The Power of Yes: Lauren

Alyssa again, as we wrap up our APW lovefest! This next post is from everyone’s favorite intern, Lauren! Meg told me she was thinking of getting an intern, and almost the next day she emailed me and said, “Hey, this girl volunteered on Twitter. Crazy, huh?” So I immediately stalked her blog and realized a few things. She’s smart, she’s funny and I immediately  wanted to steal like eight things off of her life list and put them on my own. Having Lauren as the APW intern is like having exactly what you need exactly when you need it, ALL THE TIME. She works SO hard behind the scenes, and all just for the love of APW. She lets Meg rest a little and have a real life from time to time, she’s a daily reminder of all the baby brides and your struggles and she thinks my dog is pretty. Wonderful qualities, all of them.

Here’s Lauren’s views on APW and its awesome support system.

APW is indeed a really great wedding blog that keeps me centered during my own planning process, but I’ll get to that in a minute. For me, being part of APW is really about being able to contribute to a large group of smart and creative women through writing. Meg wrote a post a few weeks ago that talked about pushing herself and experiencing a lot of “no” responses and knowing that it meant she was challenging herself and expanding her personal/professional limits. She wrote about knocking on doors, hearing the grim and repeated “no” and continuing until she heard the “yes”. Meg was my yes. Meg and the community that is A Practical Wedding has given me the opportunity to stretch, expand, gain experience and challenge myself even more. And I know that Meg and the amazing APW community has given the same opportunity to many artists within the wedding community as well. And that is an amazing, amazing gift.

I added to my life list last Thursday and one of the things I put on there was “Work to support other women in their personal and professional goals without jealousy”. It’s surprisingly difficult to help other people succeed, but I think the more women there are owning their own businesses, becoming professionally successful and self sufficient, the more we all succeed. I want to support and contribute to APW’s growth because it IS so much more than Meg’s website, it’s a place to find support, insight, advice, and encouragement to take the risk of being authentically you.

Now then, about the whole bit with planning a wedding and having this site in existence: Umm yeah. I wanted to have really meaningful wedding that combined Kamel and my families and beliefs, and traditions in a seamless way, but h*ll if I know how to do that! I’m groping in the dark over here, and if it wasn’t for you all sending in questions to Ask Team Practical, or pointing out amazingly insightful tidbits in graduate posts, I think I would be an overwhelmed mess who also happened to be failing miserably. Alright, so it may not have been publicly dramatic, but I would be living in my own little private panic room. It can be incredibly lonely being the bride, but after the APW Book Club meetup, I suddenly have a whole fistful of awesome ladies to bounce ideas off of, to confess to (You missed my sex in Paris story the other weekend), and to learn from. This place, this website, is not about the fashion of weddings (although, h*lls yes I love me some pretty), it’s about the act of weddings, the celebration of life transitions, and having a giant cheer squad rooting you on through it all.

I don’t think I could have picked a better door to knock on and a better place to finally get the answer “yes”. Thank you.

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