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" It&amp;#039;s not as if I was a child bride or anything. But I was nearly a full decade younger than what most of my big-city friends considered marriageable age. Don&amp;#039;t get me wrong \u2014 I&amp;#039;m glad I got married. And our wedding was beautiful; I&amp;#039;ve got the pictures to prove it. (Looking at them, I am reminded that, at the very least, marrying early means those photos to be treasured for eternity capture a comparatively lithesome version of things.) But maybe it was because I was so young that things turned out the way they did. In retrospect, I would have done it differently. When I imagine now the wedding I might plan if I had the chance to do it all again, I picture myself wearing some fabulous vintage cocktail dress or maybe a Catherine Malandrino found on sale at Bluefly.com. A ceremony at City Hall, a small bouquet of wildflowers, and perhaps a chic hat, then a party at some classic old-school joint. Porterhouse for 40, and the vegetarians can stick to martinis and creamed spinach.  But I wasn&amp;#039;t a savvy 33-year-old woman when I started planning my wedding. I was a 24-year-old girl with a possibly regrettable expertise in romantic fiction. As such, being proposed to in my parents&amp;#039; kitchen by my boyfriend of seven years \u2014 the answer a foregone conclusion \u2014 didn&amp;#039;t quite live up to my exacting fantasy standards. The situation was saved, just, by the utter sweetness of the man who, in six months time, would be my husband \u2014 and by the nicely poignant touch that he did his proposing the night before getting on a plane bound for Kazakhstan to do anthropological research, not to return until five months later.  Armed with long-distance yearning and a good jolt of self-pity, I commenced planning the event that would, I was convinced, secure me everlasting love, bring all of my family and friends together in perfect accord and giddy celebration, represent the essence of my vivid personality, and finally introduce me to adulthood. So thinking, I signed up for the whole wedding package: My dress was white and poufy, and the service and reception wound up being held on the garden-like grounds of my hometown&amp;#039;s art museum. There were flowers in abundance \u2014 green hydrangea for my four bridesmaids in their custom-made white shift dresses, white tulips for me. Paper lanterns hung like moons in the live oaks, candlelit tables scattered beneath them. And the food? Despite all my obsessive efforts \u2014 rubber chicken. Though I was young, I was already something of a food snob. I despised, on principle, vegetarians, dieters, and the allergic. I held in utter contempt anyone who saw extreme spiciness as a flaw in the dish rather than evidence of his own weakness. And I abhorred every meal I&amp;#039;d ever eaten at a wedding or benefit. I was better than that. This was to be the first night of the rest of my life \u2014 my first night as hostess and wife \u2014 and all the food served on that rented china atop those be-tableclothed tables under the live oaks was going to be the proving ground for a lifetime of hospitality, grace, and good taste. I didn&amp;#039;t realize that I was messing with a law as immutable as entropy or gravity: Hundreds of guests + unreasonable expectations + catering - billions of dollars = rubber chicken. Hubris, that was my problem. Some people might think it cowardly of Eric, my fianc\u00E9, to cook up a five-month trip to Asia just to avoid participating in the planning of his own wedding. But I, on the contrary, credit our continuing union to just that wise decision. Five months of being double-teamed by future wife and future mother-in-law, pelted with incomprehensible questions about chafing dishes, plagued with endless menu permutations, subjected to wildly unpredictable hors d&amp;#039;oeuvres-related tantrums, would make the saintliest of feet cold. So instead of dragging my fianc\u00E9 along to tastings and meetings, I dragged my much more willing and comprehending mother. This is the kind of thing my mom likes best. An interior designer with an obsession for obscure brands of lighting equipment, she is a woman who never tires of jigsaw puzzles and insoluble problems. She and I went immediately to the best-regarded, most expensive catering service in my hometown. My mother and I sat down with Mona, the catering coordinator assigned to us, with pencils in hand. Mona asked all kinds of questions: Buffet or sit-down dinner? Formal or semiformal or semi-casual or casual? Is there a particular ethnic food I like? What&amp;#039;s the overriding theme of the event?  I didn&amp;#039;t know weddings had to have themes, but I did the best I could to answer on the fly. &amp;quot;French Quarter,&amp;quot; I said, because I&amp;#039;d recently been to New Orleans for the first time, and because there was Spanish moss in the live oak trees on the grounds of the museum where I had just decided I was going to get married, and Spanish moss seemed New Orleans-y to me. We were keeping a firm hold on the purse strings, our eyes on the bottom line. We opted for the buffet, convincing ourselves that those sit-down dinners just tie people down when they really want to be joyfully mingling. We only needed three passed appetizers, rather than the obscene-seeming five, as suggested. We brutally cut out the Hoffbrau chopped salad, because who really cares about the salad anyway? We even, regretfully, nixed the mint julep martinis I had found on the Food Network Web site, and that my parents and I had gotten completely plastered drinking one night around their kitchen table, in favor of the simpler, and therefore cheaper, margaritas. So we felt like we were prepared. But we weren&amp;#039;t. $11,871.73. For a moment I thought the stress was getting to me at last, that my eyes had doubled up on some digit somewhere. &amp;quot;That can&amp;#039;t be right. Is that right?