Staff

Meg Keene - Publisher & Executive Editor

Meg started out in the world knowing that she wanted to make things and boss people around (in a nice way). When she was nine, she had her mom order her a set of business cards that said "Aspiring Artist." This is not a joke. She's always had a fondness for business stationery. She attended NYU's Tisch School of The Arts where she earned her BFA in experimental theatre. She is probably better at postmodern nudity than you are, or at least more qualified. After graduation she iced cupcakes, rented NYC real estate, founded and managed a small theatre company, and worked in Off-Broadway theater management. Once Peter Yarrow sang "Blowing In The Wind" in his living room to raise $1,000 for a show she produced. That was a good day. When she got tired of theatre, she moved to San Francisco where she worked in the research department of an investment bank. That is a long story. Meg founded APW in 2008 after she came home crying one too many days in a row in the early stages of planning her wedding. Her husband suggested she start a blog and call it a practical wedding. Not in a dogmatic way, but in a "The-wedding-media-you-are-reading-is-crazy" way. These days, it's Meg's full time job, and she couldn't be more pleased. She's an artist now, with proper business cards.

What follows is her professional bio. Hit it: Meg's first book, A Practical Wedding: Creative Solutions for Planning a Beautiful, Affordable, and Meaningful Celebration, was released by Da Capo Press in January 2012. She has been quoted by outlets like CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and Glamour Magazine, and her work has been cited by Ready Made, NPR, Channel 4, and Feministing.com, among others (see full press mentions here). Meg has her BFA in Drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and she previously worked in New York in Off-Broadway theater management and in the research department of an investment bank. She's thrilled to finally be melding her training in arts and business by running APW. Meg lives in San Francisco with her husband David, a criminal attorney.

 

Maddie Eisenhart - Submissions Editor

Maddie graduated from NYU with intentions of becoming Tina Fey, but quickly realized that she looks terrible in glasses. Although she once got to bring Montel Williams his coffee, Maddie soon realized that the entertainment industry was no place for someone who smiles 90% of the day. With that in mind (along with encouragement from Meg and the fine example of some other APW staffers—cough, Emily, cough), she became a wedding photographer instead. Now, as Submission Editor at APW, she gets to be snarky, eat cheese and smile 90% of the day. Just. Like. Tina. In her spare time, Maddie likes to spoon her dog and enjoys comparing her dreamy husband to the young Paul Newman. Also, she never says no to Karaoke, and yes that is totally a challenge.

 

Alyssa Mooney - Columns Editor

Alyssa received a BA in Theatre and a minor in Gender Studies from Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, TX. (Note from Alyssa: once you learn to spell it without having to think about it too hard, you're halfway to your degree.) After school, she dabbled in booze, dance and law, and is currently attempting to get her masters. She lives in Dallas, Texas, with her adorably red-neck husband and Maggie the Wonder Dog. She's been reading APW since about March of 2009 - too late in her wedding planning to save her from freaking out about guest lists and being DIY-crazyface. Now, between work and school, she doles out advice to brides-to-be like it's her job, because it kind of is. When you're not reading her Ask Team Practical columns, she can also be found at Kind of a Mess.

Emily Gutman - Advertising Manager

When her career in homeopathic drug mulery didn’t pan out (turns out there wasn’t much of a demand for it), Emily, a long-time reader of APW, started shooting weddings. Then with a gentle push from Meg (ok, it was a swift kick in the pants) she started Emily Takes Photos. Now, in addition to photography, she works with other sane wedding vendors to build thriving and practical businesses. Her likes include gypsy jazz, ranunculus, gouda, and lists. Her dislikes include eggs and coke at the same meal.

 

Kate Bolen - Copy Editor

Kate's English B.A. from USF solidified her love of words, grammar, punctuation, and all things lit nerd. She resides in sometimes-sunny San Francisco with her cuddly husband Kevin and her supportive cat Nori. Privileged to be APW’s first reader, Kate had long dreamed of copy editing Meg’s work before it became a reality, and she is constantly in awe of and grateful for the amazing community that is APW. This crafty native Texan foodie anglophile world traveling Netflix-addict has more interests than she has time, so when not editing or creating, she contents herself to defend The Earth with her amazing powers of recycling and composting. She thinks bow ties are cool.

Writing Interns - 2012 

Zen Chan - Intern

Zen is Malaysian but has lived in the UK for long enough that if her life in the UK were a child, it would have the cognitive ability to distinguish a triceratops from an apatosaurus. She studied law at Cambridge and left with lasting trauma and a BA. After a brief stint organizing public dialogues about the interaction of religion and human rights in Malaysia—a subject totally devoid of controversy—she went into the practice of the law. On the side she writes speculative fiction and bakes bread with faces.

 

Madeline Elliott - Intern

Madeline is a New York-based journalist working on her first novel. She has a BA in English literature from Cambridge and an MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard. She also takes photographs, meditates, and maintains lists of Etsy stores she’ll open one day. Her top Netflix categories are currently “Understated Slice of Life Documentaries” and “British Crime Movies from the 1980s.” Did she mention she’s British? Already married to her wonderful husband Brandon, she is deep in the reception-planning stage and thrilled to share the process as an APW intern.

 

Elisabeth Houston - Intern

It was clear from the very beginning that Elisabeth enjoyed arguing, but it was not until high school that she found something worthwhile to argue about. It was then, after an unexpected relocation to the Middle East, that she threw over her plans to be a doctor and began pursuing a career in Trying to Understand People. Unfortunately, they haven’t come up with a degree in that yet, so instead she did a BA in Arabic and Islamic studies at Yale and a Masters at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and she has spent the last few years in New York, London, and Saudi Arabia, trying to bumble her way into world peace. She has an abiding love of midnight conversations, impromptu dance parties, and all sorts of paper products.