You knew this was coming. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are getting married today. They got covered in the NYT's Weddings & Celebrations pages. This is what happens when you pitch Weddings Expert Phyllis Nefler a fastball down the middle:

As I would imagine her father might say, let's just cut to the bullshit and get to the point. Ivanka Trump is getting married to Jared Kushner like, right now. Depending on when you read this they might literally be clasping hands under the chuppah at this very moment. That's not even the beautiful sun you see shining out there today — it's just the reflected wattage from the two real estate scions, "lit from within by wealth and privilege".

But for all that wealth and privilege, the Times wedding announcement is kind of a hot mess! On the one hand, it's got the primo spot in print: upper left hand column, adjacent to the featured "Vows" article about a zaftig production lady who had to spend her special day with, of all people, Kelly Ripa. But there are numerous oddities. In contrast to the standard listing of names in the announcement headline, we get a complete sentence: "Ivanka Trump Weds Jared Kushner". Which is fine, (and maybe more SEO-friendly?) except the layout appears like this in print:

Ivanka Trump
Weds Jared Kushner

So that for a moment I thought he had some secret first name and wasn't just Jared Kushner but was W. Jared Kushner. And I'm sorry but people who do the first initial thing always kind of creep me out! So that caught me off guard. Moving on, great picture (the Post has the full one; I like her outfit) but they totally didn't "arrange themselves with their eyebrows on exactly the same level and with their heads fairly close together".

Who wrote this announcement? No, I'm seriously wondering, because we need to discuss the context and grammatical decisions behind each and every sentence. First, we get a full E! Where Are They Now episode about mama Ivana, who "founded two companies in New York: Ivana Inc., which handles her speaking engagements, books and other commercial ventures; and Ivana Haute Couture, which sells jewelry, perfumes and cosmetics on television". But in contrast, information about The Donald is extremely glancing, solely relegated to the nonrestrictive clause "her father's real estate company" in a sentence about Ivanka.

Probably not surprising. But Donald gets off easy in comparison to Charles Kushner:

"The bridegroom's father, who is a founder of his family's real estate business, stepped down as the company's chairman in 2004, owing to his legal problems, and has since resumed his title."

WHAT. I get that they've already namedropped the name of the family empire earlier in the paragraph (in addition to being the publisher of the New York Observer, Jared is, casually, "a principal in the Kushner Companies") but that sentence! So catty, structured as it is so that the whole "stepping down" is the primary active verb; the meat of the sentence. Me-ouch. Given the close relationship between father and son, the language is all the more puzzling.

[Photo via New York Magazine]

I like Jared and Ivanka. They're both such pretty princesses, and say what you will about the evils of nepotism: at least they keep themselves busy. Ivanka's Twitter feed has also won me over. Just this morning she went on a hike (I really, really would love it if she subscribed to Peggy Noonan's definition of "hike", btw) and her crowdsourcing call to arms about possible wedding song selections yielded a treasure trove of suggestions, including this, which: yes.

Jesus, other people got married this weekend too, you know. Like the aforementioned Lori Schulweis, a production coordinator for the Regis and Kelly show who had the distinct fortune of having her meager love life and her weight discussed live on air all the time. That is not something that ever ends well. Finally, even the poor woman's 97-year old grandmother was like "um, have you tried match.com, dear?" Ultimately she found David Buder, who didn't mind it on their first date when she "was pulling out a picture of her dog" and "somehow the bar stool she was on tipped".

But more importantly: how annoying would it be to have Kelly Ripa as a guest at your wedding?

Here we have Madeleine Resnick and Jeffrey Novich, two lovers brought together by their love of higher education — she is the membership coordinator at the Penn Club, he a private SAT tutor — and questionably named startups:

"The bride's mother is a public relations consultant there, and is a founder of BigOoga.com, a networking site for entrepreneurs. The bride's stepfather is a financial analyst at Northern Trust Bank in Chicago.

The bridegroom, 29, is a private SAT, math, and physics totor for Bespoke Education in New York. He is also the founder of VocabSushi.com, which helps students learn vocabulary using sentences from news articles."

Good god I hate the Internet.

Elsewhere this weekend, some frightened groom has to contend with a father-in-law who was a top State Department official in Caracas, Venezuela and Chiang Mai, Thailand (oh yeah, Jack can talk Thai REAL well); this picture looks photoshopped, right? and multiple couples met at the nation's most important singles bar: Harvard.

In fact, one early-blooming power couple met even before they made their way to Cambridge! Shane Wilson and Jessica Manners — OMG yes "Ms. Manners", and you're goddamn right she's keeping that name — met when they attended one of those high school nerd camps (oh, don't roll your eyes, you know you all went to CTY at Johns Hopkins too, geeks!) to study topics like "the future of New Jersey" and, apparently, "how to talk to the opposite sex".

In the wake of the Thrillist/Jetblue (TM) World's Most Boring Scandal of 2009, I should make a full disclosure: I am not a fully objective party, having once shared a delightful brunch with Jessica and Shane that was marred only by their blatant disinterest in firing up a game of Taboo. What was up with that, guys?

And so normally I steer clear of the featured video interviews with One Lucky Couple on the Times website, because they're just a little too Christopher Guest-y for me to accept that they're real, but I made an exception in this case. And the 2ish minute mark aside — "we both got in early so ... that worked out" — this was pretty touching! As one friend put it, when you know the people involved, "it's like Altarcations, but all of the ha's are awwww's."

And really, when the groom brags to the national newspaper of record that his bride's "nose is very squishy", you kind of have to awwww. Because that, folks, is true dorky beautiful love.

[Ed. Even I emailed Phyllis the following editorial directive earlier this morning: "SQUISHY NOSES!!!11!" Of course, she was already on this. Also, even though they're not being scored: she's keeping her last name, -2, but it's "Manners," so +4. Amirite?]

This week's matchup:

Heather Elliot and Stuart Rachels

• The bride graduated from Duke, received a Master of Philosophy from Yale, and earned a law degree at Berkeley: +5
• The groom graduated summa cum laude from Emory, was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, and earned a PhD at Syracuse: +5
• The bride was Ruth Bader Ginsburg's law clerk: +1
• Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not have any part in officiating the wedding: -1
• "In 1981, at age 11, Mr. Rachels became the youngest American chess master, a record he held until 1994": +2
• The couple are both professors: +3
• At the University of Alabama: -1
• The bride's mother had the same job as Rene Russo in Outbreak: +1

TOTAL: 15

Lindsay Levkoff, Jeffrey Lynn

• The bride graduated summa cum laude from Tennessee, earned a master's at Oxford as a Fulbright Scholar, and tacked on a Harvard MBA: +7
• The groom has a law degree from Oxford with an MBA on the way, graduated magna cum laude from Penn, and also went to law school at UVA: +9
• The groom's mother is chairwoman emeritus of the Arizona Theatre Company and his dad is on the board of trustees of the Heard Museum in Phoenix: +2
• "Ms Levkoff and Mr. Lynn may be among the few couples who can say that former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher played Cupid for them.": +1985

TOTAL: Hubba bloody hubba.