Pre-emptive and of course totally subjective advice for anyone who happens to get engaged this holiday season, because that kinda stuff just seems to happen a whole lot this time of year

1. If your engagement involves a ring, buy a damn ring holder. Buy a few, actually. Put them in every room in your house where you suspect ring-removal will happen (kitchen, bathroom, bedroom). I used to think these were for sad forgetful grannies but I am now fairly sure they are the reason I have made it one whole year and a few days without losing my ring. Having said that I will now lose it.

2. Get the Practical Wedding book. Or just add the blog to your RSS reader.

3. Book Andy Lee.

4. Plan for a photobooth.

5. Be generally wary of anyone offering unsolicited advice.

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This might be my favorite photo taken at a wedding all year (and I have seen so many photos taken at weddings this year… sooo damn many). (Yay Austin & Erin / nice work Andy!)

Unmarried pals, if I start pressuring you to get hitched, it’s not because I need your relationship to be legally validated in the eyes of society. It’s mostly because I haven’t yet figured out that you can dance like an idiot and take goofy photos of yourself with friends at events and times in your life other than just weddings. So please just remember that.

(Source: Flickr / erinkr82)

"Those who did not care to listen wandered about eating dumplings and popcorn, which made up the entire nuptial meal."

A Wedding as a Festival of Ideas, and Self-Promotion - NYTimes.com

"Everyone else can call it whatever they want. But as we fawn over pre-civil war decor, tepees, tents, flowers, and the notion that if we just clicked our ruby red slippers and sucked down a little bit of fresh-squeezed lemonade on our sun-drenched porches, everything would be good again, I will continue to call bullshit. I’m calling this the post-authenticity movement. Because if the very reason that we went back to the simple things was to get back to the basics, then we have lost focus. We’re not getting back to the basics. We’re getting back to materialism fetishized as wagon wheels, straw hats, mason jar cups, and facial hair. A group of plaid-clad brethren knowing that the rest of the people just don’t get it. That may be comfort, but it’s no more authentic than neon lights and steel."

Style shoots must die | Ground Glass (via Becca)

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Amelia and I broke in the photobooth last night at Austin & Erin’s wedding.

I wrote about Joe's & my wedding for A Practical Wedding. →

Mostly re: anxiety & joy but also booze, sweat & an Egg McMuffin.

(Semi-relatedly, I haven’t yet landed on a way to refer to something as belonging to both Joe and me that doesn’t feel seriously clunky: “Joe’s and my” I guess is the correct way to say it but that also feels weird. “Me and Joe’s” is grammatically horrific, I know, but it feels more natural than anything else, at least to say out loud.)