&amp;quot;  But the digits remained just as they were. The figure was right. The catering for my wedding was going to cost more than the dresses, venue, and band combined. The fact that my mother was not so shocked I attribute to the following: (a) she is an interior designer, and therefore accustomed to obscene amounts of money spent on throw pillows and side tables and recessed lighting; and (b) I was 24, and had never paid for a child&amp;#039;s orthodonture or college education. For my mother, this was merely one more in a long line of expenses necessary to her only daughter&amp;#039;s happiness, and thus to be borne without undue complaint. Still, we trimmed where we could. Cut out another appetizer, downgraded from roast beef to ham. I called my fianc\u00E9, nine time zones ahead, to discuss crudit\u00E9s and different cheap champagnes, and he was patient, the poor dear, even though the connection was bad. And by the time I&amp;#039;d talked at him for half an hour about all these terribly urgent choices I had to make, and he&amp;#039;d cooed through chilly lips that it all sounded delicious, and I&amp;#039;d told him I loved him and hung up, I&amp;#039;d decided on the glorious food that would be served at my wedding.  This was the menu: PASSED HORS D&amp;#039;OEUVRES Cheese Beignets on a Bed of Freshly Grated Parmesan Cheese Spicy Chicken Creole Turnovers DINNER BUFFET Shrimp Emeril (A Refined Take on Cajun Barbecue Shrimp) Southern Baked Ham with Buttermilk Biscuits andCreole Mayonnaise Citrus-Scented Wild Rice Salad with Toasted Louisiana Pecans and Fresh Mint Roasted Diced Vegetables with Fiery Vinaigrette Spiced Boursin with Homemade Croustades WEDDING CAKES Sour Cream Bride&amp;#039;s Cake with Fresh Fruit Filling and Cream Cheese Frosting &amp;quot;Tower&amp;quot; of Chocolate Cupcakes It looks good, doesn&amp;#039;t it? French Quarter, even. And not a chicken breast in sight! What I didn&amp;#039;t realize then was that rubber chicken needn&amp;#039;t be made of chicken at all. I was also too young to recognize the rubber chicken warning signs. Very long names for things should have set off the first alarm bells. The long-name thing is something that works for fancy restaurants. But when caterers employ the trick, it&amp;#039;s to try to convince you that they are fancy restaurants rather than what they are, which is caterers. Unlike chefs, caterers do not cook to order. Caterers cook great huge batches of things, then pack them into large tin containers and carry them in vans to church basements or the grounds of local art museums, where they reheat the food on chafing dishes. Many foods can be eaten very satisfactorily this way, but these foods usually have simple names \u2014 macaroni and cheese, barbecued brisket. Certainly not &amp;quot;Citrus-Scented Wild Rice Salad with Toasted Louisiana Pecans and Fresh Mint.&amp;quot; Plus, &amp;quot;citrus-scented&amp;quot;? Since when does rice need to be scented? I&amp;#039;m supposed to be eating this stuff, not scrubbing my toilet with it. I also should have worried about the shrimp. Nothing remotely Cajun should ever be referred to as &amp;quot;refined.&amp;quot;  The tower-of-chocolate-cupcakes groom&amp;#039;s cake I stole off Martha. (I was, at the time, in the thrall of a fairly hard-core Martha Stewart obsession, referring to her by her first name and becoming briefly, uncharacteristically organized. I am happy to report that I have since recovered.) Everything else was straight off the catering company&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;sample menus.&amp;quot; Which is fine, of course \u2014 you don&amp;#039;t go into a 3-star restaurant and demand that they change the menu. But such is the bride&amp;#039;s self-absorption that she thinks it perfectly reasonable to demand a sparkling new culinary evocation of her unique little self for her special day. Luckily for caterers everywhere, such is the bride&amp;#039;s self-deception that she can be easily fooled into believing that is just what she&amp;#039;s receiving, provided they have a decent vocabulary and a word processor. Name the same old chicken turnovers &amp;quot;Creole&amp;quot; and throw a New Orleans chef&amp;#039;s moniker onto a faithful old saut\u00E9ed shrimp dish, and I&amp;#039;m happy. The six months flew by as the six months before weddings tend to do, between the planning and the long-distance calls to Kazakhstan and the bridesmaids&amp;#039; dress crises, and suddenly my fianc\u00E9 is home and I&amp;#039;m rushing him to the tuxedo rental place, and my brother is home and he&amp;#039;s shaved his head and my mother bursts into wild tears and has to take a Valium, and I am filling hundreds of tiny plastic boxes with chartreuse and white jelly beans, and also with little slips of paper on which are written, instead of fortunes, scraps of love poetry and songs, while my fianc\u00E9 wastes an entire day on the lake, canoeing. And there&amp;#039;s a rehearsal dinner and a breakfast and I&amp;#039;m scanning the sky for rain clouds and I&amp;#039;m packing my dress into my parents&amp;#039; car and now it&amp;#039;s hanging from a paper-towel dispenser in the bathroom where my bridesmaids and I are bumping into one another trying to get dressed, and