I nod, as if it were nothing, when in fact I felt like a martyr as I pressed them yesterday morning, with starch and all. Spray, sigh, iron. Spray, sigh, iron.

"You didn't have to do that," he says, buttoning his shirt slowly, deliberately, while avoiding eye contact with me.

"I wanted to," I lie, focusing on the curve of his slender neck as he looks down at the top button, thinking that I have nothing better to do in Atlanta.

"It wasn't necessary… I don't mind wrinkles."

"In clothes or on my face?" I say wryly, hoping to break the ice-and then fight.

"Either," Andy says, still stone-faced.

"Good," I say flippantly. "Because, you know, I'm not really the BOTOX type."

Andy nods. "Yeah. I know."

"Ginny gets BOTOX," I say, feeling slightly foolish by my overt, clumsy attempt to divert the conversation to what's really on my mind, and even more so when Andy refuses my bait.

"Really?" he says disinterestedly.

"Yeah. Every couple months," I say, grasping at straws. As if the frequency of her cosmetic-surgery office visits will finally push him across some imaginary line and rally him to my cause.

"Well," he says, shrugging. "To each his own, I guess."

I inhale, now ready to goad him into a proper argument. But before I can say anything, he turns and disappears into the bathroom, leaving me sitting on the foot of our bed as if I'm the bad guy.

To add insult to injury, Andy falls right to sleep that night-which is about the most galling thing you can do after a fight, or in our case, a standoff. No tossing or turning or stewing beside me in the dark. Just cold indifference as he kissed me goodnight, followed by an easy, deep slumber. Of course this has the infuriating effect of keeping me wide awake, replaying the evening, then the past few weeks, and the few months before that. After all, there is nothing like a little argument-induced insomnia to shift you into a state of frenzied hyper-analysis and fury.

So when the grandfather clock in our foyer (incidentally a house-warming gift from Stella which I'm none too fond of, for both its foreboding appearance and sound) strikes three, I am in such a bad mental place that I transfer to the couch downstairs where I begin to think of our engagement-the last time I can recall feeling defensive about my background.

To be fair (which I'm not in the mood to be), our wedding planning was mostly smooth sailing. In part, I credit myself for being a relatively laidback bride, as I really only cared about the photography, our vows, and for some odd reason, the cake (Suzanne believes this was simply my excuse to sample lots of baked goods). In part, I think things went well because Margot had just gone through it all, and Andy and I weren't afraid to shamelessly copy her, using the same church, country club, florist, and band. Largely, though, I think it went well because we only had one mother in the picture, and I was perfectly happy to let her run the show.

Suzanne didn't get it-didn't understand how I could so easily surrender to Stella's strong opinions and traditional taste.

"Pink roses aren't you," she said, starting in on the Grahams one afternoon as we flipped through my CDs, looking for good first-dance song choices.

"I like pink roses just fine," I said, shrugging.

"Please. Even so… what about everything else?" Suzanne said, looking agitated.

"Like what?" I said.

"Like everything… it's as if they expect you to become one of them," she said, her voice rising.

"That's what a wedding is all about," I said calmly. "I'm becoming a Graham, so to speak."

"But it's supposed to be two families coming together… and this wedding feels like it's more theirs than yours. It's almost as if they're… trying to take you over… phase out your family."

"How do you figure?" I said.

"Let's see… You're on their turf, for one. Why the hell are you getting married in Atlanta anyway? Isn't the wedding supposed to be in the bride's hometown?"

"I guess so. Typically," I said. "But it just makes sense to have it in Atlanta since Stella's doing most of the work."

"And writing all the checks," Suzanne said, at which point I finally got defensive and said that she wasn't being fair.

Yet now, I wonder if finances weren't a factor, after all. I can say with unwavering certainty that I didn't marry Andy for his money, and that I wasn't, as Suzanne seemed to be implying, bought. But on some level I guess I did feel indebted to the Grahams and therefore complicit when it came to the details.

