alison James knows that in order to keep a New York guy around, you have to shave your pussy.

Get your mind out of the gutter! Ms. James' five-year-old cat, Kishkin, had a bit of a shedding problem, and her live-in boyfriend, Tom Howe, a flaxen-haired analyst at Capital Z, wasn't dealing well with the constant fluff in their Upper East Side one-bedroom. Out came the buzzer. "We live in such a small apartment, and Tom was just complaining about it all the time," said Ms. James, 29. "And having him shaved has just been the best thing! Everyone should shave their cat!"

"She's a freak," said Mr. Howe (a.k.a. Tomito, Tomita, Tomitian the Grecian, Tomishkin or Mishkin), a boyish 27.

Not that he's so conventional. For example, one day Ms. James was at her computer working on her forthcoming book, I Used to Miss Him But My Aim Is Improving: Not Your Ordinary Breakup Survival Guide (Adams Media), when her beau asked if she might like a piece of pizza. "No. I'm too fat," she said, nuzzling the denuded Kishkin on her lap.

Whereupon Mr. Howe brought in an empty plate with a platinum-set diamond ring on it-and then took the cat's paw in his hand. "Will you marry me, Kishkin?" he said, attempting to shove the poor sheared thing's foot into the bauble. "Oh, it doesn't fit."

The goofy, giggly twosome met in the finance section of the Union Square Barnes and Noble. But they're both "creatives," make no mistake. "I was just there for work ," said Ms. James, a Princeton grad who toils in finance at the History Channel and A&E. "I was going thorough a phase where I wanted to do a really good job at my work." As for Mr. Howe, he majored in English at Hobart College. "I was just on my way to the erotica section," he joked. "I was checking her out, but not at length."

He uttered a bon mot-what, neither of them remember. "Something transparent but noncommittal," Ms. James said. It was enough to win her phone number and e-mail address, which he used to propose two first-date options: McDonald's, or the top of the Empire State Building. "I was like, 'Is he a freak? A stalker?'" she said, suggesting the Hudson Grill. "Weirdo! Schmuck! He couldn't even pick the restaurant!"

Things progressed slowly from there: a date or two per week for a few months. "I've been with a lot of guys where you meet and then spend all your time together, but that's a really good way of killing a relationship," said Ms. James, something of a breakup connoisseur. (She describes her book as "a sassy, edgy guide for women with a rip-his-head-off twist.")

But this relationship lived, and the couple will be married in the chapel of Mr. Howe's alma mater, Regis High School. "He has this phenomenal sense of humor. He just gets it," said the bride-to-be. "He has this intuitive sense about what's funny. He can see the quirks in everyday life and point that out and make me laugh."

And what does he treasure about her?

"Her intelligence, her humor," he said, "and her ass."

Marina Bernstein and Michael Futterman

Met: March 2001

Engaged: Dec. 30, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: Nov. 20, 2004

Ladies, need we say it again? Men like it when you eat! When Michael Futterman went on J-Date, that online haven for Jews and their mothers worldwide, he was turned on by Marina Bernstein's declared love of sushi, Vietnamese food, etc. "It's great to see a woman who isn't afraid to say that," declared Mr. Futterman, 33, a swarthy, good-looking "senior learning specialist" for Paine Webber whose profile described his ideal date as "stuffed with blanched almonds and wrapped in bacon."

It didn't hurt, either, that her photo showed a svelte woman with sloe eyes and long, highlighted brown hair. "I thought it was put there by J-Date to lure guys to the site," Mr. Futterman said. "It just seemed so unusual that a woman like her would have any difficulty finding a guy."

Yet the Moscow-born, Scarsdale-bred Ms. Bernstein, 32, was too busy to answer his summons immediately (she's admissions director at the Dwight School and a candidate for a master's in education at Hunter). Mr. Futterman wrote again, asking if her picture was a J-Date hoax. "Stop being so impatient!" she fired back.

"She's always patient when I'm not," Mr. Futterman said.

Date 1 was at Sin Sin. "It was so effortless from the very beginning," Ms. Bernstein said. "I got into the cab after the first date when we parted and totally had that first-date buzz." Date 2 started at the Otheroom and ended at the not-very-gourmet Tortilla Flats, where they played bingo and she stole the bingo card. "If you print that, will they come get me?" she asked.

The buzz continued. "Within a month, we were like, 'O.K., we're getting married,'" she said.

But it wasn't official for another two and a half years. At a friend's house in Vermont, Mr. Futterman pointed to a heart-shaped tree they'd admired on trips there before. "It'd be really cool if we came back here every year together to see 'our' tree," he said.

"Yeah, that would be cool," Ms. Bernstein agreed.

Without warning, Mr. Futterman pulled out his grandmother's diamond. Bada-bing!

They live in a Columbus Avenue three-bedroom co-op with their cuddly Sharpei–yellow Lab mix, Tamber. "He's an amazing communicator," said Ms. Bernstein, meaning her fiancé. "Whenever there's anything that needs to be talked through, he won't let either of us keep it inside. That's not very typical of guys. I feel lucky to have someone like that."

