'Tis the season for post-Oscar fluff and chick-flicks galore, and here to kick it off in style is Bride Wars. The story of two lifelong best friends at war over their conflicting wedding plans at the Plaza Hotel in New York, Bride Wars isn't exactly the human drama of the century. Following Anne Hathaway's buzz-worthy performances in 2006's The Devil Wears Prada and 2008's Rachel Getting Married, some might argue that this trip down the aisle stands to seriously threaten her standing on this year's Oscar nomination ballots. And if you are one of those women who somehow convinces your boyfriend to come see this film with you, beware, he may very well take your soda straw and gouge out his eyes before it has even hit the 30-minute mark.

All that aside, I actually enjoyed watching Bride Wars. Liv (Kate Hudson) and Emma's (Anne Hathaway) driving obsession with having the perfect wedding may be a bit over the top. From Mean Girls-style diet sabotage to hair/tan color switcheroos a la Runaway Bride, the brides' back-and-forth attempts to destroy each other's weddings may be more predictably ridiculous than ingeniously hilarious. But in the end, Bride Wars becomes less about the weddings driving its plot and more about the relationships at its center for a story that is actually cute and sweet in a way that rings true.

When Bride Wars opens, we meet Liv and Emma, best friends since their childhood and locked-in Maids of Honor for whenever the last detail of their long-anticipated and meticulously-planned summer weddings at the Plaza Hotel falls into place. Finally receiving the proposals necessary to set their plans into action within just days of each other, the two women giddily set off together to finally make their dream days come true. But when their weddings are mistakenly booked on the same day, the problem becomes that one of them will have to change a few details of her dream day, or both of them will have to re-envision their dreams without the one person who has always been a part of them.

As someone who has never had a very concrete idea of what I would like my wedding day to be like—other than that I would like to have a man with whom I'm in love and who's in love with me standing up at the altar and my sister by my side holding my flowers—I have to say I would have just picked another day or time or place&ellips; or something. But as we all know, sometimes we have to learn what really matters most the hard way. And as Liv and Emma blast through less-than-rose-filled wedding preparations and finally arrive at less-than-perfect wedding days, what becomes increasingly apparent is that the biggest threat their weddings face is not each other's sabotage, but the inability to recognize and embrace how valuable an authentic and loving relationship truly is.

Although Bride Wars is really more about the friendship between Liv and Emma than anything else, the value of their friendship is emphasized by their relationships with their fiancès. Both women are different, both of their fiancès are different, and as such, both of their relationships are different. But as the movie unfolds and both women essentially go off the deep end in their attempts to hold onto their own individual dreams, the responses of their fiancès and the course of their relationships point to the reality of what a committed and truly unbreakable relationship should be about. Don't get me wrong; in typical male fashion, neither man thinks his bride's obsession with wedding plans is exactly sane. Both are rightly sad to see the two best friends at odds and undermining each other in such ridiculous ways. But where one fiancè faces his bride's borderline insanity by drawing her closer, letting her know he loves her even if she's not perfect, and subtly nudging her to forget the silly details that divide her and her friend and remember that which has long held them together, the other deals with the situation by pulling away, pushing his bride to return to the perfectly-behaved woman he prefers, and essentially ordering her to completely abandon her friendship with her obviously toxic ex-Maid of Honor.

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