Stephen Nowers photo

The day after my fiancé proposed, I left work early and we spent the afternoon downtown, going out to lunch, checking out the Star Wars exhibit at the museum, and dropping in on friends to share our good news. Eventually we ended up at a bookstore in Midtown. When we were separated for a few minutes, it took him exactly no time at all to figure out where I was: in the wedding section.

"You don't understand," I said as he stood there, frowning and shaking his head at my armful of bride magazines. "I'm finally allowed."

I'm not ashamed to say that one of the first things I did in the days after I dug a little square box from George Walton's Gold and Diamond Co. out of the heap of Costco produce in which it had been cleverly concealed was run out and buy a huge stack of wedding magazines. My fiancé remains convinced that I'd been secretly sneaking peeks for months, but I can honestly say I hadn't so much at glanced at them. I'm the kind of subtle masochist who thrives on anticipation. In the days before Christmas, I might pick up the presents under the tree -- poke them, shake them, evaluate their dimensions -- but as much as I want to know what's inside, there's no part of me that would ever consider actually opening them early. It was the same with bridal magazines. We'd been talking about marriage for a while, but there was no way I was going to come within an arm's length of an issue of Brides or Martha Stewart Weddings before we were officially engaged.

Once the ring was on my finger, though, the dam broke, and I'm now the proud owner of a stack of bridal books and magazines almost as tall as my nephew. Our wedding is still more than a year away, and I'm still very much in the anything-is-possible stage of planning. It's kind of like the very beginning of a research project, when you've got a topic (wedding!) but no thesis (budget/colors/venue/dress/menu) and you get to just spend a whole lot of time reading and making notes and narrowing things down and organizing ideas without feeling encumbered by page counts and MLA style and deadlines.

In case you were wondering: Yes, I am approaching planning a wedding in much the same way I approached writing my master's thesis. But I really enjoyed writing my thesis, so I'm feeling pretty confident about how my practices will transfer to wedding planning.

While I spent the first months of my thesis sitting in the library, marking passages in books and journal articles with Post-It flags, now I'm spending a lot of my free time sitting on the couch, marking pictures in wedding magazines with Post-It flags. (Fortunately, I have a good friend who's in sales for 3M and who replenishes my supply of Post-It flags every year around Christmas.) At first I was completely overwhelmed by the options and didn't think I'd ever manage to come to any decisions about anything. But the more I read, the more things start to sort themselves out. It's like learning a language. Two months ago, I probably couldn't have named a bridal gown designer besides Vera Wang. Now I'm starting to have opinions about bridal designers. I actually recognized a dress -- and correctly identified the designer -- while watching an episode of "Rich Bride, Poor Bride" last week.

Of course, as with any research project, not every source of information is valuable, and some of the bridal magazines out there are total duds. Here's a rundown of the magazines that have risen to the top of my stack:

-- The Knot. At $9.99, it's not cheap, but it's worth the investment. If I had to pick the one magazine that's been most useful in helping me wade into the world of weddings, this would be it. Good luck finding a thicker bridal magazine -- it might be out there, but I haven't come across it yet. The Knot is published by the Web site of the same name (more on that in an upcoming column).