The wedding will be at the Yale Club, with lots of vodka to keep Ms. Bernstein's family happy and plenty of Russian caviar, too, which the bride expects to gobble up with reckless abandon. Hey, Mr. Futterman thinks it's sexy, right?

"As long as you don't eat too much," he said.

Met: Summer 1984

Engaged: July 20, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: June 5, 2004

Jennifer Cohen and Michael Oko grew up living parallel lives on the Upper West Side as the comely brown-haired, prominent-nosed, thin-lipped children of Jewish intellectuals. His family lived on 101st Street; hers on 100th. Both had an older brother named Daniel and a father who was a shrink. Her mother frequented Teachers, the late, lamented family-friendly restaurant; his waited tables there.

The two moms bumped into each other when both families were coincidentally vacationing in Paris. While the parents schmoozed, young Romeo and Juliet took off on a bus and got lost. Mr. Oko used his eighth-grade French to navigate back to the hotel. Years later, Ms. Cohen, a year ahead in school, discovered five pages of tightly single-spaced writing-"bubble letters with hearts and circles dotting the I's," she said-documenting his failed attempt at a pass.

Eighteen years passed without another rendezvous. Ms. Cohen attended Tufts and The Columbia School of Journalism and started working in network news and documentary production, which begat a dysfunctional romance with a manic-depressive, suicidal journalist in Moscow. Mr. Oko graduated from Cornell and also went into documentary filmmaking. One project required a week spent in silence at a Tibetan-Buddhist monastery. "I'd talk about it on dates to make me sound intriguing," he said.

After extracting herself from the situation with the grim journalist (her book about the experience, Lying Together: My Russian Affair , hits the stores in September), Ms. Cohen returned to the forgiving bosom of the Upper West Side and got a job as a producer at CBS's The Early Show . Seeking a dry spot after a rainy run in the park one afternoon, she ducked under an awning at the 72nd and Columbus flea market and found herself in a tchotchke-filled stall manned by Mr. Oko's mother. Could she give her son some job advice? Mama Oko asked.

The young people met for drinks in Chelsea. "I remember passing by the bar and seeing her in the window and having a little heart-skipping-a-beat feeling," Mr. Oko said. "Then it was like, 'So what's been going on in the last 18 years?'"

"We talked business, but there was definitely something there-a weird tension," Ms. Cohen said. "It was like, bam! I was back in Paris."

"After that, it evolved so naturally," said Mr. Oko, 33, who has found a new career path studying international relations at Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. "I never felt any angst about it all."

"Compared to all the other relationships I'd ever had, it was just so easy," said Ms. Cohen, 34. "When my friends complain about their significant others, I just sit there quietly, because I can't share."

One afternoon, they were strolling near her parents' summer home in the Berkshires, which lacks the amenities of Central Park.

"Why isn't there a bench here so we can sit?" Mr. Oko wondered, oh so casually, his grandmother's platinum-set 2.5-carat diamond with two baguettes burning a hole in his pocket.

"Huh? Are you O.K.? Are you sick?" Ms. Cohen said. Her beau began to tremble.

"Oh! Is this a proposal situation?" she said.

They'll be married at a defunct summer camp in Great Barrington. "It's the perfect epilogue to my book," said the bride-to-be. "I run around the world searching for passion and excitement, and here I finally found it literally next-door."

Nicole-Leslie Bent and Damian Sommerville

Met: Oct. 10, 2001

Engaged: Dec. 9, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: July 11, 2004

Nicole-Leslie Bent was raised in Scarsdale to Jamaican-born parents. After she got a job at Lord and Taylor and became a bona fide Manhattan single girl, the family would often ask her to play tour guide to visitors from their home country. "I'd been to the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building more times than any New Yorker should ," said the 29-year-old fashion executive and designer-a hazel-eyed, beauty with great posture and a wardrobe full of sweater sets, pearls and neckerchiefs.

When her mother asked her to show Damian Sommerville, the son of a friend, around the bright lights of Times Square ("He's so smart !"), Ms. Bent got particularly bent out of shape. "No way! Nope! Never again!" she declared. No matter that Dr . Sommerville had graduated magna cum laude from Morgan State, liked theater, was in dental school at N.Y.U., had a sister at Harvard, etc. "I was picturing Steve Urkel," she said.

Dr. Sommerville wasn't so keen on the fix-up himself. "I thought she was probably one of those stuck-up, high-maintenance girls in the fashion industry," he said.

Grudgingly, the two young people consented to a dinner date à trois (with her mom) at Cité. When the bearded, bespectacled and dapper Dr. Sommerville walked in, Ms. Bent positively melted. "I saw him and was like, 'Oh my God! He's normal! He's handsome!'" she said.

Favoring the slower island pace, perhaps, he didn't call the next day-so she phoned him. Then he called every night for the next two weeks. "I was like, 'Whoa! What did I do?'" Ms. Bent said. They saw each other almost daily for a couple of months. "And he never kissed me," she said. "My friends are going, 'Maybe he's gay?'" (A conclusion encouraged, perhaps, by his penchant for pocket handkerchiefs.) "I just hadn't had the right opportunity," said Dr. Sommerville, 28, now a resident at N.Y.U. School of Dentistry. He waited to strike till they were prowling the sofa department of Bloomingdale's; they both adore furniture. "People my age often don't like doing the things I like to do-I don't drink, I like antiques," Ms. Bent said. "But he's different. He totally gets me."

