APW Happy Hour

Hey APW!

First, the newsletter. In a sort of Oscar-Wilde-comedy-goes-new-media setup, we accidentally launched newsletter sign ups in last week’s Happy Hour. The behind the scenes story is that I set up and automated a whole bunch of features on Thursday night, and rushed out of the office without letting anyone know, because really, what could happen before I got in mid-morning the next day? HA. While I was gone, the always-enthusiastic APW staff created a signup form for the newsletter, started collecting emails, and my automated system went into full effect, sending emails left and right. If you got one, I hope you enjoyed it, because the British-comedy-of-manners joke was totally on us.

However! Now we’re actually ready to launch our newsletter, and our first weekly missive will be hitting subscribers’ inboxes next week. (If you want in, sign up in the sidebar on the right, or here.) Our first email will be a sum up of some of our favorite stories from the week, a tiny bit our favorite shopping (we window shop a lot for work), plus a little APW behind the scenes action. We’ve got a few pictures, and you’ll get a selected APW staff Slack conversation every week… in case you want to know what we really get up to. We’ve committed ourselves to experimenting with the email format through at least year’s end, so whatever you see this week is simply our first iteration of this experiment. Feel free to hit reply and let us know what your dream newsletter content is.

On a similar note, from now till year’s end, you may notice a small scaling back of the sheer volume of content we’re providing on APW (though it’ll be exactly the same level of quality). For example, you won’t get your full link roundup in Happy Hour for the next few weeks, though you will get your open thread. November and December is our slow season, and after a crazy year (and a small passel of staff and intern babies and pregnancies), we’re going to focus some on catching up from now till we go on our holiday break.

And finally, inspired by the excellent and robust conversation this week about people with and without kids being friends, our family made the executive decision to invite ALL our friends to our three year olds bounce house birthday party. We don’t expect a ton of our childless and childfree friends to come, but we’ll be thrilled to see all of them that make it. (And we may even splurge on fancy adult temporary tattoos for those folks.) So thanks for helping us stay inclusive, because we love all our people.

With that, I’m kicking it to the spooky, spooky weekend. I have a toddler and a baby to dress up. And yes, we’re taking them to a party with our childless friends, where there will be boozing, and too much attention paid to them. Happy Halloween, y’all!

XO
MEG

HIGHLIGHTS OF APW THIS WEEK

Would you ever let your MIL plan your whole wedding?

This 150 person $35,000 wedding was really gorgeous, but the pi-bar and wrinkly dogs really stole the show.

Adult friendships post children get a little complicated. Here are ten tips to make it easier.

What’s your favorite holiday tradition (that doesn’t revolve around…stuff)?

Fuck wedding t-shirts, subversive cross-stitch, and other goodies that you should steal from our Instagram.

Join the APW team for 2016! We’re hiring writing interns. Apply now!

“My son cheated on his fiancé. Should I boycott the wedding?”

LINK ROUNDUP

Drake’s goofy dancing in Hotline Bling broke the Internet and inspired the best memes ever.

China has a wife shortage, and one economist thinks women should just “double up” on husbands. Um, what?

#Feminismfail: When SXSW thought the best way to handle threats about the women and harassment panels harassment was by canceling the panels.

Dear couples costumes…

In defense of Khloe Kardashian (and her role in the Lamar Odom addiction scandal).

“Stone-hearted ice witch forgoes exclamation point.”

Let’s talk about who funds women-run websites (and why men own so much of women-focused media).

This Fox News panel on “dads” judging leggings is terrible, but this comment made us LOL.

We’re in love with what Nicki and Beyonce’s friendship, both backstage and on stage.

The Notorious RBG gives us #goals.

Our At-Home Oregon Wedding on the Family Farm Makes Pumpkins Look Good

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Diana, Hospital Outreach Worker Cater & Nat, Laboratory Technician

SUM-UP OF THE WEDDING VIBE:  A cozy, at-home fall wedding.

SOUNDTRACK FOR READING: “Built for This” by Ben Sollee

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FAVORITE THING ABOUT THE WEDDING

Being with my favorite people at my favorite place. Oh, and the food. And our photographs. And dancing the Time Warp.

OTHER COOL STUFF WE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT

I told you about my wedding last year in my essay “Growing Up With Ghosts and Getting Comfortable With History.” The approaching fall weather (and my first anniversary!) reminded me to send them in.

My husband and I were married at my parents’ century farm in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. Growing up, I wasn’t the sort of girl who got excited about my future wedding. If I had known how fun my own was going to be, I would have. Pumpkins, a bonfire, pie and cider, sparklers, dancing under the awning of my grandfather’s old machine shop—it was truly a bash. We did a lot of the work ourselves to stay in budget, and this was part of the fun: my mom grew the flowers and my sister arranged them, I made our couple’s cake, Nat made the benches for the ceremony, and our friends carved the pumpkins. The setting was our own, and the people we loved brought life to it. And Buddy, our old Jack Russell Terrier, wandered around through it all.