Beyond the money, there was something else at play, too-some dark thing I never wanted to look at too closely, until now, in the middle of the night, on the couch. It was a feeling of inadequacy-a worry that, on some level, maybe I wasn't good enough. Maybe I didn't quite measure up to Andy and his family. I was never ashamed of my hometown, my roots, or my family, but the more I became entrenched in the Graham family, the way they lived, and their traditions and customs, I couldn't help but start to see my own background in a new light. And it was this concern-perhaps only subconscious at the time-that gave me a tremendous sense of relief when Stella suggested that she plan our wedding in Atlanta.

At the time, I justified my feelings. I told myself that I had left Pittsburgh for a reason. I wanted a different kind of life for myself-not a better life-just a different one. And included in that was a different sort of wedding. I didn't want to get married at my drafty Catholic church, eat stuffed cabbage from tinfoil chafing dishes, and boogie down to the Chicken Dance at the VFW Hall. I didn't want to have wedding cake smashed in my face, a blue-lace garter removed by my groom's teeth, and my bouquet caught by a nine-year-old because virtually every other female guest is already married with kids. And I didn't want to get pelted with rice by my husband's friends-the few who had yet to pass out-then cruise off in a black stretch limo with empty Iron City cans tied to the back bumper all the way to the Days Inn where we'd spend the night before flying to Cancun for our package honeymoon. It's not that I turned up my nose to any of that-I just had a different concept of the "dream wedding."

Now I see that it wasn't only a question of what I wanted for myself-it was also what I feared the Grahams and their friends would think of me. I never tried to hide how I grew up, but I didn't want them observing too closely for fear that someone might come to that horrifying conclusion that I wasn't good enough for Andy. And it was this emotion, this fear, that crystallized and manifested itself in the purchase of my wedding gown.

It all started when Andy asked my father for my hand in marriage, actually flying to Pittsburgh so that he could take my dad to Bravo Franco, his favorite downtown restaurant, and ask for permission, face to face. The gesture won big points with my dad, who sounded so happy and proud when he told the story that for a long time I joked he was worried he could never marry me off (a joke I stopped telling once it became apparent that this might be Suzanne's fate). In any event, during the course of their lunch, after my dad gave his jubilant blessing, he became earnest as he told Andy about the wedding fund he and my mother had long ago set up for their girls-a savings of seven thousand dollars to be used any way we wished. In addition, he told Andy that he wanted to buy my gown, as it was something my mother had always talked of doing with her daughters, one of her symbolic big regrets during her final days.

So after Andy and I got engaged, he passed along these details to me, expressing his gratitude for my dad's generosity, telling me how much he really liked my old man, and how much he wished he could have taken my mother to lunch, too. Meanwhile, though, Andy and I both knew without saying it that seven thousand dollars would not make a dent in the cost of our lavish wedding-and that the Grahams were going to make up the rather significant shortfall. And I was okay with this. I was okay playing the role of gracious daughter-in-law, and I knew I wouldn't have to hurt my dad's feelings by telling him that his contribution would barely cover the cost of all those pink roses.

The problem was the dress. At some point, my dad insisted that he wanted me to send him the bill directly. This left me with two unpalatable choices-buy an inexpensive dress, or choose something my father could not afford. So with this conundrum in mind, off I went, uneasily dress shopping with Stella, Margot, and Suzanne, constantly trying to check the price tags and find something for less than five hundred dollars. Which simply doesn't exist in Manhattan, at least not at the couture Madison and Fifth Avenue stores where Margot had booked our appointments. Looking back, I know I could have confided all of this in Margot, and that she would have tailored our search accordingly, finding us a boutique in Brooklyn that fit my dad's budget.

Instead I had to go and fall in love with a ridiculously expensive Badgley Mischka gown at Bergdorf Goodman. It was the dream dress I didn't know I had to have until I saw it-a simple but lush ivory crepe sheath gown with a beaded netting overlay. Stella and Margot clasped their hands and insisted that I just had to get it, and even Suzanne got a little weepy as I spun around on my toes in front of the three-way mirror.

When it came time to pay, Stella whipped out her Amex Black card, insisting that she really, really wanted to do this. I hesitated and then accepted her generous offer, shamelessly pushing aside my dad-and, even worse, my mother-and filling my head with rationalizations of every kind. What he doesn't know won't hurt him. I won't have my mother at my wedding-at least I can have my dream dress. She'd want me to have this.