Exactly one year later, they were back in the same spot at Bloomie's (what about Lord and Taylor loyalty?) when he suddenly produced a vintage diamond-pavé platinum engagement ring. Taken aback, Ms. Bent plopped into the nearest leather couch, a flurry of anxious sales ladies materializing quickly at her side. Dr. Sommerville then spirited her away to the restaurant Jezebel. "If I could [propose] all over again, I'd do it differently," he said. "She's not too excited about how I did it."

The couple live in Midwood and will be married at the St. Regis. Ms. Bent designed their unity candle. The fabric of her ivory satin Monique L'Huillier gown will exactly match Dr. Sommerville's vest and tie, and the christening outfit of their future children. The cake will be a white buttercream concoction with sugar-sculpted orchids by Ron Ben-Israel, and there will be plenty of Jamaican fare beforehand: jerk chicken, plantains and a groom's cake soaked with rum. Yes, they're jammin'!

Robert Gould and Jennifer Machado

Met: 1992

Engaged: Sept. 23, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: April 24, 2004

Personal-injury lawyer Bob Gould, 30, is marrying Jennifer Machado, 24, the babelicious aquatics director at the Paris Health Club on West End Avenue.

"I can be a really big pain in the ass," said the robust, brown-eyed Mr. Gould loudly, seated near his Esther Williams at a Starbucks. "I'm a slob. I lose my temper about lots of stupid things. I like to argue about everything. I was raised in a house where everyone debated! I'm a lawyer. I'll argue about, like, which is the better oatmeal -the generic or the Quaker Oats?"

"I just give up-he's always right," said the brunette and smiley Ms. Machado, who intends to become a math teacher.

They originally met a dozen years ago through her older cousin Carrie, but memories are vague. "She was just a kid," Mr. Gould said. Flash-forward to Carrie's wedding, when they were partnered as usher and bridesmaid. "I was like, 'Oh my God, who is that beautiful woman?'" he said. "Everyone was forbidden to talk to Cousin Jen except for me."

Ms. Machado, a swim-team girl studying at the University of New Hampshire, had a less strong impression. "I guess I got drunk," she said.

"I swept her off her feet," Mr. Gould said. There was confusion in the hotel, he said, and they had to share a room. "I totally scored."

"You did not score !" she said.

Whatever, kids.

They had a few visits after that, but then his phone calls abruptly stopped. Mr. Gould was concerned about leading on his friend's cousin. "I knew she was the woman for me, but I wasn't emotionally ready," he said. "Wasn't ready to commit and be a husband-y kind of guy."

A year later, he I.M.'d her and they took a joyful reunion hike. "She just couldn't keep her hands off me," he said. They moved into an Upper East Side love shack last year, and one morning she found money on the kitchen table, along with a note that read "Go get a manicure."

When she returned from swim class later that day, she found that her freshly filed red talons perfectly matched the roses her precious had scattered all over the floor. The ring: a radiant-cut square diamond set in a platinum band. The celebratory dinner: Nino's.

Considering that he already dumped her once before, Cousin Carrie was a bit nervous to hear of the impending nuptials, but Mr. Gould swears he's a new man. "I'm reformed," he said. "I'm the sweetest guy she'll ever meet."

Ms. Machado has converted to Judaism for the wedding, to be held at a country club outside the groom's native Boston. Afraid of looking like a linebacker in her dress, she has cut down on swimming, but is dragging Mr. Gould to the gym every morning at 5 a.m. so that they can be in fighting shape to rush the brownie sundae bar they have planned.

Met: June 2000

Engaged: Oct. 11, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: Oct. 24, 2004

At Bentley College in Massachusetts (the alma mater of New York Times food fairy Amanda Hesser), Katy O'Connor thought that swarthy Michael Klarman was a mysterious Latino. "He hung out with a bunch of international people and everyone called him 'Klarman,' but I thought they were calling him 'Carmen,'" said the petite, toned and golden-haired Ms. O'Connor, 27. "I figured he was Puerto Rican."

Years after graduating, at a "Thirsty Thursday" alumni event in Boston, she was surprised when Mr. Klarman opened his mouth and revealed the lilt of a different exotic locale. "He's from Long Island!" she said. "He had this thick New York accent. I'm like, 'Uh, maybe he's not Puerto Rican?'"

They went on a very Boston-ish first date: dinner and a comedy club, followed by group drinks at a bar. "One of my friends was like, 'Wow, Katy, if you don't date him, I will!' Ms. O'Connor said. "He held my hand; I thought it was so sweet. After that, it was like power dating-together all the time."

Before the month was out, Mr. Klarman hustled her back to the North Shore to meet his family. "I thought she was so great!" he said. "She was everything I'd been looking for-sweet, intelligent, funny, cute, not needy. Just really independent."

