Everyone knows a bride who nearly got cold feet. Even Princess Diana, or so the story goes, wanted to bail on her wedding. ("Bad luck," one of her sisters reputedly told her, "Your face is already on the tea towels.")

And, yes, sometimes it's probably better to escape before the wedding march begins. I know someone (name withheld to protect the wronged!) whose limo got stuck in a ditch on the way to the church.

A few years later she cracked, "We should have stayed in the ditch and just drunk the champagne." These were pretty accurate words, though I promise things turned out better later.

In Valerie Frankel's newest, we have the flipside of all that: the runaway groom. His fate? Well, it involved getting konked on the head with a champagne bottle, getting kidnapped by the mother of the bride, and facing the prospect of eating a thousand little quiches. More, I will not tell you.

By the way, I've never been to a wedding where the bride, or groom, didn't turn up. Have you?