I DO & I DON’T – SYNOPSIS [500 WORD]

Three weeks before their wedding in Baltimore, Bob and Cheryl discover they have not yet taken the necessary pre-marital classes required by their church. At the last moment, the pastor manages to arrange private sessions for them with the Stelmacks, a couple whose singular taste in fashion and interior décor alone should have excluded them as suitable pre-marital counselors.

The best thing that can be said about the Stelmacks is that they are perfectly matched. By having married one another as opposed to anyone else, Nora and Richard Stelmack spared two unknown innocent bystanders from fifteen years of dysfunctional lunacy. Every hour is cocktail hour for Nora in the Stelmack bungalow, where she keeps her horizontal personality well lubricated with liberal applications of alcohol. A woman of a certain age, she is entirely comfortable with her sexuality and can rock a knee-high stocking with the best of them. Her husband Richard, (let’s call him Dick), has a taste for primary colors and uses the expressive mannerisms and motivational vocabulary of the modern self-actualized man. His perky can-do personality does him credit as he wrestles, not always successfully, with his private demons and addictions. Dick also suffers from a minor, debilitating condition, the impact of which is felt most keenly come laundry day.

Bob and Cheryl, the prospective bride and groom, are in love and blissfully ignorant of any secrets hiding in the nooks and crannies of each other hearts. Unfortunately Dick and Nora are determined to enlighten them. The less you know about your prospective spouse the better, is not a maxim to which the Stelmacks subscribe. During the pre-marital counseling, they rigorously encourage Bob and Cheryl to reveal their innermost thoughts with one another. The outcome of such inhibition proves messy.

Valiantly, Bob and Cheryl try to stick with the Stelmack program. But too much indiscriminate “sharing,” combined with outlaw-able future in-laws, badly behaved best friends, a colony of nudists, two spectacularly ugly dogs, and one riled bag-piper all conspire against them. As the wedding approaches, and Bob and Cheryl’s emotional and physical scars accumulate, they begin to question one another’s commitment, sanity, and even sexual orientation.

Will pre-martial counseling scupper Bob and Cheryl’s chances of making it down the aisle? Or will the roller-coaster wackiness of the Stelmack family prove to be, in the end, the best preparation Bob and Cheryl could possibly have before walking the plank known as marriage? After all, if their relationship can survive this, maybe it can survive anything.

Written by

Susan McCullough-Smith