She might be whisked away by some errant groom once, twice, or more, but the job of defender will always be Dear Ol’ Dad’s.

Like most fathers of the bride, I think of a wedding as something similar to an invasion by a foreign army, only more stressful. Not to mention that weddings seem to have more people than you’d get in an invasion – certainly you have to pay more people, anyway. And, as with invasions, I’d just as soon avoid the whole thing: Wouldn’t it be just as romantic to watch a ballgame?

It’s not that fathers don’t want their daughters to get married and have families – we just don’t want it to happen now.  What’s the big hurry? Our daughters have finally gotten to the age where they are respectful, or mostly respectful, or at least occasionally respectful, and they seem to want to be with us for reasons other than needing to borrow money. We made it through their teen years (which is worse than an invasion, by the way); why can’t we enjoy the relative calm and peace of adulthood for a few decades?

I’ve been writing about life with teenage daughters for some time; now I’ve started explaining what happens to fathers when their little girls unexpectedly, and without parental authorization, grow up. (See shameless plug for books below.) I have realized that, no matter how effective the Boy Prevention Program, one or two of them are going to slip through a father’s defensive perimeter, and it is only a matter of time before the relationship gets serious. Suddenly, before you’re ready, there are all these 10-pound bridal magazines cluttering up the house.

She’s getting married.

While conducting research for my latest 8 Rules book, I spoke to a lot of fathers who were going through the foreign invasion syndrome, though a few of them took issue with me and said the whole thing was actually more like Apollo 13. To a man, they agreed with me on the following:

• We want our daughters to be happy.
• We don’t know if this guy is going to make her happy.
• We don’t understand what it means to have a wedding “theme.” (Isn’t the theme always “We’re getting married at great expense to our Dads?”)

How can some virtual stranger love, protect, and care for our daughters? That’s our job, and we’ve been on duty for as long as they’ve been alive.

It’s even worse if it is a second marriage, because the first one only confirmed a dad’s worst fears – our daughters really can’t pick a winner, she’s proven that! We had our suspicions about the first guy, and we were right, which is a rare experience for a man.

So here comes a replacement. How can we know he’s not a loser too?

Of course, what often happens is that we start making comparisons to the first jerk, and naturally the new guy starts to look pretty good when we do that. Marriage Number One broke our daughter’s heart; you could pretty much pull someone off the streets at random and he’d be preferable to that guy.

Daughter: “Dad, I’m getting married to this guy I found unconscious in front of a biker bar!”

Dad: “Sounds better than your first husband!”

But that’s hardly a valid standard – we want this new guy to be perfect; it’s not good enough that he doesn’t seem to be a serial killer. He should be, well, like us.

My daughters often point out that I’m hardly the right person to lecture them on how to build a perfect marriage. Aren’t I divorced? Didn’t I fail myself? Would you take boating lessons from the captain of the Titanic?

Of course not, I don’t need boating lessons, I have an instinctive grasp for things like that. And let me tell you, a pilot who has been shot out of the sky a few times knows a lot more about successful flying than someone who is just making his first takeoff. (My daughters pretend that this kind of argument makes no sense to them, saying that they don’t see what being shot at while flying a burning airplane has to do with anything, which means they weren’t paying attention during my first marriage. Then again, they’ve never been married.)

A father’s reaction to potential groom number 2 can range from genuine affection to outright hostility. We’ll probably go along with the whole thing – didn’t we eventually allow the first marriage? (As if it were your choice, your daughter will say if you point this out to her, so it’s best not to bring it up.) At least, though tradition generally mandates that the father pay for the first wedding, it is thankfully silent on your obligations when it comes to the second one, so you aren’t required to give her money, you’re only required to loan her money. (You are, after all, president of the Bank of Dad.)

But we’ll always harbor a doubt or two about the fellow, and will always reserve the right to dump him over the side of the boat that I don’t need lessons for. Our job is protection from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

We get that she loves him – she wouldn’t be marrying him, otherwise. We’re just not sure that he’s good enough for our daughter.

Because really, who could be?

W. Bruce Cameron is the author of 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter (Workman Publishing), on which the popular TV series was based. The follow-up humor volume 8 Simple Rules for Marrying My Daughter (Fireside Publishing) hit the bookstores in April 2008. See www.brucecameron.com.