Love means never having to say: No, your honor, I'm not pressing charges.

The collective snickering heard 'round Western Pennsylvania yesterday was generated by what could only be described as a classic "nuptials and knuckles" story on the front page by my colleague Karen Kane.

Karen's tale about a wedding-night brawl between newlyweds David "the Executioner" Wielechowski and Christa "Lights Out" Vattimo reigned as the most e-mailed story at post-gazette.com all day yesterday. (Click here for today's update by Mackenzie Carpenter.)

Karen's description of the post-nuptial thrilla' at the Holiday Inn-McKnight Road in Ross included examples of ultra-violence similar to what routinely happens at hockey games and heavyweight fights.

According to Karen's story, the marriage got off on a bad foot when the Shaler dentist gave his bride the same roundhouse kick Bruce Lee perfected in "The Chinese Connection" just as they were about to enter their hotel room late Saturday night.

"Upon hearing her screams, two guests of the hotel who had been attending another wedding reception ran to Mrs. Wielechowski's aid. But when they attempted to restrain Dr. Wielechowski, he began fighting the would-be rescuers only to have Mrs. Wielechowski 'turn against [them] and also begin to assault them,' according to the complaint."

Like that infamous wrestling scene from "Borat," the brawl continued in the close confines of the elevator with all of the screaming, kicking and gouging that happens under those circumstances.

Dropping seven floors to the lobby, the fight between the Battlin' Wielechowskis and the two Samaritans took on a surreal quality usually only seen in David Lynch movies.

The Glenshaw couple then double-teamed the peacekeepers by clobbering them with metal planters. When the dust cleared, they had inflicted cuts, a broken tooth and a possible broken thumb on the rescuers -- not to mention $1,000 in damage to the hotel.

See what you're missing at 2:30 in the morning? At least the Wielechowskis are in a position to do something about the victim's broken tooth.

When the cops from four municipalities finally arrived on the scene, "Sugar Ray" Wielechowski was down for the count while "Boom-Boom" Vattimo was just getting her second wind.

After the "Shaler Swatter" was examined for his injuries at UPMC Passavant, he was escorted to Allegheny County Jail to join "Hard Hands" Vattimo for some post-fight analysis before a judge.

Alas, the cruiser-weight couple was booked into separate honeymoon suites at the jail. On Sunday morning they were released under their own recognizance, but there was no one to greet them with fistfuls of rice outside the jail.

This is where Karen's story gets especially poignant: "Mrs. Wielechowski, still dressed in her wedding gown, was picked up by her father and taken home. No one was awaiting Dr. Wielechowski, whose left eye was blackened and swollen shut. He was arraigned wearing tuxedo pants, a bloodied T-shirt and one shoe."

A thousand questions come to mind about this case. Were there any blows exchanged at the rehearsal dinner? Did the bad blood begin over something the groom said about one of the bride's relatives? Police noted that the happy couple in fact got married a month ago in the Bahamas, and simply repeated the vows in the Saturday ceremony. Is one month the new threshold for marital disintegration?

And what about the good Samaritans who tried to help the bride before she viciously turned on them? Do the two men regret their act of chivalry, or would they do it again?

Wedding-day brawls are becoming so common in America that nobody blinks anymore when a drunken father-of-the-bride takes a swing at his counterpart for staring too long at his wife's cleavage.

We've come to expect and even secretly revel in these stories because they upend what is supposed to be the happiest day in a newly married couple's life. There's nothing like a wedding to stoke the sparks of schadenfreude.

Gathered among the wedding guests, unhappily married couples often feel resentment toward the newly married couple for their optimism. They see an exchange of blows as sometimes necessary to put matrimonial expectations into perspective.

Now that the Wielechowskis' story has gone out on the wires, it won't be long before the national media picks up on their story.

They'll be hounded by local and national reporters eager to find out what happens next and whether there's a grudge match their future.

Marriage consultants and relationship therapists will speculate about the Wielechowskis' marriage. Is reconciliation possible, or do they bite the bullet and put boxing promoter Don King on retainer?