First, how delectable is that Tiffany engagement ring currently being advertised all over the NYT wedding pages? So big, so sparkly, so inevitably overpriced! We pity the poor guys who’ll be shelling out their clerkship bonuses for that one.

Second, memo to the New York Times: Since when does summer employment merit mention in the wedding pages? If we once spent Christmas break shoveling David Souter’s driveway, would that get us a write-up? Or is it just that the word “Skadden” makes you all trembly?

Here are this week’s couples (no summer associates here!):

1. Alexis Krock and Grant Mainland

2. Emily Sheehy and Reed Carey

3. Jessica Rodriguez and Emile Lisboa

More on this week’s couples, after the jump.

1. Alexis Krock and Grant Mainland
(Buy them a fish spatula.)

The Case:
- Alexis and Grant had a solid Article III officiant: Federal District Judge Jed S. Rakoff.
- Alexis (who is taking Grant’s name — good call) works for NYTimes.com. Typically, we’d cry foul at this point and intimate that Alexis used her connections to get their write-up into the weddings section. But these two are totally legit, because Grant is a rising legal star. He was editor in chief of the Columbia Law Review! This means he’s got charisma or mad bluebooking skillz or whatever gets you ahead at Columbia. He’ll be clerking next year for Judge Pierre Leval of the Second Circuit.
- These two have been together for a long time. They met as undergraduates (at Reed College in Oregon), and now they’re 29 and 31. Nice to see a college romance survive the temptations of law school.

The Case Against:
- The groom graduated from law school two days before the wedding. We’ll go out on a limb and guess that Grant was absolutely zero help with the pre-nuptial planning this past year, what with running the Columbia Law Review and being a huge gunner and all. We trust that Alexis will bring this up frequently in the years to come.

2. Emily Sheehy and Reed Carey
(Buy them a frying pan.)

The Case:
- More love for Columbia Law! Emily and Reed met there. She went to Yale undergrad; he went to Georgetown and has a master’s from the London School of Economics.
- Reed is a tax lawyer, and he’s got the glasses to prove it! He’s an associate at Cleary Gottlieb; Emily’s at Paul Weiss

The Case Against:
- Their parents have some mildly interesting occupations. Emily’s dad owns a landscape design company; her mother works on “biodefense systems” at an MIT lab. Reed’s father was an associate deputy undersecretary at NOAA, and his mom was an officer at the IMF (“associate deputy undersecretary” sounds like bureaucrat-speak for “parking-garage attendant”). Yeah, we said mildly interesting. But they’re more interesting than their kids!

3. Jessica Rodriguez and Emile Lisboa
(Buy them a cheese preserver.)

The Case:
- Jessica and Emile are the first legal-eagle couple we’ve featured who’ve had a video accompanying their NYT write-up (you can view it here). To our shock, we did not find it entirely appalling. (No, we’re serious! It’s kind of sweet.)
- The groom’s father is a judge on the Superior Court of New Jersey. That sounds quite impressive (although it’s possible that New Jersey is one of those states where the prestige of the court is inversely related to the showiness of its name).
- Emile’s full name is Severiano Emile Lisboa IV. LEWW has always wanted to have a son who’s an IV, so we could nickname him “Ivy.” So cute and preppy! (Something tells us that preppiness was neither a goal nor a possibility for the Lisboa clan.)
- These two make the couples who usually win this competition seem utterly bland and lifeless by comparison. Jessica and Emile are full of zest: They salsa till six in the morning! They have five registries! Their facial features display emotion!

The Case Against:
- Between the groom’s accent, the couple’s three Rutgers degrees, and all the mentions of Hackensack, Newark, etc., there’s a whole lot of Jersey here. Not that LEWW has anything against New Jersey! (Well, we do prefer to pump our own gas — rugged self-sufficiency and all that.)
- The bride, who has a master’s in educational theater, is an acting coach for child actors. Is there a phrase more tinged with foreboding than “child actor”? We can’t even look at poor little Dakota Fanning anymore without imagining the future fake-rehab stints and crotch pictures. Get out of this grim business, Jessica, and go work for Sesame Street.

The Verdict:
Forgive us, Columbia! Jessica and Emile have salsa-ed their way into our hearts, and we’ll never be the same. Congratulations, Team Rodriguez-Lisboa!