The past week has been a big one for thinking and talking about marriage. At the same time as the nation has been gripped in the same-sex marriage debate, another conversation has been playing out on the sidelines--not about who people should marry, but when.

The chatter started at the end of last week, when Princeton alumna Susan Patton wrote an open letter to The Daily Princetonian urging female students to find a husband on campus before graduating. She wanted to tell "the daughters I never had" what she wished she could have said: "Forget about having it all, or not having it all, leaning in or leaning out," she wrote, "Here's what nobody is telling you: Find a husband on campus before you graduate." It wasn't surprising that Patton's "excruciatingly retro understanding of relationships," as Maureen O'Connor put it in The Cut, was met with a firestorm of criticism. The Daily Princetonian has since removed the letter from its website.

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"I love you, God bless you and see you tomorrow," is how Pilar La Rosa bids adieu to her regular patrons at Pilar Jewelry Repair on East 7th Street. Shopping at her quaint boutique is always a joy, though for the most part we stop by for no apparent reason other than to chat with owners Pilar and her husband Walter. You see, it's not everyday you meet a happily (and chill) married couple (in Manhattan) that also happen to work together.

This adorably cute couple hail from Lima, Peru, and have been coworkers for the past 20 years at this East Village storefront, which is an accomplishment in itself. What is even more astonishing is that they've been married for the past five decades! So on today's very special love day, we asked the one couple who spends every waking moment together how relationships can function and survive in today's complex digital love age.

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The phrase "divorce expo" sounds like something out of the 1939 film The Women, which depicts women traveling to Reno to extricate themselves from their marital unions. But that is what New York is playing host to this weekend with "Start Over Smart: A Modern Divorce Expo," taking place at the Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th Street today and tomorrow. While this event is not about skirting the strict divorce laws of yore à la Betty Draper, according to the expo's founders, it does attempt to make the process of divorce easier for both women and men.

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Sesame Street's Bert and Ernie have been living together for 40 years. And now, an online petition demanding that Sesame Street allow Bert and Ernie to wed is circulating. As of this posting it has almost 4,500 signatures. "Let us teach tolerance of those that are different," the petition's description reads. "Let Sesame Street and PBS Kids be a big part in saving many worthy lives." Admirable intentions, but are Bert and Ernie even gay? And even if they are, why should two puppets on a kids' show get married?

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They say beggars can't be choosers, but one man refuses to accept the age old wisdom. Robert Darling commutes to Manhattan from his New Jersey apartment twice a week to look for a bride, but he won't marry just anyone; his future wife has to be loaded. He dons a cardboard sign that reads, "Hi friends, I'm looking for a wealthy lady to be my wife."

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Our good friend science has made another groundbreaking discovery about human relationships. This time it's that "marriages are more satisfying when the wife is thinner than the husband." What? Yes. Actual researchers followed actual newlywed couples for four years, checking up on them every six months to gauge happiness in accord with size. Men with a higher Body Mass Index than their wives were "a little happier" to start with than those with the same or a lower BMIs. This stayed the same throughout the four-year period analyzed. Meanwhile, while wives weren't really affected by the BMIs of their husbands at the beginning of their marriages, by the fourth year, "the wives whose BMI was lower than that of their husbands were significantly happier than those who had the same BMI, or a higher one."

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Dr. Amora Rachelle, the ex-wife of Avraham Rabinowich, vice president of the Long Island Board of Rabbis, is going hard in her custody battle with a pretty inexcusable, not-so-secret weapon, which she's handed right over to the New York Post. With the help of a private investigator, Amora taped her children's father being serviced by a call girl and her madam, who was actually Amora's private eye. "Since when are prostitutes kosher?" Amora asked, with expert media savvy. "And what kind of rabbi is he? He didn't even take these prostitutes to the mikvah [Jewish ritual cleansing bath] first. What is he doing, praying or laying?" The rabbi said he had "no response," though his lawyer piped up to call the sting a "setup" (well, yes) and insist, "It doesn't matter, this was five or six years ago." It was six months before the couple's divorce was finalized.

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It's not as absurd as the time they offered a personalized paparazzi experience, but it's still pretty damn extravagant: today, Gilt City New York, the daily deals site's local arm, is offering an "All-Inclusive Same-Sex Wedding for 100 Guests" in association with Del Posto, which earned New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton's first four-star review back in September, up from Frank Bruni's three-star rating in 2006. The affair for sale includes all of the trappings of a classy ceremony in addition to the basics, including bouquets, boutonnieres, chairs and a jazz band, plus an open bar, a wedding cake and a private preparation suite. The pricetag? $30,000.

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Following Friday's passing of same-sex marriage in Albany, the office of the mayor has already updated NYC.gov to provide some new info on nuptials, including the heartening headline: "New York City to Welcome All to Marry Here." It continues, "We look forward to welcoming all couples who want to marry and celebrate their weddings amid our bright lights and legendary sights, including many landmarks of gay history. Whether you're a native New Yorker or someone who yearns to be married in New York City, that opportunity is now yours -- no matter whom you love." This hints at another effort that's already in the works, NYC & Company's ad campaign to bring same-sex couples to New York for weddings, not least because the city thinks the gay wedding industry "could be worth millions of dollars to the city, triggering job growth."

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On Friday night, groups of New Yorkers stayed glued to their cellphones even in social situations -- and more than usual -- awaiting the final word on the marriage equality vote in Albany. When the good news finally arrived, more drinking commenced and for one crew of friends, the late-night celebration turned into big ideas, but in the morning they actually started to follow through on the drunken plan. Local software developer Josh French, Gothamist editor Jen Carlson, writers Lindsay Robertson and Tyler Coates, along with legal minister Bex Schwartz, whose day job is as a writer and director, will host a New York City pop-up chapel the first weekend same-sex marriage is legal in New York, on Saturday, July 30, at the Bethesda Fountain in Central Park. We spoke with Schwartz this afternoon to get a few more details.

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