The following year, he moved to Manhattan so he could take a job as chief financial officer at a hedge fund, and six months later Ms. O'Connor followed, eventually taking a job as a category analyst at Colgate Palmolive. ( This is toothpaste … and this is dishwashing liquid …. ) In her down time, she began training for the New York marathon.

Following an 18-mile run in Central Park near the Upper East Side one-bedroom the couple shares, an engaged girlfriend named Dina asked the breathless and sweaty Ms. O'Connor, still clad in her jogging togs, if she would accompany her on a visit to her wedding site at the Boathouse.

"Sure," Ms. O'Connor replied.

A maître d' insisted that both women be blindfolded before entering the reception room. "I was like, 'Oooh! How exciting!'" Ms. O'Connor said.

("She's book smart, but not street smart," said Mr. Klarman, 28. "She doesn't think people will lie to her." And certainly not people in the wedding industry!)

Walking uncertainly, she heard the sounds of cameras flashing.

"Oh, it's a beautiful day in Central Park and people are taking pictures!" the maître d' blithely improvised.

Ms. O'Connor was then pushed into a boat. "I was just like, 'Dina! What are you doing to me? We're so not friends anymore!'" she said. "I was so confused and dehydrated from running that I didn't know what was going on."

Finally, it occurred to her to remove the blindfold. Mr. Klarman, surrounded by roses, was manning the ship. He pulled out a platinum ring containing three round diamonds, plus a banana to replenish her drained potassium.

Excited tourists rowed over to offer their congratulations. "It was just completely unreal to suddenly be engaged and in a boat!" Ms. O'Connor said.

"I wanted to have a banner across Fifth Avenue, but in the end it just wasn't feasible," Mr. Klarman said.

They'll be married in the faraway land of Cape Cod, at a resort near where she grew up.

Melissa Rose Bernardo and David Serrano

Met: Spring 2000

Engaged: Nov. 8, 2002

Projected Wedding Date: April 24, 2004

E ntertainment Weekly staffers Melissa Rose Bernardo, 29, and David Serrano, 39, will soon be entertaining each other weekly … every week for the rest of their lives .

With its notorious 2 a.m. Tuesday-night closes, the magazine has been a Petri dish of interoffice romance throughout its 14-year history. One day Ms. Bernardo, a curvaceous brunette senior associate editor, carried down a layout to Mr. Serrano, the publication's robust, bespectacled "quality control" associate, and suddenly felt like she needed more than just textual healing. "Friendly! Nice! Well-dressed!" was her assessment.

"I remind her of her father," Mr. Serrano said.

They chatted pleasantly during a mutual friend's birthday party at the Village bar The Otheroom. "After that, she kept sending me e-mails: 'We should go to San Gennaro! I have an extra ticket to The Music Man ! We should do this! We should do that!'" Mr. Serrano said. "But I had reservations about dating someone from work, so I kept politely turning her down." He also had reservations about her favorite pastime. "I'd only been to the theater twice," he said. "And both times it was to see Beauty and the Beast ."

Ms. Bernardo was worried. "I kept forwarding the rejection e-mails he'd send to me to my friends, saying, 'What does this mean?'" she said. "It was all very high school." Despairing, she brought a batch of her "famous" oatmeal-and-peanut-butter-chip cookies into the EW production department, but he barely nibbled.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attack happened two weeks after the impromptu bake sale. "I was telling my friends one night about this cute girl at work who was persistently asking me out," Mr. Serrano said, "and suddenly I remembered watching a guy jump out a window of the tower, and I thought, 'You know, you never know what'll happen. I should go out with her.'"

They began hanging out across the street at the sawdust-on-the-floor EW hangout Gallagher's. On a subsequent night, they performed an Ian Schrager pub crawl that included dinner at the Hudson Hotel, followed by apple martinis at Morgans and the Royalton. Mr. Serrano confided that he was terrified of flying since Sept. 11. Ms. Bernardo whipped out a pen and paper and made a pros-and-cons list to help figure out whether he should attend a friend's forthcoming wedding in Dallas. "I'm like, 'That's the cutest thing I've ever seen!'" he said.

After moving in with him in Hoboken, she introduced him to the joys of the stage-they're now a regular Statler and Waldorf. Ms. Bernardo was needling Mr. Serrano about when she was going to get a ring one night during dinner at Maria Pia when he suddenly plopped down a little velvet box from her favorite jeweler, containing a brilliant-cut diamond with two small rounds in a platinum setting. "How about now ?" he said.

Their wedding reception will be at a steakhouse in Sarasota, Fla., near the bride's parents' vacation house, and quality control is expected to be tight. "I get frantic about things. I obsess!" said the groom-to-be. "But she can always calm me down."

Matthew P. Cormier and Rosalynn Hsu

Met: September 1999

Engaged: June 27, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: Sept. 4, 2004

Before Matthew Cormier proposed to Rosalynn Hsu, he formally asked her father for his blessing, as a lot of Manhattan blokes persist in doing. Mr. Hsu, who is Chinese and was unfamiliar with the dubious American custom of startingmarriage with a surprise, couldn't wait to tell his daughter the good news.

