By SUE ZELICKSON

(ARA) - First comes love, then comes marriage and then comes the couple with the baby carriage. Well a few things happen in between, and in the haze and craze of wedding plans and reality, one pleasant portion involves food.

Therefore the showers, the bridal dinner, the wedding dinner and the brunches that usually follow the next day get my undivided attention as a planner and as a guest.

There are a multitude of options that are available for each wedding couple to choose from. Beginning with the showers, it is up to the bride to decide exactly how many and what kind of showers she and/or her husband will accept from their friends and family.

Divide your lists according to compatible groups and try not to overlap guests as one shower per person is plenty, except for your mother, mother in law and perhaps close sisters and sister in laws.

Couple showers are also fun and get the groom involved and a chance to meet more of the family and friends before the wedding. The food at these showers can be elaborate or plain. Often guests at a recipe shower will bring the recipe for the gift and prepare it as pot luck for the shower. This usually turns out to be a nice, fun theme that is easy on the hostesses as well.

"No Hostess" showers are often done when one person doesn’t want to spend a lot to give a shower alone or if too many friends all want to entertain.

A letter or call goes out from a core committee to see who wants to pay twenty or twenty five dollars for gifts and the cost of the luncheon and decor. Then the core committee takes the group money and buys and wraps the gifts, plans the luncheon, and when everyone comes, the entire group becomes the party and gift giver.

The bridal dinner is usually the night before the wedding and is held in a party room or restaurant or even someone’s home. The invitations are sent out to those coming in from out of town, the bridal party and close relatives. The food is usually a well-planned dinner with wine for toasts, appetizers, and either a fancy or casual meal with time for talks and stories and almost a roast of the couple.

One bride recently booked the back room of a family style Italian restaurant that served food just like her future husband’s grandmother did at home. It was an old fashioned, fun-filled evening with lots of nostalgia and melting together of ethnic backgrounds.

The wedding dinners take on the wishes of the bride and groom if their parents listen carefully. If they love chocolate or carrot cake, who is to say that the wedding cake has to be white? No rules allowed in the kitchen. Just make the food plentiful and beautiful and delicious and the entire evening will be perfection.

The minute you start planning the wedding keep a notebook to jot down ideas you see at parties or other weddings. Just walking into a gift shop or glancing in a department store window, or going to a kitchen store will give you ideas beyond your wildest imagination.

Make your wedding something special, just for you – be it with music, flowers, table decor, gifts for the guests, lighting, color of the bridal party and table settings, (which can be rented if the place you choose for your dinner doesn’t have exactly what you desire).

One last word of caution: make sure there is plenty of space for you guests. It’s crucial to have enough room to move around and places to sit down, especially if you don’t have assigned tables. Nothing makes a wedding fall flat more than guests with plates full of food and no place to sit to eat and enjoy it.

And remember to greet as many of the guests as you can personally, to show your appreciation that they took time out of their busy lives to share your special time. This will help you get off to a great start of living happily ever after.

Here are a few perfect recipes that can be included in a shower, a bridal dinner or the wedding itself. And don’t forget eggs benedict and mimosas for the brunch the following morning.

To begin with, here are some old fashioned tea sandwiches from a cookbook called "Heirlooms in the Kitchen: Treasured Recipes from the Turn of the Century," by Joan Hutson.