You know it's time to stop for the night when...

you spatter small blood droplets across your cutting matte. Sorry finger/fingernail.

 Aaaaand scene.

How To Eat a Cupcake (in four easy steps)

This is wedding related b/c you know what's often at a wedding? Cupcakes! I'm generally not a huge fan of the gloriously cute desert and while mostly it's because of the flavor*, it's at least a little in part b/c it's a messy little monster. Enter very smart woman Beth, who I just met at a New Years Coast weekend. (I will also be stealing her couscous recipe.)

1. Cupcake!

2. Take off the wrapper. You're not an animal.

3. Twist the top cupcake portion off and flip over.

4. Squish it down into the bottom.

THIS way you have something to hold so you don't get as sticky. Second, the frosting won't go up your nose when you bite into it. Third, this method redistributes the frosting more evenly throughout the cake so you don't end up alternating between between mouthfuls of pure frosting and pure, slightly dry cake.

*Z's Mom cooks cupcakes pretty often, and her cupcakes are teaching me to actually really like cupcakes. But it's getting to that point where I'll look at a cupcake and think, "Did Pam cook this? No? Then no thank you b/c sometimes you can't go back."

Heads Together

This really doesn't fall under the advice column but a couple really excellent ideas came out of last night's brain storm:

1. Serve cold food: theoretically it's going to be hot in August. So instead of dealing with the headache of trying to keep everything warm, let's just not serve warm food. Lots of salads. Salads rock. This is a great idea. Thank you Z's Mom!

2. My Mom came up with a great idea too. Come up with a few drinks that we can premix before hand. Premix everything maybe but the alcohol. We just make sure we keep out pitchers of the mix. Excellent!

I've done a bad job yet again communicating well with my family. The easy route is to just do everything alone. But that's not the best route for them, who want to be a part of it. I don't know how to delegate. I'm happy leading people, but this doesn't quite feel the same.

Good Advice: Wedding Party + 1

One of my bridesmaids was MOH at a wedding this past weekend and when I asked her for advice she gave the following:

Allow your wedding party to have their significant others sit with them at the main table.

I'd never considered this. Of course! I went as a friend's date to a wedding a few years back. I felt like I was crashing the wedding in that the only people I knew were in fact, in the wedding party. Small talk has never been my forte and it ended up being a really uncomfortable evening for me and probably all the strangers I was sitting next to.

Brilliant. Thank you Ms.V! Noted!

Dress Finding Mission

Weddings are all about being the center of attention whether you like it or not. Recently I was talking with a friend about my extreme discomfort at these particular types of attention. Also, I don't really like shopping with people. Or I'm very very selective of who I shop with and what I shop for...and especially how much I spend. This is an equation that makes dress shopping (even my $150 dress) kind of the most not fun thing ever.

Well, a bit of brainstorming over drinks and dessert, Andrea (hello there !) and I devised a plan: scavenger hunt. Not really, but b/c I know my wedding party wants to be a part of the dress search (I can feel my anxiety rising) we came up with the idea of all of us going into a large department store and then going off on our own for like 45 minutes. We'd meet back at a particular dressing room with white/cream/champagne colored dresses but also their ideas for bridesmaids dresses. That way we are all trying things on at the same time and I can get their opinions on both at once.

Genius! And actually sounds like a lot of fun.