Ms. Hsu, 27, a corporate lawyer at Dorsey and Whitney, tearfully informed her swain that his cover was blown. "Never mind!" huffed Mr. Cormier, 26, a litigator at Bainton McCarthy. "I'm not going to do it anymore. It's ruined !" Petulant!

Soon thereafter, he asked her if she'd join him in Boston for a Celtics charity event (his dad is the team's assistant coach) and they checked into the Millennium Bostonian. Ms. Hsu began to get a suspicious feeling when Mr. Cormier coaxed her out to the Boston Common, Beantown's poor answer to Central Park. There, he knelt down on one knee and proffered a solitaire diamond in a six-prong platinum setting. "She could hardly speak," he said with satisfaction. Needless to say, there was no "charity event."

Several months later, on Ms. Hsu's birthday, she received another surprise: photos of their special moment of betrothal, taken by a friend that Mr. Cormier had stationed in a nearby tree (a little freaky, no?).

The couple met during "contracts" class in the first week of law school at Boston College. Ms. Hsu was immediately taken with the strapping, blue-eyed, blond and tanned Mr. Cormier. "So quintessential New England!" she said. She slid into the seat next to him, dropping her backpack on the floor by his feet. It made a loud clanking noise. "Silverware," she said. "If you need any, there's a whole lot of it in the cafeteria."

Mr. Cormier was untroubled, perhaps even titillated, by her petty crime. "I just thought she was beautiful and very well put together," he said. They went out for burgers and milkshakes. "She was quiet, but pleasant," he said. "Not shy, but not obnoxious." They began dating steadily. "She tried to give me the pink slip more than once," he said, "but a little persistence on my part paid off."

Ms. Hsu has since shaken her doubts. "I've never met anyone so beautiful inside and out!" she trilled. "I'm the luckiest person in the world to have Matthew Cormier love me." The couple inhabit separate apartments on Sixth Avenue but plan to consolidate households before their nuptials, which will be held in a 19th-century mansion in her hometown of West Orange, N.J. (Caterers, make sure to count the teaspoons!)

The bride will wear a white, strapless organza Vera Wang gown for the first half of the wedding, and a red cheongsam-like qi pao for the second half. And the groom is also finding a way to bridge their cultural divide.

"He's adamant about learning Chinese so when we have kids, I won't talk shit behind his back," Ms. Hsu said.

Back in the 80's and early 90's, Ms. Jaffe-the sister of producer and former Paramount Communications chief executive Stanley Jaffe and daughter of the late Columbia Pictures chairman, Leo Jaffe-wielded a lot of power as the iron-fisted personal publicist of Mr. Cruise, as well as actors Richard Gere, Warren Beatty, Dustin Hoffman and filmmaker Oliver Stone. In 1991, Los Angeles magazine declared her, along with Peggy Siegal, Ms. Kingsley and Nancy Seltzer, one of Hollywood's "Flacks Fatales."

When Ms. Jaffe closed her firm, Andrea Jaffe and Associates, later that year to become the president of marketing at 20th Century Fox in January 1992, Mr. Cruise went to PMK. And now that Ms. Jaffe has quietly announced-via ads in the Hollywood Reporter-the opening of her new marketing-consulting firm, Andrea Jaffe and Associates L.L.C., speculation has begun that, at some point, she will be called to work upon the films of Mr. Cruise, who has married and divorced Nicole Kidman, become the father of two children, made a dozen films and cooled somewhat in the media's perception since Ms. Jaffe went to Fox.

Fueling the speculation is a comment that Mr. Cruise's sister and current personal publicist, Lee Anne DeVette, made to the Hollywood Reporter when news broke of his split with Ms. Kingsley. "Will we potentially be looking for someone on films? Yes, we will, but no decision has been made," Ms. DeVette told the publication.

Reached via her new company, Ms. Jaffe denied that there was any connection to be made. "I haven't had any conversations with him recently," she said, adding that she had no intention of becoming a personal publicist again. Besides, Ms. Jaffe said, "If I had Tom Cruise as a client, why wouldn't I want to tell you?"

Ms. DeVette backed up Ms. Jaffe. "We've had no discussions whatsoever," she told The Transom, although she added that she thought Ms. Jaffe's return to the business was "great."

When Ms. Jaffe decided to jump to Fox, Mr. Cruise's career was in ascent. In 1988, he had done Rainman. A year later, Born on the Fourth of July netted him an Oscar nomination and gave Mr. Cruise the kind of momentum that not even Days of Thunder (1990) could stop.

Ms. Jaffe was on the rise, too, and her decision to leave her very successful firm behind was the talk of both coasts. But in September 1994, she abruptly left Fox amid some reports that her abrasive style had alienated certain Fox executives. Ms. Jaffe said that this was "categorically untrue," but declined to discuss why she had departed the studio.

On her own again, Ms. Jaffe continued to consult on the marketing of films, but she also began donating her services to a number of children's organizations, including Save the Children, in the Southeast.

Citing the fledgling state of her new company, Ms. Jaffe, who is in her 50's, declined to be interviewed or to discuss any films she may be working on, but she did explain why she decided to get back into the business: "I really thought I was seeing some holes in some movie campaigns, and I had some ideas, and I thought it was time to get back in," she said. "I thought I could have some fun."

