Photo: Julia Roberts, "Eat Pray Love," New York Times, Sunday, August 8, 2010

Yesterday’s New York Times Arts & Leisure Section, front page, reminded us that “Eat Pray Love” will debut this Friday, and romantic notions of love, travel, adventure and the possibilities they invoke, make us pause for a moment. Is not a wedding all of the above? Is it worth our while to sit up, serve ourselves a fresh summertime beverage, chocolate whatever, and let the romance of it all take us up and away.

There are three imposing similarities to Eat Pray Love in your wedding life. Yes, for most bride, sixteen months is the wedding lifetime, unless you surprise even yourself and head with the love of your life in tow for Portifino, Positano, or the Venetian in Vegas for a short nuptial ceremony and a lingering honeymoon.

Similarity # 1: Travel with a mission. Isn’t that what you are doing as you criss-cross many hamlets in upstate New York, or New York City, a la Chelsea Clinton, in search of the perfect dress, cake, musician, and invitation? Travel begins with a sense of mission, a clarity of purpose, and a quickening of the heart that moves you out the door and into a new world of possibility.

Similarity #2: Adventure. This is a thing of the heart. The nuance of an adventure vs travel is that it taps into a deep part of ourselves. There is an expectation that what we have always sought and cherished is available on this path. So it is with your wedding adventure, which was first imagined as a nine year old as you dressed up as a bride. A wedding adventure brings out the child in us all, where possibilites abound endlessly.

Similarity # 3: Love. Whether Julia Roberts on a pilgrimage to India, Italy; the Knights Templar on their Crusades; Odysseus in Grecian waters and lands on his epic odessey, or, alas, Dorothy’s Yellow Brick Road to the Wizard of Oz, they all, sooner or later discover as did Dorothy,” There’s no place like home.”

Simply, Love is within. Therein lies the possibilities of sharing love with your beloved, your family, friends, and all those who travel along the wedding path, and beyond.