Fearless Gawker wedding correspondent Phyllis Nefler is braving the heat this weekend as well as the picture-perfect pairings featured in the vaunted pages of the New York Times Weddings section. Come along, but beware: Trinity, teachers, and Maine: oh my!

Sometimes love is like a keratin hair treatment: it might be flat and limp at first and you're all regretful and why did I do this again? but then when you've taken enough showers and sort of worn down all the buildup everything becomes quite lovely and manageable for awhile and you're glowing and telling all your friends until it kind of fades and slowly the effects wear off unless you go spend some money getting it fixed every couple of months or so.

Oh, sorry, I was just trying my hand at writing like Lois Smith Brady, whose featured Vows column, about the marriage of Paul Mitchell's son Angus to a former Vidal Sassoon employee, Michelle Raab, includes the following turns of phrase:

• He looks like someone who could break your heart so bad, it would have split ends.
• At his salon, Angus M, hugs are like mints: offered when you walk in and when you leave.
• She insisted they forget the kiss—make it vanish like gray hair.
• Mr. Regidor went on to describe love in a way that made it sound like a rich conditioner, something that heals and takes the tangles and difficulties out of life.
• He has [his wealth] now, but views it as temporary, like a wave.*

*Assuming on this last one. Who even gets a wave anymore!?

The story of Raab and Mitchell is nice enough, but between that and "they were married in Hilo on Mr. Mitchell's macadamia-nut farm," I am, like a silently texting girl in the salon chair, too distracted to talk about it.

There were, in general, three threads running through a fair amount of the wedding announcements this weekend: Trinity, teachers, and Maine. (French-braid those together and you've got the New York Times' favorite hairsty— okay, okay, I'll stop.)

Lucy Leuders-Booth and Duc Nguyen have two of three attributes: their wedding was held in Deer Isle, Maine, and the bride is a second grade teacher. (Her dad was a teacher as well: of photography, at Harvard.) Nguyen is an illustrator, under the first name Duke, of children's books including "Herbert Hilligan and His Magical Lunchbox," which I would now like to read. Without spoiling their announcement, I'll just say that I find the whole ring thing a little bit awkward?

Also married in Maine were Abigail Povich, whose father is a state representative candidate there, and Scott Weinstein. The pair met on Match.com. ("'I winked at him first and he emailed me the next day,' she said." Povich, the "senior manager of the book clubs division of Scholastic" had only been on the site a few days, while Weinstein, SNL's "Weekend Update" producer, fed up with the site, was making his date with her his last. It was.

Rebecca Whidden and Christopher Rogers have their own ties to Maine. She is the step-grandaughter of "the abstract painter and sculptor George Ortman, who lives in Castine, Me." while he owns a boat building shop in Penobscott and will next month become a member of the team "building Puma Ocean Racing's 2011 sailboat entry in the Volvo Ocean Race." (He'd previously helped build the boat that won the 2010 America's Cup.)

Trinity brides include Lindsay Dorrance, a Columbia University fundraiser who married T.J. Ortenzi, the besideburned associate news editor for the Huffington Post, as well as Susan O'Hare, who met her husband Alasdair McBarnet at a 2006 Halloween party where he "act[ed] the part of a drunken pirate" while she was a construction worker. Befitting a graduate from Camp Trin Trin, the two met over a bowl of grain-infused jungle juice. And then there's Kathleen Milnamow, who works for Teach for America … where she "assisted managers in performance reviews for staff members." Oh.

Milnamow may not qualify for the teacher trend yet — she is starting as a seventh grade teacher soon — but Danielle Tobias already does: she teaches first grade. Jennifer Deal oversees fourth, and Amanda Weicker is "an instructional aide at the Las Vegas Day School." Your guess is as good as mine as for what that even means, but hey! Her grandpa was a governor AND a senator!

Then we have Avery Eyre, a former college squash player who taught second grade "until June," a month before marrying her boyfriend-from-Dartmouth, Benjamin Lovejoy. He, notes the announcement blankly, "is a defenseman for the Pittsburgh Penguins of the National Hockey League." Their meet-cute story is worth the read: "Ben casually offered to help her move in, and when they were finished he offered to take her out Molly's where Ben would buy the then underage Avery as many margaritas as she could handle..." I like the honesty! Ben and Avery sound fun!

Emma Mittelstaedt and James Burnham met at school too: the University of Chicago law school, where she graduated with honors and he with high honors. This nugget from their announcement is a new one: "Dr. Frank R. Parrish, a minister of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel and an uncle of the bridegroom, officiated." Church of the Foursquare Gospel? Man, Dennis Crowley really HAS hit it big.

