In the classic movie Love Story, the quote "Love means never having to say your sorry" is perhaps the most famous line...and even though hopeless romantics have clung to this theory with wistful sighs and dreams of a relationship where that is true, it's -- sorry to be blunt -- complete crap.

Love does mean having to say you're sorry, because we all say and do dumb things sometimes. If you can't apologize for the insensitive thing you said or the mistake you made, you have big problems ahead.

When you're planning a wedding, you're going to be operating under stress, highly emotional, often exhausted, and dealing with the conflicting requests and sometimes challenging personalitities of a lot of other people. So chances are, you -- and they -- are going to say some dumb things. And you all had better forget about the Love Story line, because apologies are central to Planning in Peace.

Today starts my new series on the Art of the Apology. It's a tricky thing to figure out when it's warranted, how to wait for one when it's deserved, what to do when the apology doesn't come, how to word yours well.

For example, someone involved with my wedding got really mad when I wouldn't let her child perform a musical number at my wedding, and she said some pretty rotten things before hanging up on me. Did she apologize? No. She never does. I'd be a fool to expect one from her, since she's not the nicest of people. So that's my tip for today: don't expect an apology from someone who's always been insensitive. It's a huge drain on your energy, and it steals your wedding happiness, if you think that your wedding will inspire the rude and thoughtless to become better people.

Face it...sometimes the apology isn't going to come. Ever. So you'll have to find a way to remove that verbal knife from your back, feel sorry for the offender, and make it a rule to deal with that person as little as possible. What if it's a parent who never apologizes when it's called-for? That can be a bit trickier, and we'll get to that later in the series.

For now, when someone zings you, just forget about e-mailing them, demanding an apology, or having your mother call them to say what pain you're in, or sharing the story with all of your friends and your groom. If you did this, that mean person gets a charge out of the success of the insult and injury. Your peace has been stolen! You're so upset, you're talking about it to everyone! Woo hoo! As sick as it is, this can be the goal of the mean person: attention. And draining your joy away.

Sometimes selfishness means never having to say you're sorry.  Because they're not.