-Frank DiGiacomo

King, of the Friars

With his hooded eyes and carnivorous smile, Alan King looks like a man intimate with anger. But the 76-year-old Abbot of the New York Friars Club seemed more wistful than wicked when he spoke at a March 24 lunch celebrating the organization's centennial.

Up on the stage that had been set up in the East 55th Street club's dining room, Mr. King looked pale and grizzled in a gray suit, white shirt and black tie. Then again, anybody would have looked pale next to the electric blue number that his interviewer, longtime Channel 11 senior correspondent Marvin Scott, was wearing.

Apologizing that there was something wrong with one of his eyes, Mr. King repeatedly put on and took off a large pair of brown sunglasses as he reminisced about his adventures in show business.

There was the time, for instance, when his agent's back went out at the Concord in the Catskills.

"He was like a pretzel," Mr. King recalled.

So Mr. King and his friend, Buddy Hackett, gingerly set the guy down on the hood of a car and began to make the slow crawl to the nearest doctor. They hadn't gotten far when a cop pulled them over. According to Mr. King, Mr. Hackett, who was driving, told the cop: "What'sa matter? Is he out of season?"

Then there was the time Mr. King worked as one of the opening acts for Judy Garland on Broadway. His contract called for him to precede Ms. Garland onto the stage. But one day, he said, he was bumped to an earlier segment of the show in favor of two dancers who had survived the sinking of the Andrea Doria. Mr. King had to be coaxed to go on, and at this point in the story, he suggested that he understood the connection between angry and funny.

"I never was so mad at an audience," Mr. King told the Friars crowd. He killed, and after the show there was a knock on his dressing-room door. It was Garland, all made up and wearing "the dirtiest terry-cloth robe," Mr. King remembered.

"You can close my fucking show any time you want," she told him.

The memory of poor, doomed Judy Garland had an unexpected impact on Mr. King. He began to cry. "She was the best," he said. "Better than Jolson."

Frank Sinatra-whose portrait looked on from the side of the stage-was the best, too, Mr. King said. And then he added with a killer's smile:

"Even if he wasn't, who would say he wasn't?"

There were other great ones. And Mr. King seemed to have a story for each. When actress Norma Talmadge left comedian George Jessel, considered one of the best roastmasters in the history of the Friars, Mr. King said that the comedian bought a gun and, while on a "three-day drunk," intended to commit suicide. But Jessel apparently had trouble saying goodbye and, according to Mr. King, called up writer/composer George M. Cohan ("Give My Regards to Broadway") for help with his suicide note, telling him: "You're the best writer around." Cohan sent someone in his room to alert the authorities while he pretended to collaborate. And when a sobered-up Jessel eventually called to apologize, the comic told Cohan, "But it really was a good letter."

Cohan apparently agreed. Somewhere, said Mr. King, "it's a published song."

Mr. Scott urged him to tell one more story that is a bit of show-business legend. At a roast of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Harry Einstein, a beloved radio comic who performed as Parkyakarkus (and the father of comic actor and filmmaker Albert Brooks), got up and did his shtick-"He was terrific," Mr. King said-then returned to his seat, put his head down and died of a heart attack. As the dais members tended to Einstein, Mr. King said, Jessel shouted to performer Tony Martin: "Sing something!"

Martin did as he was told, Mr. King said, and began to croon "There's No Tomorrow."

-F. D.

Cast Member

In his heyday, Robby Benson, the swarthy, unctuous, good-boy idol of 1970's teen movies, was the king of doe-eyed schmaltz and androgynous, youthful good looks. "Cute as Bambi and twice as smarmy," wrote Newsweek in 1977, "Benson seems destined for one of the most protracted adolescences on the screen (by 40 he should be ready to play psychopaths)."

Not quite. Mr. Benson spent most of his post-adolescent years undergoing-like something out of one of his after-school special–like teen flicks-two heart-valve surgeries because of a chronic congenital heart defect. Professionally, he took to directing sitcoms (Friends, Evening Shade), acting in them (Sabrina the Teenage Witch) and doing the voice of the Beast in Beauty and the Beast (Grrr!). But now, at 48, it looks like his balls have finally dropped. On March 17, he'll open at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Open Heart, a semi-autobiographical musical that he wrote and will be starring in. His wife, Karla DeVito, plays his wife and other roles (her portrayal of a dead cow is particularly touching), and Stan Brown plays, among other parts, Mr. Benson's penis.

In the show's most memorable scene, Mr. Brown-an extremely robust 41-year-old black man-sings and dances the penis role, which takes place during a dream sequence after Mr. Benson's character undergoes heart surgery. Mr. Brown starts the bit with his beaming face poking out from between Mr. Benson's straddled legs and, some 10 gyrating minutes later, ends up enveloping Ms. DeVito in the folds of his paunch.

Whatever inspired such a scene, we asked?