Emily Lucas and Joseph Turilli could have met at Harvard, but despite having "the same big group of friends" they never did meet each other until one fateful night in New York, a night which is painstakingly sketched out for us by writer John Harney:

Their first formal meeting took place shortly before Christmas at the birthday party of a mutual friend.

Oddly, Mr. Turilli said, that was the second of two parties they both attended that night. Ms. Lucas "had left by the time I got there to the first party," he said, adding that by the time he turned up at the second party, she had been there awhile.

They then ran into each other at two more parties later that week. "We were bound to meet at some point," Ms. Lucas said.

So you were, so you were. Fun game: if you replace "parties" with "Starbucks" then you've got this scene:

Elsewhere this weekend: a South African man moved to the US to choose his future bride over the Croatian rowing team; a couple proves what I always say, which is: fourth bride's a charm! ; Gayley Morris Woolston is keeping her name, which upsets me because come on, Gayley Woolston Piepmeier would have been dope; though not as dope as the groom who goes by Bass Bassin; and finally, the announcement for Edward Farley and Matthew Horowitz contained this gem:

He is the son of Sylvia Horowitz and Barry Horowitz of Wilton, Conn. The bride's mother is an independent nutritionist, yoga teacher, and personal trainer. His father works in Manhattan as a vice president and the general merchandize manager for Girl Scouts of USA.

I was so busy relishing the part about the Girl Scouts — miss you, knee-highs with tassels and beanies — that I completely missed what the NYT Picker, um, picked up on: that Horowitz here is described as "the bride!" I thought maybe this was a fabulous little commentary on heteronormative gender assignments within the wedding-industrial complex, but nope!

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 18, 2010

An earlier version of this announcement misidentified Sylvia Horowitz. She is the mother of Mr. Horowitz.

Oh my. Tough one, dolls. It... will make for a funny story?

Today's face-off is a little unconventional; I am pitting against each other one couple who got married this weekend with a couple who got married a few weeks ago (I never covered the latter because of technical difficulties at the Gawker Media mothership.)

Why? Because here: THE BATTLE OF THE GOAT CHEESE.

Lora Elizabeth Smith and Joseph Daniel Schroeder

• The couple was married "at Celebrity Dairy, the goat farm and dairy where they both live, in Siler City, NC": +1
• The wedding picture features a freaking GOAT and is taken in front of hay bales: +5
• The bride "cares for a herd of 60 goats and makes cheese from their milk": +1
• The wedding was officiated by a Presbyterian priest: +1
• The bride is "also involved in publicity and bookings for "Deep Down," a public television documentary about coal mining: +1
• The bride graduated magna cum laude from NYU and is completing a master's in folklore (!) at UNC: +3
• The groom manages grants for projects on NC farms: +1
• "When they met in 2008 at a conference in Monteagle, Tenn., Ms. Smith and Mr. Schroeder were both community organizers in Kentucky": +2

TOTAL: 15

Louisa Katherine Conrad and Lucas Andrew Farrell

• Not to be a total creeper but I have to admit, I happen to have been subscribed to their incredibly jealousy-inspiring blog on Tumblr for some time now and I just lovelovelove it: +2
• "The couple met in 2000 at Middlebury College, from which they graduated": +1
• "Until last month, [they] were apprentice goat-cheese makers at Blue Ledge Farm in Salisbury, VT": +1
• The bride is an artist who specializes in photography and drawing and the groom is a poet ("his manuscript 'The Many Woods of Grief' won the 2010 Juniper Prize for Poetry"): +1
• The bride received her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and the groom his MFA from the University of Montana: +2
• The bride's father retired as senior partner at Davis Polk and is now "a full-time painting student at the New York Studio School in New York": +1
• The bride's father is a member of the standing committee of the Episcopal Diocese of NY: +1
• The bride's mother is a president of a nonprofit environmental coalition in Bedford, NY: +1
• The groom's mother is a staff nurse at Ferry Beach Ecology School in Saco, Maine and his father is the director of the Kaohsiung American School: +1
• "After the wedding, they plan to move to Brattleboro, VT where they hope to start a goat farm. Their wedding registry includes goats and farming equipment. They said that they have received a 10-gallon milk can and three pledges of goats so far. They're also working on starting a tractor fund." +5

TOTAL: 16 Baaaazel-tov, you foxy farmers.