New Pieces

After a long hiatus from writing, I've finally gotten back on the wagon!  Main Street just published two pieces of mine about wedding planning. 

Wedding Budget Relativity
Because after two years of planning a wedding, I've stopped flinching when someone tells me that a bouquet costs upwards of $150. For this, I got to interview Elizabeth Clayton, a Bay Area wedding planner whose Get Sh*t Done articles on A Practical Wedding have contributed significantly to my sanity in planning this whole thing.

Financially Illogical Wedding Traditions That I Still Can't Avoid
I got to interview Meg Keene, the founder and editor-in-chief of my favorite wedding blog.  I'm hoping it wasn't too obvious that I was ridiculously excited.

Wedding Planning vs. Backpacking

I have been planning our wedding since March 2012, so it's been a while.  In that time, I have managed to find my way through many, many wedding blogs.  Since this will be the most expensive event I've ever planned, I usually click through websites that include advice on how to save money.  Some are great - did you know you can dress up a grocery store cake into something pretty fancy?  Even though picking our bakery (maybe five months too early?) has been one of my favorite parts of planning so far, I love reading through posts like this.

Making our cake tasting even better, we got samples to take home.

Other websites quickly leave me feeling inadequate.  For every gorgeous featured wedding, there's another wedding that was just as beautiful and cost half the price.  On a post about a $10,000 wedding for 100 people, there's an internet commenter saying, "$10,000?  My 200 person wedding only cost $5,000 and we served a seven-course meal with fresh-caught lobster."  For every $5,000 lobster-filled wedding, there's an internet commenter saying, "You spent that much on one day, you idiot?  I fed my 300-guest wedding with $20 and a box of saltines!  And they all said it was the best wedding they'd ever been to!"  This race to the bottom leaves me with the constant fear that I am behind on my research.  Clearly if one vendor's prices look good, I must have missed the other guy whose prices are even better, plus he'll throw in a puppy for the day.