This Wedding Season, Unreal is All About the Romance

It's almost June and, as happens every June, wedding invitations are piling up on Unreal's refrigerator door. We don't want to brag or anything, but we are running out of magnets. It's time to start making travel plans, unearth our fancy shoes from the depths of our closet (or find an appropriate bathing suit, should the nuptials be at a water slide) and, above all, dig out the ol' wallet and make the pilgrimage to Crate & Barrel.

In earlier years, we used to love printing out that registry and wandering around the store, critiquing our friends' choices. It made us feel important. But, my God, friends, why is it that all of you want the same goddamned set of tasteful white dishes and plain silverware? This is your chance to request every bizarre appliance you've ever dreamed of -- the zester! the melamine reamer! the culinary torch!!! -- and this is the best you can do?

Unreal is -- what is the nicest way to say this? -- bored with you all.

Fortunately, we have just received a press release touting the least boring gift we've ever seen. How, we ask, can anybody possibly resist a personalized romance novel?


Now don't worry, friends. Unreal is not going to write this great work ourself. Frankly, now that we're no longer roommates and we don't have aural cues, the idea of imagining your sex life makes us a little squeamish. (It made us squeamish then, too, but we had to share a bathroom with you, so we held our peace.)

Fortunately, this great company YourNovel.com does all the work. They've got this guy named Fletcher Newbern and, boy, is he talented: He can write romance of the mild or wild variety! And he can set it in a variety of locales: a dude ranch, Key West, New Orleans (during Mardi Gras, natch), Paris, a ski lodge, an Alaskan cruise or the high seas aboard a pirate ship. (Where were you taking your honeymoon again? We want this to be as accurate as possible, wild details notwithstanding.)

All we have to do is fill out 26 little details about the two of you -- silly nicknames, hair and eye colors, workplaces, favorite radio stations and her preferred color of lingerie -- and Fletcher artfully plugs them in to his story, as in this tender hayloft interlude from Away on the Range, the dude ranch book:

Ann ran her fingers through her blonde hair, looked up at John and said, "If I'm gonna find that needle in this haystack, you better get to losing it."

"Pronto," John replied as he tore at his clothes to release his needle.

We're also gonna make sure the YourNovel people stick your picture on the cover. Plates crack, silverware tarnishes, but here is a gift that will last forever! Also one you can't possibly return or re-gift.