Wedding

Alfre Woodard and Anna Paquin (a Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winner for "The Piano") shine in one of USA's best made-for-cable movies to date, an adaptation of Carson McCullers' novel "Member of the Wedding" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., USA).The story pits Paquin's character, a 12-year-old Georgia girl, against the world she's been brought up in. The girl can't decide whether she's a beauty (as her family suggests) or a freak who belongs in a circus. When her brother gets married, she decides the only thing to do is get out of town by leaving with him on his honeymoon, an idea that meets with a predictably cool reception.

"To the Wedding," by John Berger. Pantheon Books. 202 pages. $22 Novelist and art critic John Berger, author of a highly regarded study of Picasso, won the prestigious Booker prize in 1972 for "G." Before long he had given away his Booker money and abandoned the drawing rooms of London for a small village in the French Alps. Living among the peasantry, Mr. Berger worked at mind-numbing manual labor. Unlike other British Marxists, he linked himself in practice rather than theory with ordinary people of the soil.

At the last wedding reception I attended, most of my time wa spent quietly sipping a Molson Light and watching 200 drunks do the Hokey Pokey.All in all, it was a chilling ordeal. They say all brides look beautiful on their wedding day, but this one looked like a young Peter Ustinov, which seemed to set the tone for the entire affair.The food was lousy, the band stunk and when the first strains of "The Hokey-Pokey" drifted across the room, I took it as a sign that the world was coming to an end.Just then, an intoxicated woman with smeared lipstick and a huge pearl necklace grabbed my arm and tried to yank me up to the dance floor.

SOME WEEKS AGO, a young couple in Baltimore took an unfortunate leave of their senses and had their marriage ceremony performed in a giant fish tank.Apparently, they had met while both were volunteer divers at the National Aquarium. Ignoring the obvious breakdown in logic, they decided the aquarium would make a swell place for a wedding.From all reports, it was quite an affair. The bride wore a white wet suit and white fins and carried the traditional bouquet of lettuce and broccoli to be fed to the fish.

How far is too far, when it comes to protecting the people you love? What is reasonable, what is off-limits, and who's to decide the difference? Susanne Bier's After the Wedding asks viewers to consider a host of issues, not the least of which may be: How much overwrought melodrama can they take? But the movie is filled with fine acting and piquant storytelling. Those willing to overlook its emotional grandstanding will find much to admire and even more to think about in this Oscar-nominated Danish drama.

For more than a year, Patty Garrahan had been planning the perfect wedding: 130 guests, formal reception, $15,000 worth of food, music and flowers.But when the big day finally arrived, the New York bride was not blushing but hospitalized. A ruptured ovarian cyst demanded surgery, so instead of gliding up the aisle and hokey-pokeying with friends, Ms. Garrahan married Neil Murphy from a stretcher in an emergency room. She borrowed a wedding band from the hospital attorney and was blessed by the attending chaplain.

Alexandra Deutsch said her groom looked "hot" on their wedding day, a compliment unlikely to be heard in the halls of the William Paca House 250 years ago. At the historic Annapolis home Saturday, Kyle Cunningham indeed looked dashing as he dramatically appeared from behind the shrubbery and escorted her down the garden lane wearing a beaver felt hat, a sea-blue silk jacket and black breeches. While every bride plans her wedding day down to the last pin in her hair, Deutsch, the curator of the Paca House, reached back to its liveliest days to create her period wedding, with perfect attention to the dress, customs and manners of the day. But their union was infused with 21st-century touches.

No sooner had the morning ferryboat chugged out of the Fernandina Beach marina when somebody popped the question."All right, let's get this over with," said Jerry, a brash, middle-aged businessman on vacation from Atlanta. With a cold Busch beer in one hand and a bag of boiled peanuts in the other, he looked at the young woman in the Greyfield Inn uniform, offered a charming, crooked smile and asked, "Did you see any of them from the wedding?"Everybody on board the boat to Cumberland Island, Ga., all seven of us, knew exactly which wedding he was referring to. The one that starred John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette and, of course, Cumberland.

June is a popular month for couples taking the leap of faith into marriage. And in the African-American community, many weddings are anything but traditional. There's the bride in her white dress and the bridesmaids wearing themed colors. The groom and the groomsmen are usually dressed in tuxedos and colors to complement the bridal party. But more and more African-American wedding ceremonies are including Afrocentric stylings. Elaborate brocades with ethnic patterns are stitched into the women's dresses and West African kinte cloth accents are added to the men's lapel, jacket and bow tie. Beyond the clothing, many are using other African accoutrements as well, experts say. Caribbean rum cake or black cake complements the traditional three-tiered cake, and Egyptian unity candles are lit to bless the union.

The Drews included something old, borrowed and blue in their wedding finery, but they avoided anything new.The Hampstead couple wore Civil War attire rented from the Costume Shoppe in Westminster."