APW Happy Hour

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Hey APW,

Oh hi guys. So this week I… finished a book, is what. My second book, more specifically. And the photo above is the flowers to prove it! I know that sounds probably like fireworks and magic (and hopefully it will be at some point), but it actually felt mostly like seven months of extreme exhaustion hitting all at once. Because I started writing a book, and two weeks later got pregnant (don’t pity the fool, and the fool is me) and have powered through all 66,000 now edited words with various levels of illness, exhaustion, and health issues. So I hit send on the manuscript on Wednesday morning, and more or less collapsed into a puddle of not-actually-that-great.

BUT! BUT! BUT! The book is done, and even my editor likes it. (She’s purposely unmarried and tattooed and delightful, and totally my people and also totally not a wedding person. She simply inherited me as an author, so I take that as a huge compliment.) A Practical Wedding Planner: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating the Wedding You Want With the Budget You’ve Got (without losing your mind in the process) is coming at you in December. It basically contains every logistical wedding planning detail you need, plus jokes, plus the scoop on what in the wedding industry is kind of a scam, and what actually isn’t. (I was surprised by the answers to that question, by the way.) It’s months and months of research, mostly thanks to Alyssa of Rose Gold Events, who was nice enough to step in as my research assistant for many moons, all packed into one little book. It will have rip out pages for reminder lists for your taco truck wedding, suggestions for what to buy when you realize you can’t afford peonies, when you need to get event insurance, and everything! More… like the cover… to come!

In the meantime, I’m slowly picking myself back off the floor, and I’m turning thirty-five tomorrow and off for a baby/book/birthday-moon that’s twenty-four hours in length, and HAPPY WEEKEND.

Enjoy your open thread. Excuse me if I go outside, and enjoy the… outside. Which I haven’t seen very much of for seven months.

XO,

MEG

Highlights of APW This Week

love letter to Oakland means a church, sparklers, and breakdancing.

“It’s okay to be particular about who’s around when the event involves your vagina.”

A low-effort wedding hack for all the minimal/neon awesomeness your place setting could ever want (if you want that sort of thing).

Fun Tax Fact: The US rewards marriage… if only one person earns the bulk of the income.

Sequins, feminism, and a game of “rock, paper, scissors” to figure out who would do the vows first.

Everyone shared some wedding budgeting wisdom.

Self-Harm: What was the point in just being hurt on the inside?

A color-wonderful Vegas elopement, Elvis included.

Can Prince be part of a sacred wedding ceremony?

Link Roundup

Patti Smith has written the sequel to “Just Kids” and you can’t have it till October.

Is it time for Jews to leave Europe?

Kayne presents a new line of “athleisure” wear.

This country is 230 years old and has had 43 presidents and not a single one of them has been a woman, but that might change.

How did Dr. Oz come to be?

Also, you can cut industrial steel into pretty lace.

Tina Knowles (the women responsible for birthing Beyonce and Solange) got married (and is also, unsurprisingly, a babe).

Amy Schumer made a music video about booties fudge machines.

Grace Bonney gets real about five things that scare her.

The youngest female self-made billionare is not in it for the money.

We knew this, but again: women of color make less than 78 cents on the white man’s dollar.

What does lingerie designed by women, for women, look like?

Legitimate reasons why your millennial is crying.

Anne Hathaway came in like a wrecking ball.

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