MY FRIENDS CALL ME Monica, after the control freak on Friends. I think it’s done affectionately, but I’m not sure. Regardless, I am the first to admit that I’m an obsessively driven perfectionist.

So you might expect that I’d turn into some maniacal detail-fiend when it came time to plan my wedding. A "bridezilla," if you will, the not-so-secret code word for the demanding harridan who tortures florists, bakers, and caterers. Certainly, I thought I would. But for some odd reason, I’m not stressing out over what will be the biggest occasion in my lifetime. Not that I haven’t had my moments.

Take the engagement, for instance. My fiancé, Steven, and I have had rational discussions about marriage on many occasions. We’ve been together for five years, lived together for three. We’re content, comfortable in our cohabitation — and not getting any younger. So last year, we decided to get hitched, tie the knot, do the deed — and do it some 3100 miles away, in Northern California, where members of both families reside. By February 2001, Steven even went so far as to ask my parents for my hand.

I felt secure — for a while, anyway. But then weeks passed, and months, without an engagement ring. Panicked, I imagined the worst. Perhaps Steven had second thoughts. Perhaps he had regrets. Perhaps my domestic bliss was a delusion. My high anxiety manifested itself through fits of housecleaning or late-night workloads. When Steven surprised me last Thanksgiving with candles, roses, and a 1940s-era antique ring, relief swept over me. Finally, I thought, we’re engaged.

And this is how my wedding planning has gone: long stretches of calm interspersed with moments of sheer terror. Much of the calm can be attributed to Steven’s and my excellent decision to enlist my mother's help in planning the details. She immediately took charge of scouting venues throughout the Bay Area. She visited three locations. Within a week, we’d booked a September 2002 date at a gorgeous riverfront setting in Capitola, California.

I discovered my gown with similarly atypical speed. Last January, on Super Bowl Sunday, I visited Designer Bridal Outlet, a quaint boutique in Wellesley. Unfazed by the substantial selection, I approached the dress racks with determination. One hour later, I left with a $300 receipt, tucked neatly inside my purse, for an antique-white, silk-sheath gown — I even managed to make it home in time to relish the game’s fantastic final quarter.

In the following months, much of the planning process has felt as smooth as that silk dress. Over the phone and via e-mail, Steven and I have lined up the vendors, one by one, using family references. We hired the officiant in February, the wedding coordinator in March, the cake-baker and florist in April.

And yet, it hasn’t all been this easy. When the two guitarists who were supposed to play at our ceremony bowed out last March, for example, I lapsed into a childlike tantrum. I cursed the musicians. I cursed the heavens. I cursed Steven for failing to curse along with me. But after a teary-eyed hour of drama, I got down to business. My wedding coordinator, Donita, referred us to two other guitarists named, conveniently enough, Terry and Terry. The Terrys, as they’re called, are fixtures in the Santa Cruz music scene. They do lots of weddings, the coordinator enthused. Soon I was dialing up one of the Terrys myself.

"Hello. I understand you do weddings."

"Oh, yeah," Terry responded, his voice California cool. "We love weddings." Minutes later, my musician fiasco had become a distant memory.

And then there were the bridal magazines that weaken you under their sheer weight alone. In late April, when I first opened one of those industry tomes, true panic finally set in. Preparing for a vacation full of wedding appointments in California, I’d purchased about a half-dozen bridal mags at the behest of my vendors. They had urged me to rip out pages of any hairstyle, cake decoration, and bouquet that inspired me. At first, I casually flipped past photograph after photograph of women in white. Skinny women doing their best impressions of Audrey Hepburn. Ho, hum. Big-haired women in elaborately beaded, billowy gowns. Been there, done that.

But then I, an inveterate to-do lister, succumbed to their to-do lists. I lingered, wide-eyed, over their real-life planning diaries and rap sessions with mystery advisers. The more I read, the more nervous I grew. Elegant Bride warned that good weddings take at least a year to plan. Modern Bride cautioned that flawless receptions require 150 hours of prep time. What?! I cried. So far, I’d spent maybe several dozen hours on the details, tops.

Distraught, I scoured the magazine checklists, looking for the one crucial item that had escaped me. According to the lists, Steven and I were a month late in choosing my bridal attendant’s dress. We were three months late in asking our groomsmen to do the honors. We were six months late in introducing our parents! Columnists informed me that I should be arming myself with file folders, color-coded and itemized with tabs. I should be creating one for possible wedding-day shoes, one for hairdos, one for wedding bands. On the eve of our trip to California, I curled myself into the fetal position on our bed: "Oh, my God," I shouted to Steven. "We are soooo behind. What are we going to do?"