"I just think that, basically, most of the problems in this world are caused by man's testosterone and the desire to control-the megalomania and the power-that comes with that testosterone," Mr. Benson told The Transom by phone one recent afternoon as he got ready for a preview of his opus. "And that makes me physically ill. The power people use that comes not from their mind, but from their dick? It's absurd in the same way that that scene is absurd. The show is about getting rid of all that and going back to the soul and following the [soul's] path, not the path of the dick. A man shouldn't be making life decisions based on his ego, [especially when] a man's ego is often in his balls."

Right. So does that mean Robby Benson's ego is in Robby Benson's balls?

"Well, if you're a compassionate man, you'll get a hard-on when the 104 bus goes by, you know? You're fighting these primeval, cave-man testosterone bursts, and you're at war with yourself like a fifth-grader is [about sex]," he said. "The idea is to evolve out of that place and not just shoot sperm all over the place all the time."

Of course, casting an actor who could help him walk the audience through the journeys and struggles of a man and his penis took a great deal of care. The penis-actor plays many other choice roles, including a dead AIDS victim and a television producer. In the end, Mr. Benson chose Mr. Brown, whom he'd met at the University of South Carolina, where he taught filmmaking, voice-over and screenwriting in the 80's. "Stan was one of my students, and I realized he was probably the most talented male performer I'd ever been in the same room with. He's a brilliant man. He deserves to be a star," said Mr. Benson. And is he happy with his student's portrayal of his manhood? "Yes. He's brilliant," Mr. Benson said. "Magnificent. Life is an adventure, and I find it beautiful that I can continue to help my students learn."

-Anna Jane Grossman

Dawson's Screed

Several weeks ago, rumors began to swirl around that ribald Irish thespian Colin Farrell had dumped co-star and girlfriend Rosario Dawson for fellow castmate Angelina Jolie on the set of Oliver Stone's Macedonian epic, Alexander.

Throughout the sixth months of filming, Mr. Farrell and Ms. Dawson were sequestered in locales like England, Morocco and Thailand; somewhere along the way, Ms. Jolie started filming-and that, rumor has it, occasioned the split.

While sources claimed that the 24-year-old actress was heartbroken from the experience, she had nothing but praise for Mr. Farrell at a March 28 benefit for the Lower East Side Girls Club. "I think he's actually undermined by all of the rumors that go on with him," said the multiculti beauty, who's part Irish herself (she's also part African, Cuban and Native American). "He's really, really, really talented. I mean, he really gives a lot. He's a very generous actor. I'm really proud of him in this movie."

But were the rumors true?

"For me, for Colin, it only annoys me, because now I feel how robbed he is-you know what I mean? Because now, the whole six months [of filming] is only 'Rock on' and who you fucked. And I really think he did so much more than just fuck Angelina."

She continued.

"Fuckin' A! He's just a fuckin' guy doing his thing. He's gorgeous, he's talented, he's got a lot of money out of nowhere, and … I just think he's an incredible human being."

Mr. Farrell has reportedly moved on since his relationship with Ms. Jolie, and Ms. Dawson said she's now skipped over the Irish Sea to lust after Scotsmen.

"Goddamn, I love Ewan McGregor!" she gushed. "I really, really love him. I was having an argument with my friend about him today, because I was like, 'He's even great in Star Wars!' and he was like, 'No one was good in Star Wars!' I was like, 'No, he is really amazing!'"

Is she partial to one part in particular?

"Beautiful penis!" Ms. Dawson said, answering another, more interesting question. "In almost all of his movies, he's always showing off, and I'm just like, 'Yeah, man, uncircumcised! That's nice! You go! You work that shit!' That's why he's amazing."

-Noelle Hancock

The Zen of Mipam

Last fall, Uma Thurman's brother Mipam was overheard fuming, "I want to kill him! He's a piece of shit. I can't believe what he's done."

He was responding to the news that his brother-in-law, Ethan Hawke, had cheated on his sister, causing the marriage to crumble.

At a March 29 party in honor of National Tartan Week, however, Mr. Thurman attempted to water down his previous threat.

"Any intelligent person will tell you the statement 'I want to kill him' is a proverbial statement and no one actually-well, people in prison may mean it-but no one in the outside world actually means it when they say that," he told The Transom. So does he take it back?

"Um, I wouldn't take it back, but I would temper it with the statement that it takes people a certain amount of time to come to terms with wrongdoings of other people. And a little bit of anger is natural and perhaps even healthy. I have come to terms with Ethan, and I have talked to him about it. And it did hopefully scare him a little bit into being more compliant with the apology situation!"

The spitting image of his ravishing sister, Mr. Thurman took time out from his career as a model to participate in the "Man with a Pan" cooking class sponsored by Dewar's. The event found 12 men-about-town, like Page Six poobah Richard Johnson, ubiquitous celebrity D.J. Mark Ronson and Costume Institute curator Andrew Bolton, cooking under the tutelage of chef Marcus Samuelsson (Aquavit, Riingo).

When the Buddhist Mipam was handed a lobster, he started stroking the animal.

"It looked at me and said, 'You're Buddhist! Why are you going to throw me into the boiling water?'" he said. "There was nothing I could do except pet the lobster!"

Maybe it wants an apology?

-N.H.

