This week’s cover, “June Brides,” is the artist Gayle Kabaker’s first time in The New Yorker. The magazine’s art editor, Françoise Mouly, found the image through her Blown Covers blog. Every week, Mouly hosts a cover contest on the blog, open to all, with themes that closely mirror those she suggests to her regular contributors, from Father’s Day to books to the theme that reeled this image in: weddings. Kabaker is the first artist to make the leap from blog to cover.

“I live in the Berkshires, so I do almost all of my work online,” Kabaker said. “It’s a big deal, getting on the cover. We’ve been getting the magazine forever—it comes in and goes straight on the kitchen table. We talk about the cover with my son, who’s seventeen, and my daughter, who’s twenty-three. ‘What do you think it means?’ It’s a conversation. And we all read it, dog-ear it, and leave it on the table for the next person to pick up.”

“Françoise told me not to tell my mother until the issue actually went to press, because things could change,” she added. “I didn’t want to say that my mother’s dead—but I know she’d be very proud of me.”

See below for other wedding images submitted to the Blown Covers blog, with Françoise’s comments.

Weddings: The Winner! Jérémie Decalf

So, the truth is out: I like skeletons! And I appreciate the use of a hand—a hand in marriage, with a simple wedding ring, meant to represent “till death do us part.” At first Nadja didn’t see why the artist would associate weddings and death, but it makes sense to me, maybe because I’m considerably older. Life, death, marriage: I like an image that cuts to the core.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 1 Charrow

Awww. So sweet! I like the fact that the bulldogs are not anthropomorphized—except, of course, for their clothes. They are very doggish, with serious, almost mask-like expressions, befitting the occasion. They seem somewhat pathetic, not at all excited by what’s about to happen. The blue and pink pillows add a nice touch: this image is all about the feelings we project on our pets.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 2 Denis Carrier

A sophisticated design that elegantly represents one of the important ways husbands and wives are joined in marriage.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 3 Isabella Bannerman, Jin Suk, and Julien Couty

Oh, to think that even “the most beautiful day of one’s life” is likely to be experienced as another moment mediated by all our devices… Note that all the artists who had this idea also chose to have the priest as up-to-date as the happy couple.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 4 Delton Demarest

A play on the classic image of the bride throwing her bouquet. The bridesmaids running for their lives give a telling portrait of how contemporary women view marriage: they’re at polar ends from their mothers or grandmothers.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 5 Bruce Roberts and Gabriel Guma

This is—sigh—a good representation of the modern couple, each in his or her own world of online relationships, with barely a foot in the present moment.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 6 Andre Slob

The contrast of the two silhouettes lost in each other against the background of calamities and devastation give a certain power to this image—it feels timeless. (We hesitated, wondering whether there was any meaning in the specificity of this couple, before deciding that they were meant to be generic—and they could have been more so.)

Weddings: Runner-up No. 7 Daniel Kondo

Simple and funny; first we were grateful to have a princess and a frog kissing (it’s a must in any wedding-image repertoire), and then it was nice to get the thought-balloon joke as an extra.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 8 Jeremie DeCalf

The ring turned into brass knuckles, but still decorated with diamonds. There are lots of layers of meaning here, but it still certainly qualifies as a take on modern marriage.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 9 Tim Foley

One wonders, Why the Bride of Frankenstein? But then you see Frankenstein reading the magazine, and it seals the deal. Why not make a cute, timeless joke, especially when it’s so nicely stitched together?

Weddings: Runner-up No. 10 MJSketchbook

The one-point perspective of the bridge seals the kiss and gives it gravitas. Besides, that is the bridge that would take this Brooklyn couple to City Hall.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 11 Maria Eugenia

Very sweet: the hardcore punk girl who is still a princess at heart. Nadja wished the image hadn’t used any words (they aren’t needed), but I like the way a drawing of a drawing portrays an alternate reality.

Weddings: Runner-up No. 12 Matthew Kalamidas

A simple idea, rendered efficiently. Not the first thing one wants to think about at the word “wedding,” but it’s undeniably a real part of it.