I registered with TheKnot.com in an endorphin-induced fit of wedding planning enthusiasm pretty quickly after we got engaged. (It might have been the same night. Whatever.) Founded in the late 1990s, The Knot has become a go-to media source for brides-to-be, offering books, magazines, television programs -- and the free planning/community site, which has been named a Forbes' Best of the Web Favorite and received a Webby People's Voice award.

And has its own language.

TheKnot.com screenshot

That was my initial reaction to my first tentative steps onto The Knot's discussion boards: These women are not speaking English. Turns out there's an acronym for everything on The Knot. Some are relatively easy to figure out (FFIL is "future father-in-law"; bridesmaid is shortened to an unflattering BM), while others take some thinking (even with context, it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that DOC stands for "day-of coordinator" and NWR means "not wedding-related").

The discussion boards are organized by location, culture, religion and topic -- and then there are "club" discussion boards for brides who are getting married in specific months. On the June 2011 board -- a club of which I am a default member due to our chosen date -- brides share "checks" -- as in items checked off their to-do lists -- and goals, as well as updates on the ups and downs of their planning and requests for advice and feedback.

People keep mentioning our "long" engagement (we'll have been engaged 15 months by the time we get married), and while that's actually about a month shorter than the national average, it does feel like an eternity. But some brides on the June 2011 board have already worked their way pretty far down The Knot's 400-item wedding planning checklist. On March 9, after I'd been engaged just about a week, I read a post in which a bride listed her accomplishments (capitalization preserved from the original):

"FI met (the DJ) today and put our deposit down. Mom & I went shopping ... Everything needed for centerpieces -- DONE! ... Cake Topper & Crystals to add BLING to cake topper! Fabric for table squares -- need to be (hemmed) ... Favor Tags DONE..."

She had also booked her reception venue and put down a deposit. This woman is getting married eight days before I am, and she already had a cake topper. I hadn't even ballparked a budget yet.

The Knot wasn't just on the Internet -- it was starting to form in my stomach.

I spent a few days panicking about The Knot and its bottomless pit of ideas and expectations. Things only got worse when I stumbled onto the "Not Engaged Yet" discussion board. That's where women who aren't yet brides-to-be go to debate topics such as whether it's worse to have a cash bar or a dry wedding or whether it's appropriate to start planning a wedding before actually getting engaged. (The answer to the latter, for the record, is a resounding "no"; according to the denizens of the Not Yet Engaged board, it's a guaranteed way for a not-quite-a-bride to get herself labeled "BSC" -- batshit crazy.)