Your bride is being poisoned. Corrupted. Brainwashed. Learn what she's reading...so you can prepare yourself for what's to come.

There's a new piece of furniture in your bedroom: a stack of magazines, books, and articles that could double as a side-table. It's your fiancée's "wedding porn." And unlike actual porn, this isn't harmless. It's putting ideas in her head. Poisonous ideas. Thoughts about how you, as a groom, should be "behaving." This is where it gets dangerous. As one wedding website puts it: "Sometimes a seating plan is not just a seating plan..."

Consider this your counter-intelligence—and you need it. According to the queen of wedding sites, The Knot, your fiancée will draw conclusions about your future life based on how you behave during the wedding planning period:

"Planning the wedding is a trial run for your future marriage. The things you battle about now are clues to where you're going to have trouble in the future...."

Remember Shakespeare's Othello? The general has an old advisor, Iago, who he leans on for counsel and support. Othello trusts Iago. He confides in him. There's only one tiny problem: Iago whispers lies into his ear, sows the seeds of doubt, and convinces him that his wife, Desdemona, is boning another soldier. Consumed by jealousy and vengeance, Othello smothers Desdemona with a pillow, murders her, then commits suicide. (Turns out she was innocent. Oops!)

The parallel isn't exactly 100% identical, but your bride is Othello, you're Desdemona, and the wedding porn is Iago. These magazines are whispering in her ear. They're changing her. They're fanning the flames of psychological warfare.

Will they convince her to kill you and then kill herself? Not always. Are they malevolent in a dark, sinister, Iago sort of way? Not intentionally. But they exist and they have power; understanding this whisper will help you understand your bride.

Understand what your bride is reading...so you can prepare yourself for what's to come.

What Wedding Porn is Saying About: The Balance of Power

As a bride, it's pretty much your inalienable right to micromanage every aspect of the wedding if you choose to.

Decoded: And you wonder where she gets these ideas? Micromanaging a wedding is an "inalienable right," sandwiched between Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. After neglecting this inalienable right, we suspect, Thomas Jefferson is on The Knot's shit-list.

What Wedding Porn is Saying About: Your Role In The Wedding

"He doesn't even seem to care about the color of the table linens -- what is he, insane?"... He's a man. Most men are clueless when it comes to design and decor. This doesn't mean that you should give up on including him, however. Find out what he is interested in and encourage him to participate in that part.

Decoded: At first glance? Nothing mean-spirited. It even gives you a pass. Look closer. The Knot urges your fiancée to keep including you, encouraging you, cajoling you. So even when you've made it abundantly clear that you're delighted with either the magenta or periwinkle, she might still badger you for input in other areas... because she's told to by Iago. The good news is that she'll (hopefully) understand if you say that you trust her keen eye on the colors, and you'd rather focus on the reception music.

What Wedding Porn is Saying About: Your Friends

[A reader writes]: For his best man, he picked his jerk of a college roommate, who's just intent on getting my fiancé drunk at our wedding."...He and his former roommate may have a strong bond -- just make sure there are some more reasonable men around them to keep a lid on things. Arrange with your brother or a male friend to befriend your fiancé and help him resist the ploys of the best man.

Decoded: Did you catch that? They advise the bride to cultivate a spy and infiltrate your wedding, which, in all likelihood, she'll interpret as "your bachelor party." What's more sinister--a harmless lapdance or sneakily recruiting "more reasonable men" to act as her eyes and ears? What shows less respect, demonstrates less trust?

What Wedding Porn is Saying About: Free Time

Moving forward, save his sanity (and yours) by designating one night a week as wedding-free. Talk about the weather, your friends, the dog -- whatever you want. He'll be psyched to see that the girl he fell in love with still lives there, and you'll appreciate the breather yourself. And who knows? Left to his own devices, your fiance just might surprise you with a great idea for your cocktail hour or the perfect solution to a guest-list dilemma.

Decoded: Wow! That's so generous. For one night a week, you get the pleasure of talking about the freaking weather! Hot damn! To be fair, we agree that designated "wedding free" zones are a fine idea, but it's telling that from The Knot's perspective, the other six days should be so consumed with the wedding planning, so overwhelmed with stress, that you don't even have time to talk about "the weather" or "the dog."

What Wedding Porn is Saying About: Being Bridezilla

Two weeks before the big bash, you find that you're panicked -- you're sweating, shaking, losing sleep, and not eating. While this is not healthy, it is normal... Your nerves will eventually return to a normal state.

Decoded: Chicken or the egg? Let's think about this. The experts are telling your bride that it's okay to be "sweating, shaking, losing sleep, and not eating." Multiply this by a thousand. When every expert tells her that it's totally cool--even encouraged!--for her to be an emotional wreck, then maybe, just maaaayybe, she's more likely to become an emotional wreck. The wedding-porn has created this new status quo. It's only "normal" to be a Bridezilla because everyone says it's "normal." When the Aztecs practiced cannibalism, it was considered "normal."

More counterintelligence on the next page...