"We’re not a by-the-book couple," he replied, in a vain attempt to ease my pain.

But if women see themselves through their wedding day, I wondered, what would mine reflect? Would it be a classy event? Or a haphazard joke? By May 3, when we boarded a flight from Boston to San Francisco for a whirlwind week of planning, I was wound as tight as a yo-yo.

MY FEARS began to subside as soon as we arrived in San Francisco. Our second day there, I took my sister Allison, who is my bridesmaid, for a shopping excursion. Allison is a 24-year-old "techie" living in Berkeley, a long-time runner whose favorite attire consists of shorts and a sports bra. Finding her an outfit, I’d imagined, would be akin to pulling teeth, a painful, angst-ridden procedure. And so, we geared up for disaster as we ventured into a high-end downtown mall. With Monica-like efficiency, however, we ended up spotting perfection an hour later: an azure-blue form-fitting satin dress. We snatched up the $240 frock. As we walked out of the mall and into a nearby bar to celebrate, one thought played through my mind: this must be a sign.

And it was. The following day, on May 5, our officiant, Cal, a tall, trim, fortysomething psychotherapist with a braided tail hanging down his back, put us at ease with a spirited, two-hour conversation about ceremony details. Steven and I are creating our own ceremony, inventing traditions while incorporating rituals from our respective Jewish and Catholic heritages. Cal has an inspiring, invigorating way about him. His motto might be summed up this way: teach your parents that it’s best for all concerned if they keep their opinions to themselves and just enjoy you for being you.

It’s a sentiment that would be echoed throughout the week. When Steven and I fretted about the cake’s flavor — yellow, for the guests, or chocolate, for us — the baker, a middle-aged, bespectacled woman also named Terry, put a stop to the agonizing. Pick the cake you want to eat, she said. When Steven and I fussed over our fathers’ boutonnieres — roses to match our flowers, or hydrangeas to match the bridal party's — the florist, an affable, efficient woman named Sarah, ended our indecision at once. Why not both? she suggested. In sharp contrast to the bridal magazines, none of the vendors told us what we had to do. Nor did they imply that our wishes were misguided, eccentric, or just plain gauche. It all seemed as easy as a summer’s breeze.

Of course, panic over details like whether to arrange for pewter place-card holders, personalized party favors, napkin prints of homemade wedding logos, and out-of-towner booklets might have diffused some of the fear that comes with getting married in the first place. Indeed, for Steven and me, our most difficult moments came while pondering our imminent life-altering leap into matrimony. While waiting for a delayed flight at the airport, for instance, we had time to riffle through the book Guide to Wedding Vows and Traditions. We turned to one page full of questions designed to help you write your vows. Why did you decide to get married? we asked ourselves. What qualities do you most admire in each other? What do you have together that you don’t have apart? When did you fall in love and why?

Suffice it to say, our answers were slow in coming. We especially struggled with the story of how we fell in love, as we rarely share the tale. We don’t divide it between ourselves, interrupting each other in the same places with the same comments, like a well-rehearsed comedy team. It’s not exactly a sweep-me-off-my-feet romance: we were dating others when we met; we became friends; our hearts eventually found each other. The tale's lack of drama left us paralyzed for the rest of the day. How do we know this is right? We closed the book, feeling vulnerable and deeply aware of the risks.

In my calmer moments, I have no doubt that we’re doing the right thing — maybe I’d be better off agonizing over frivolous details instead. Still, I’ve heard too much regret from my now-married friends who fixated on the color of their napkins and linens for months before tying the knot. Today, they don’t remember their wedding; it was all a blur; they have no clue how the tables looked because they spent too much time greeting guests. One friend who carefully plotted her wedding was forced to recognize how insignificant such details could become. On her day, her minister suffered a stroke and never showed up. Guests whispered. Parents freaked — until a friend, who’d paid $40 for ordination through some magazine, happily volunteered his services. Some things, in other words, are beyond your control.

According to TheKnot.com, a wedding-planning Web site, Steven and I have 116 additional tasks to check off our list. We’re working on it.

Kristen Lombardi can be reached at klombardi[a]phx.com