Getting married? In addition to being bestowed with wedding gifts, I bet you’ve heard your fair share of advice from well-meaning family and friends. From “It’s okay to argue, but don’t go to sleep angry” to “remember to always put the seat down on the toilet,” most marriage advice is well meaning and on point. Some advice is truly a valuable gift for the groom and heeding it can save you tons of heartache and money! Sometimes a witty piece of advice might stay in your memory longer or a funny joke about marriage – even though you might not share those exact sentiments about marriage, something in the saying really resonates with you. Here are some of our favorite wedding, marriage and love inspired sayings (some serious, some silly) from celebrities and famous people:

Your wedding day is fast approaching and we know you want to put your best foot forward in every sense of the phrase. Today, there are quite a few choices when it comes to picking the right shoes for the groom and groomsmen. Color and comfort of course are key, but another important consideration is the formality of your wedding. Converse sneakers or cowboy boots may be a statement of fashion (and function) at casual weddings, but more traditional affairs usually require a dressier shoe. Below, check out the different types of shoes that may work with your tuxedo, dark suit or event sports coat.

Current research suggests a person’s level of happiness is related to whether or whether not that person is married. The Office of National Statistics in the UK polled 165,000 British people about their overall satisfaction with life and anxiety levels. What they discovered is that being married is 20 times more important to happiness levels than salary and 13 times more important than being a home owner. If you think about it, getting married could be the best gift you could ever give yourself – this wedding gift keeps on giving!

Getting married and building a life with another person has a lot of challenges that require compromise. Not only do you have to set up a physical home address and decide where to put all the wedding gifts, but finding the right city to plant roots in can be one of the biggest negotiations couples face. Some newlyweds have been living across the country from each other before getting married and are looking for a neutral home base. Other couples are looking for the best city for their up-and-coming careers or desire the most affordable city in which to start a family. In their annual list of the 10 best cities for newlyweds, Rent.com rattles off locations for you to fall in love with. These prime picks were selected for a number of criteria including rental availability, number of married couples, number of children under six, mean annual income and cost of living.

In our last blog post, we reported about the unusual law in India requiring a groom to provide proof to the state that he will be providing his future with toilet accommodations. This seemingly odd demand (which actually has public sanitation and safety implications) had us wondering about other strange-but-true wedding requirements across the world.

In India, getting married comes with a price. Oh, yes, I’m sure your saying, “getting married always comes with a price – an engagement ring, a big mortgage or even just putting up with a nagging wife.” Well, that may be how it is in the US, but in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, that price in the cost of a toilet. Yes, a toilet.

Are you too busy to attend your own wedding? Perhaps you have a business meeting at corporate headquarters, are enjoying a vacation and don’t want to come back or, more likely, been deployed overseas with the military. Well, never fear, for if you live in California, Colorado, Texas or Montana you can get married “by proxy.” In a marriage by proxy, either the bride or the groom does not appear in person for the wedding ceremony. During the solemnization of the marriage, another person stands in for the absent party, acting on a power of attorney. And, in certain counties of Montana, both the bride AND the groom do not have to be physically present to get married – this is called a “double proxy” marriage. One of the most famous unions created by double proxy was that of Emperor Napoleon and Archduchess Marie Louise in 1810.

Having trouble sleeping, eating and staying focused? Does your heart feel like it’s about to beat out of your chest or are your feet cold, literally and figuratively? Don’t worry; you’re not dying – at least not yet. If you are weeks, days or just hours away from getting hitched, the overwhelming odds are that you are suffering from pre-wedding jitters. Some might call this condition “cold feet,” anxiety, nerves, doubts, or what-have-you, but when distilled down to the basics, this normal feeling of nervousness is just your body’s way of coping with stress.

Every groom and his bride can expect the honeymoon to be a memorable trip, wherever the location. Memorable for most honeymoons conjures up images of romance, relaxation and few worries. But, keep in mind that “memorable” can also mean “events have gone disastrously wrong.” Make sure you recall your honeymoon with fondness in the years to come by being aware of issues during travel that could arise and screw things up. And, remember, if the bride’s not happy, you’re not happy!

A wedding is a ceremony where the bride and groom exchange vows to each other before their god, their friends and their family. Not only is a lifetime commitment being made between the couple, marriage also weave together two previously unrelated families forever. Many in the African-American culture choose to include special elements in their wedding ceremony that represent the traditions and customs of their ancestors.

Laws can be very weird. We’ve found some doozies when it comes to getting married. For example, men in Saudi Arabia, despite their exalted status, have to make sure the bride gets her daily grind. Coffee, that is. Apparently, there is a law on the books that says woman in this country may divorce her husband if he does not keep her supplied with coffee. We say, give her a monogrammed coffee mug as a wedding gift to make sure she knows where her bread is buttered, err, where her java is brewed. Some might expect international laws to be strange to the American culture, but here are some very strange-but-true laws from states right in in the USA.

A few years ago, the mere mention of bowling brought up images of beer-gutted, middle-aged guys wearing bad shoes and matching shirts. Let’s just say that it would be a tragically uncool way to spend the groom’s last big hurrah of bachelorhood. But, flash forward to 2013 and all of a sudden bowling has undergone a transformation, making it all the rage with the hipsters. Old school bowling alleys are experience record numbers and new, upscale bowling “lounges” (alley sounds so shabby) are popping up in bigger metropolitan areas.