For the past three hours I have been sitting on my couch, typing, with one eyelid colored Aubergine and the other Rose Fumée. In theory, I am testing these shiny powders to see how long they last before they flake off onto my cheekbones. In reality, I am crazy. I am a woman getting married.

I do not normally spend my afternoons looking like my fiancé clocked me one. I do not normally wear makeup at all; the stuff I smeared onto my eyelids earlier today I bought several years ago, in a purchasing fit that seized me shortly after college. (I have now learned that those little puffy-tipped makeup wands disintegrate over time, shedding sticky particles along my browline. Today’s colors were applied, childlike, with fingertips.) This afternoon also saw the purchase of the single most expensive pair of shoes I have ever bought in my life. This is not the me I usually live with.

My boyfriend and I hoped — still hope — to avoid becoming a Bride and Groom. I am not going to wear white; he is not going to wear a tux. In a spirit of community, we have enlisted many of our friends to help us with our nuptials, from music to photos to flowers to cake. But our wedding, which we have talked about with enthusiasm for many years, has nevertheless become the single most stressful event in our lives. And it hasn’t even happened yet.

Take that cake, for example. We have a good friend who trained as a baker, so, naturally, we decided to ask her if she’d be willing to cream butter and sift flour for our wedding. Blithely, she agreed. But a few months later, when the guest list materialized and the numbers became real, I called her and downsized the assignment: One cake, vegan, big enough just to feed twelve or so. We would buy extra cake from a local bakery to feed everybody else.

Then I told my intended the plans had changed, pointing out that the expense and effort of one woman baking enough cake in her small apartment kitchen for nearly 150 guests was less of a gift than a burden. He wasn’t sympathetic; he was furious. Our friend had agreed to make our wedding cake as a gift to us, and now I was reneging? How could I have insulted her by saying, “Sorry, thanks, but we really don’t want your talents after all?�

We glowered at each other.

Why such angst? We’ve been together for years; we’ve traveled abroad together, moved up and down the West Coast together, even bought homes together. And yet suddenly we can no longer assume that we can agree together.

In my earnest desire to avoid Bridezillahood, I try very hard not to fill my sweetheart’s ears with froth about deckle edges and hem lengths. We make decisions together — like asking our friend to bake for us — but then I take care of the details. Right?

Wrong.

Getting married — when it’s the right people exchanging rings for the right reasons — is a good thing. It is also a harrowing thing, a swirling funnel of anxiety, diplomacy, anticipation, and fatigue. It is a trial of perspective, in which two people are forced to look at themselves anew. All this makes getting married both desperately intimate and embarrassingly public.

My love and I, fogged by all the unspoken expectations of impending matrimony, have had to learn to converse all over again. When he announces that he doesn’t want to wear a tux, I don’t know what he means. (A suit? A kilt? Aloha attire?) When I tell him that I want to recruit friends to help with our wedding, he doesn’t realize that negotiating such largesse can be trickier than simply hiring professionals.

Weddings trail clouds of tradition and assumption, and they can shift the weather most powerfully. Why else would I find myself taking makeup so darn seriously? Why else would my normally placid fiancé leap to outraged conclusions? We’ve realized just how large a wedding can loom, and we’ve learned to clear the air by speaking our minds.

Which may be what, in the end, a wedding is for. If you haven’t learned to really talk to each other — to really understand what you both mean, not just what you’re saying — planning a wedding is a crash course in communication. Are you truly meant for each other? Are you each truly ready to be a spouse?

Are you, in other words, ready to be responsible both for yourself and someone else? Then maybe you can walk down the aisle together. And you’ll have learned not to sweat the small stuff — not even flaking eyeshadow.