Scenes from an Impending Marriage

by Adrian Tomine

I picked up this short, slim little book as an impulse buy, mostly because I loved Tomine's Shortcomings, and wanted to read more from him. 

Scenes from an Impending Marriage is a series of short strips, and the odd Family Circus-styled circle, that details some of the trials and tribulations of organizing a wedding these days.  Tomine and his fiancee, Sarah, go about the mechanics of wedding prep - jogging together, selecting florits, DJs, venues, hair styles, and wedding socks, while both realizing just how ridiculous the entire thing really is.

The book is pretty funny - I loved the DJ Buttermilk scenes, and also pretty honest.  It's amusing to watch Tomine, who is at first not terribly concerned about many of the details, become whole-heartedly involved in minutia like the type of printer given the contract to print their invitations.  It seems that many of the stories here made up the wedding favours that the couple gave out on the 'big day'.

The book is overly too quickly to be a satisfying follow-up to a book like Shortcomings, but if seen as being like a mixtape released between albums, it has whetted my appetite for more of Tomine's work.