Life is hard, but sometimes everything works out. Couples in today's New York Times weddings announcements have been blessed by something (God? Randomness? Aliens?) Resident Gawker weddings expert Phyllis Nefler parses their serendipitous stories.

Maiko Matsushima and David Brick knew they were destined to be together when they visited a museum on the Japanese island of Naoshima during a difficult trip to her parents' home. Glancing up at a space that was open to the sky, they watched as "all the clouds disappeared and all we saw was blue sky. We just started crying. We just felt that someone was smiling."

Back in New York, "the magic found them again":

Ms. Matsushima was locked out of her apartment. The superintendent, they soon realized, had engaged a secondary lock that she never used and for which she did not have a key.

"The door won't open," Mr. Brick said. "We're exhausted. We've got all these bags. The super is not around." On a whim, he took out the key to his Philadelphia apartment.

"I put it into the lock and it just turned and opened," he said.

That's the best! Smiled upon by a higher being. Things that were meant to be. Serendipity. I know exactly how it feels, because that happened to me once, except we were at a football tailgate and instead of tri-state area apartments it was Jeep Grand Cherokees and we were trying to get to our drugs. Some of you owners of those late '90's models might want to get your locks changed, is all I'm saying.

William Bolton had a little more trouble when he tried his hand at locksmith chivalry. After Katie Albert locked her keys in her office, he offered to help:

"I thought I might be able to jimmy open her lock using my Blockbuster card, but couldn't," he said. "It was a little embarrassing. Our faculty chair sidled in and tried it with my card and did it in a few seconds."

Anyone else imagine the faculty chair as being played by Jeff Bridges in a sort of The Door in the Floor capacity? "I'm just a picker of locks who likes to draw," he would say.

It's been awhile since we've had a good old fashioned liberal arts power couple, so props to Cory Mescon and Benjamin Baumer.

The pair graduated from long-time Gawker honorees Oberlin and Wesleyan, respectively, and were married in Northampton, Mass, at Smith College. (There's another Wesleyan groom of note this weekend: William Wallace Burke Gilmore, a "metal fabricator who does custom work for cars and motorcycles at his business, Gotham Chop Shop in Millerton, NY.")

Mescon is a lawyer for the Legal Aid Society Criminal Defense Practice in Queens, and Baumer is the statistical analyst for the New York Mets. This is perfect, because baseball is the thinking man's sport.

Baumer's maumer was from 1991-2005 "the owner and editor of Sole Proprietor of Many Hands Magazine, published in Northampton" and the author of "The Holistic Practitioner's Business Bible," while his father is a Smith professor and co-author of "Parties, Polarization and Democracy in the United States."

Gary Lowman first met Brock McCormack at a Wake Forest Law School baseball outing. Lowman's roommate brought him along to serve as human gaydar. "I didn't know they were scoping me out," said McCormack.

The pair's friendship blossomed. "He would come over to my house, and we would play different Broadway soundtracks and sing along," McCormack said. (GAYDAR: ACTIVATED.) "We both knew all the words to 'Wicked,' and that's how we bonded." At a Super Bowl party in February of 2006, the pair ultimately turned off the game and turned on something more:

"Everyone else just watched and laughed at us while we were singing to 'Rent' — we really got into our roles," Mr. Lowman said. I hugged him, and I could feel him hug me back, and it just felt right."

I didn't recognize you without the handcuffs.

Then there's Michael Angelo, proprietor of the gloriously named Michael Angelo's Wonderland Beauty Parlor in New York, and his husband Scott MacDougal, who came together not over show tunes but rather "the cause that would become their bond — the fight against the child sex trade in Cambodia." When they visited a shelter last year, the girls asked them if they had wives:

"We said no, we chose each other," Mr. MacDougall said. Then they asked if they were married. Mr Angelo said that when they answered no, "They said, 'You love each other. You have to get married.'"

(dabbing eye with a hanky) Can I bottle those smiles and wear them as perfume?

Elsewhere this weekend, an evil defender of white collar criminals used to flirt so heavily with her now-husband that even 7-year olds were like dude, get a room!; two members of Riverdance clogged their way down the aisle, or whatever it is those weird dancing folks do; this guy looks like Matt Berninger; and an important lesson to all: never don't leave the note!

The Times also gives us one of their "State of the Unions" columns this week, checking in quite enjoyably with voice-over actress Jen Cohn and writer, director, and producer Robert Siegel. It's worth the read, although I'd like to highlight my favorite part about the couple's son, Mickey:

The baby was not named after Mickey Rourke but rather "Mickey Cohen, Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel," she said, naming a trio of gangsters.

The baby's name has "sort of a swagger," Mr. Siegel said, deadpan.

"He could become a bank robber, or a comedian in the Catskills," Ms. Cohn said. "If he's a bass player, he can be Mick Sender. If he runs a bank, he can be M. Sender Siegel, and if he's a gossip columnist or sportswriter, he can be Mickey Siegel."

They say they're trying to be "70's parents," and I wonder if this is the next little trend: is the pendulum swinging away from Purell-toting narcs? Will we once again drive with our kids on our lap, and splash their mouths with some bourbon to shut them up on the plane?

God, I hope so. And if we do, you heard it here first. This week's faceoff:

Elisabeth Haviland James and Robert James Revere La Noue

* The couple was married "at the Celebrity Dairy, a goat farm in Silk Hope, NC": +1
* The wedding was officiated by an Episcopal priest: +1
* The bride graduated from Georgetown, and received a master's in documentary film and video from Stanford: +2
* "The bridegroom, also 33, is known as Revere": +1
* Revere graduated from the University of Notre Dame and received a master's in documentary film and video from Stanford: +1
* The bride "was a producer of 'The Lord God Bird,' about reports of the rediscovery in Arkansas of the ivory billed woodpecker, which was thought to be extinct. The film was shown last year at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana.": +5
* The bride's first marriage ended in divorce: -1
* The brides mother works at "a chemical company founded in 1934 by the bride's maternal grandfather, the late J. Bernard Haviland": +1
* The groom's parents are both professors: +1

TOTAL : 12

Caroline Joanna Mallonée and Eric Heinz Huebner

* The couple was married "in a Quaker ceremony at the Baltimore Monthly Meeting of Friends, Stony Run, a Quaker meeting house in Baltimore.": +1
* The bride graduated cum laude from Harvard and received a master's in music from Yale and a Ph.D. in musical composition from Duke: +8
* The groom graduated from Juilliard, from which he also received a master's in piano performance: +3
* The couple met at the Walden School ("a summer program for young musicians in Dublin, NH") where she is the assistant dean: +1
* The bride is a composer ("her octet, "Reaction," had its premiere at the Turner Hall Ballroom in Milwaukee in February") and the groom is a pianist ("He performed Messiaen's 'Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant-Jésus.' at the Ojai Festival in California this month."): +3
* The bride composed a 14-minute work for her future groom called "Pangrams." It comprises "44 pieces each using the 88 keys of the piano keyboard exactly once.": +2

TOTAL: 17