I&amp;#039;m just so glad that the food, at least, I don&amp;#039;t have to think about. The food is perfect. The service goes off practically without a hitch, except that I start down the aisle too early so nobody knows to stand up. Everyone cries, including my fianc\u00E9 and my brother, who never cries \u2014 everyone except my mom and me, that is. We&amp;#039;re just relieved that nothing terrible has happened, and secure in the knowledge that on the veranda the food is being laid out even now, and that the food is perfect. And my husband \u2014 my husband! \u2014 and I have our picture-taking session with our goofy photographer who wanted Eric to ride on an antique bicycle in a newsboy cap for our engagement photos, and then we&amp;#039;re walking back up to all the lovely tables set beneath all the lovely live oak trees. The evening is beautiful \u2014 we&amp;#039;d been afraid it would be too hot \u2014 and my husband (my husband!) is beautiful, and I am beautiful. We&amp;#039;re so beautiful, in fact, that everyone has to talk to us immediately. My husband is swept off in one direction, I in another, with no time for anything but a sip of champagne together and a peck on the cheek. This, from what I hear, is where wedding planners come in very handy: for handing the bride a plate of food. But I had no wedding planner, so I didn&amp;#039;t get around to eating anything until the reception was nearly over. I didn&amp;#039;t even drink anything \u2014 trust me, this was unusual.  Occasionally I passed someone with a plate piled high, and I asked them how they were enjoying it. &amp;quot;Oh, it&amp;#039;s very good! Congratulations!&amp;quot; They smiled when they said this and nodded their heads. But I was obscurely disappointed. Where were the ecstatic protestations of joy? Where was the oohing and aahing? This was the unique culinary evocation of me, remember? I caught up with my husband, at last, under the veranda. Our eyes met over the trays of Emeril Shrimp and Roasted Diced Vegetables with Fiery Vinaigrette. Cajun polka music drifted among the Spanish moss. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m famished,&amp;quot; I confessed. &amp;quot;Me, too!&amp;quot; sighed my husband. So we piled our plates high and sat on a stone wall beside the dance floor. I spread a napkin across my lap to avoid the heartbreak of Creole Mayonnaise on silk organza. I speared a shrimp on my fork and bit into it.  Crap. Rubber chicken. The trouble with rubber chicken isn&amp;#039;t that it&amp;#039;s bad; it&amp;#039;s that it&amp;#039;s not much good. It is also, alas, inevitable, I see now. I have finally stopped trying to assign blame, either to the catering company, which really is quite an excellent one, or to some personal failure of nerve or imagination. Rubber chicken is just what happens when you want the impossible. When you want to make a meal for hundreds into an expression of who you are. The only way to deal with rubber chicken is to embrace it for what it is \u2014 an excuse to bring these people you love together, a way to mark time while everyone you know does the thing they really came here to do: to celebrate this wonderful day, the day that you married the sweetest, kindest man in the world. Honestly? Nobody gives a crap about the food. So in retrospect, I think if I were to marry again at the age of 24, I&amp;#039;d keep the poufy white dress and the tulips and the paper lanterns in the live oak trees. I&amp;#039;d even keep the rubber chicken. But for real this time. My theory on the ideal perfect chicken is this: It should be cheap, it should be at least a little tasty, and it should be inoffensive. Roasted Chicken Breasts with Fennel fit the bill nicely.  Roasted chicken breasts with fennel Smear some olive oil on a cookie sheet, toss the chicken breasts on there, and broil until the juices, when chicken is pricked, barely run clear. Set aside, and throw some sliced fennel on the same sheet. Brush them on both sides with more olive oil, season them with salt and pepper, and squeeze some lime juice over them. Broil about five minutes, until the edges are slightly blackened. Turn them over, sprinkle with a generous dusting of Parmesan, and broil again, until the cheese begins to brown. You can serve this warm or at room temperature, and the fennel adds just a bit of interest. Spoon the fennel over the chicken breasts before serving, sprinkle with a bit more lime juice, and serve to as many hundreds of people as you like. Or let the catering company do it, rather. And relax, remembering that your rubber chicken is fine, but your rubber chicken is not the point. The point is you. And your husband. And your family and friends. Oh, and booze, of course. Mint martini This is the drink I wish I&amp;#039;d served at my wedding: Put a few mint leaves in the bottom of a highball glass. Add a tablespoon of simple syrup and some crushed ice, and mash it up with the handle of a wooden spoon to bruise the mint leaves. Pour in the vodka \u2014 Belvedere is good \u2014 and shake until thoroughly chilled. Strain into a martini glass and garnish with a sprig of mint. This is delightfully refreshing, slightly sweet, and packs a serious wallop. One or two of these and all impatience with rubber chicken will melt away.  Julie Powell is the author of Julie &amp;amp;amp; Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. Winner of two James Beard Awards, she lives in Queens, NY. This essay is excerpted from Altared, an anthology of bridal stories. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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