A blogger takes a meandering look at the many relationships that led to her wedding day.

Cheek, a longtime resident of Los Angeles, wasn’t sure she’d ever make it to the altar: “I never saw myself doing fifty years with anyone,” she admits. After all, she’d watched her parents split up and her father remarry and divorce twice. Her stepfather and her maternal grandfather each had three wives, too. By the time she was in her early 20s, she “didn’t know of any marriages that had worked out.” In short chapters, the author charts her shift from cynic to romantic to wife. The passages, largely drawn from her blog, move between scenes from her wedding day and glimpses of old flames, family stories, and cheeky memories of her courtship with her now-husband, Big Johnson. Despite the various emotional fallouts found in many of these vignettes, most often in the form of heartbreak, they are pithy tales told from a place of happiness and gratitude. With levity, she recalls childhood memories of confusion and pain. She recounts decades of alternately sweet and painful flings with figures like “the Musician,” “the Actor,” “the Ghoster,” all the way back to “the High School Boyfriend.” She delves into Big Johnson’s first two marriages to “Tammy #1” and “Tammy #2.” At times, the book does indeed read more like a lighthearted blog than an insightful memoir, but what it lacks in narrative structure, it makes up for in voice. Even her sometimes harsh descriptions of Big Johnson—that “he weighs too much” and that she “was noticeably uncomfortable with his size”—come off as quirks of hers, instead of flaws of his. Throughout, she returns to their discovery on their wedding day that the judge hadn’t signed their marriage license. “Had I just been given a sign?” she wonders. “Should I make a run for it?” This minor detail, which somehow makes its way into the subtitle, is far less symbolic than she attempts to paint it. Looking past this distraction, readers will find a delightful story about commitment, patience, and self-trust.

A funny, original look at modern marriage for any reader who’s thought twice about taking a trip down the aisle.