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Three years ago, Courtney was a lovestruck 23-year-old planning her wedding. She'd been with her fiancé for less than a year when the reality hit her during a trip to the florist.

"We were at a consultation with our florist, and I was getting really excited about the flowers," she says. "And I suddenly realized that I was more excited about the flowers than I was about going home with him. I was genuinely more excited about the wedding than the marriage."

At first, Courtney figured she had cold feet, so she and her guy postponed the ceremony. But after a few weeks of wrestling with her nerves -- and one very helpful conversation with her mentor -- the to-be-wed gave back the ring and called things off.

"Because we dated for such a short time, I think the engagement brought up a lot of questions and doubts that we hadn't had to deal with in the first six months of dating."

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In a society that stereotypes women as wedding-crazed obsessives, women who doubt their relationships can feel alone -- but Courtney's story is far from unique.

From Breakup to Book
Anne Milford had her own a-ha moment five months into her engagement. "I had gone to a friend's wedding, and my fiancé couldn't come, and I had a blast without him," she shares. "I thought to myself, 'You are a fraud! You don't even like him!'"

After the experience, Milford joined forces with licensed therapist Jennifer Guavain to write "How to Marry the Wrong Guy: A Guide for Avoiding the Biggest Mistake of Your Life," a book aiming to help women who worry they're about to wed Mr. Wrong.

Milford and Guavain found that three out of every 10 divorced women admit they already knew their marriage was a mistake by the time they walked down the aisle. "We're trying to address the question of 'Why is our nation's divorce rate so high?' I assert that it is because so many marriages are over before they start," says Milford.

So why would a woman marry a guy she knows isn't the right guy? The book's interviewees shared the same reasons: 1) All my friends are getting married; 2) We are too far along in the planning process; 3) I want to be married; and 4) Embarrassment.

"Our ambition is to help women have better relationships and, therefore, better, successful marriages," she says.

Sarah's Story
Sarah, 36, called off her wedding four years ago after almost six years with her guy. She started to sense they weren't meant to be after about a year, but wasn't yet ready to call things off.

"You get comfortable, and a year turns into five years so quickly," she says. "We lived together which makes it even harder to get out."

When her longtime boyfriend finally proposed, Sarah was forced to face up to the situation. "I remember thinking, 'This isn't the way I should be feeling. I know I should be more excited than I am,' but he was down on one knee, so I thought, 'Sure we've had our issues, but he really is a good guy.' Plus, once you start getting into wedding planning all that excitement starts to overshadow your doubt."

Just like in Courtney's case, it was wedding planning that brought things to a head. "It brings out the crazy in families, and many of our issues were already family related," she says. "It opened my eyes to a lot of red flags that I had been ignoring."

The Aftermath of a Breakup
For Sarah, the long-postponed breakup started her on the path to self-discovery. "We postponed the wedding and started going to couples counseling, which ended up being me going to counseling by myself," she says. "After about a year of therapy, I realized I was fighting for a relationship that I didn't even want to fight for." Eventually, she and her fiancé called off the nuptials altogether.

Courtney also learned more about her own dating habits. "Looking back, I know I loved my fiancé , but I didn't love him like a husband. Since then, I've made wiser dating decisions, and I've also learned that my desire to 'fix' things shouldn't apply to my boyfriends."

"It definitely helped me handle things differently in the relationships that followed," agrees Sarah.

"It takes a lot of strength to do what I did," says Sarah. "I am 36 and still single. If I just wanted to be married, I could be -- but I want to marry the right person."

Tell us! Have you or someone you know ever called off a wedding? What finally made the bride-to-be see the light?Also on Lemondrop:

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