Dan Zevin is not a man to miss an opportunity to turn his life’s milestones into comic prose and potential bestsellerdom. Zevin burst onto the humor scene four years ago with “Entry-Level Life,” a tongue-in-cheek, how-to book for recent college graduates about surviving in the real world…Now comes “The Nearly-wed Handbook: How To Survive the Happiest Day of Your Life” (Avon Books), a spoof of wedding-planning guides that Zevin began writing just about as soon as his honeymoon was over.
…A shrewd and witty observer of Gen-X mores, Zevin, who majored in journalism at New York University, says men of his generation frequently don’t even start thinking about getting married “until the day after attending the wedding of a kid they used to babysit for.” Marriage usually sneaks up on these guys, he notes, when they aren’t paying attention… “One day you’re sitting in front of the TV in your underwear watching ESPN and the next thing you know, you’re down on your knees proposing,” he says.
…Zevin has a prose style that’s a blend of Dave Barry and PJ O’Rourke, and, happily, the editors of who worked on The Nearly-wed Handbook left the laughter in…Getting married, explains Zevin, means: “You make the most mature adult decision of your life.” Getting weddinged, however, means: “You spend three hours deciding whether to register for the sterling silver olive pitter or the crystal margarita decanter with cactus theme swizzle sticks.”
– William A. Davis