Met: 1974

Engaged: Nov. 8, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: June 12, 2004

We've heard of "till death do us part," but this is ridiculous! Sybil Young, 30, and Matt Dojny, 32, are holding their wedding ceremony at Green-Wood Cemetery, near the tombstones of Leonard Bernstein, Boss Tweed and Jean Michel Basquiat, none of whom could be reached for comment ( ba-dum-dum ). "Occasionally I think it's creepy," said Mr. Dojny said. "But it's just a place we love to go."

"I don't think it's creepy at all ," said Ms. Young, a Columbia graduate student in historic preservation who's been interning with preservationists at the cemetery. "I think it's one of the most beautiful places in the world. It's just so interesting."

Talk about from cradle to grave: These morbid main squeezes have been squeezing each other practically since babyhood. Their mothers were lifelong friends (Mr. Dojny's mom introduced Ms. Young's parents), and the tykes spent many a blissful summer at their grandmothers' houses in Connecticut, drawing cartoons and listening to the Pixies. "She was simultaneously shy and funny and weird," said Mr. Dojny of dark-haired, blue-eyed little Sybil. "I always had a crush on her."

Playing house, they agreed to one day have kids and to name their dog Elvis. "I knew he was 'The One' when I was, like, 14," Ms. Young said.

But they lost touch around college (Bates for her, Oberlin for him). After a stint doing hand-modeling in Thailand in 1997, the shaggy-haired, plump-lipped Mr. Dojny came to New York to pursue a career in graphic design. With tremulous-but great-looking!-fingers, he dialed his old playmate and offered to paint a mural in her Stuyvesant Town apartment in exchange for a month's lodging. He whipped up a "sexy" underwater scene ("Hieronymous Bosch meets SpongeBob SquarePants," he said), and it wasn't long before their Underoo longings became reality. "We were getting to know each other for the first time as adults," Mr. Dojny said. "The whole thing was taboo and scandalous … and vaguely incestuous."

"When we kissed for the first time, I remember thinking, ' Whoooooaaaah! What's going on?'" Ms. Young said. "It was very, very, very weird."

They celebrated the anniversary of their adult romance with a trip to the Mohonk Mountain House. Her gift to him: a misshapen blue hat that she'd knit. His to her: a yellow diamond ring from Reinstein Ross, which Ms. Young blithely put on her index finger. Mr. Dojny's face fell. "You know, it's an engagement ring," he said.

"Oh," she said.

Then they went hiking.

The ghoulish lovers have moved to a Park Slope one-bedroom, which they share with a scrappy cur with behavioral problems (named Lizzy, not Elvis) whom they compare to a "troubled Russian orphan." The apartment is conveniently located near the cemetery where they'll exchange vows.

"I think being buried there would be a nice 'circle of life'–type thing," Mr. Dojny said.

Alessandra Bocco and Garrett Rafferty

Met: Fall 1999

Engaged: March 4, 2003

Projected Wedding Date: May 7, 2004

Alessandra Bocco was hardly an hour into her first date with Garrett Rafferty before she had swooned- literally . Yes, folks, she's a fainter!

Ms. Bocco, the copy chief at W, collapsed in a midtown gutter after sharing her first smooch with Mr. Rafferty, a longtime bartender at Patrick Kavanagh's, in the back seat of a cab going from Swift's. "I'm deadly," he said impishly. (She claims it was low blood sugar.)

Mr. Rafferty spirited her back to her apartment in the East Village-"Do you know how hard it is to hail a taxi when you have a woman lying on the ground?" he said-where he fortified her with Irish breakfast tea loaded with sugar and cream and tucked her into bed. "And he slept in the bed with me," she said. "Clothes on."

After a two-year marriage to a florist foundered, Ms. Bocco had spent a year touring Europe on her orange '93 Harley before taking a job tending bar at the Leopard Lounge on Second Avenue. The boyishly handsome, blue-eyed Mr. Rafferty was friends with another staffer and often hung around. "I thought he was adorable. He had such a kissable face!" said Ms. Bocco, who is 37 and dark-haired, with a sexy beauty mark on the tip of her nose. Nor was she put off by his long yarns about a misspent youth in Monaghan making petrol bombs. She began referring to him as "Rump-o." She became "Bum-sy." (They both melted into giggles when we asked them to explain the monikers.)

Mr. Rafferty, 32, moved into her apartment three years later. He's taking motorcycle-riding lessons and working on his grammar. "He has punctuation problems," she said gravely. "He's always starting sentences in the middle."

Maybe that's why he let a photo album full of pictures and a round diamond set in platinum do the talkin' over dinner at Artisanal one special evening. "She was crying before I even gave her the ring," he said. They celebrated their engagement at Patrick Kavanagh's, then gave up drinking for Lent the next morning. But they were off the wagon by nightfall. "Everyone kept buying us champagne!" she said.

Following a sober wedding ceremony with bagpipers at St. Patrick's Old Cathedral (Ms. Bocco said she's checked the wording on the invitations "400 times"), all hell is expected to break loose at the New York Botanical Gardens. The reception will feature an open bar, which is apparently unusual at Irish nuptials. Heaven knows why.