As someone who had a $25-30K wedding on a modest farm in bumblefuck New England (New Hampshire in my case), I enjoy your taste in weddings.

Didn’t Taylor write a bunch of unflattering songs about Joe Jonas (and alleged Joe Jonas-thief Camilla Belle) circa Speak Now? I know she is friends with Gigi but that seems like a pretty big elephant in the room (or on the boat as it were).

Which makes literally no sense - if you did regret it, there would be nothing stopping you from changing it at any time you chose! The other comment I have heard a lot of is “but don’t you want to have the same last name as your kids?” I get why that would be an issue for some people, but I am more concerned with…

The worst part is, they think they’re being funny. Like it comes up IRL sometimes and they act like it’s this big joke that I didn’t change my name, but I’ll give in eventually! It’s especially weird because my husband is not like that at all...he didn’t care one bit that I didn’t want to change it.

A lot of the mail that has been addressed to me with my husband’s last name has been wedding invitations, and I thought I could nip it in the bud by writing in my maiden name on the reply card, but in only one case has my actual name made it onto the escort card at the wedding.

Yeah, when it does occasionally happen with older people it doesn’t really bother me. I just feel like some of my husband’s friends are doing it just to be obstinate.

I kept mine. I had assumed that most of the pushback I got would be from older relatives, but surprisingly they have been respectful of my decision. I have, however, experienced a lot of name-change related passive-aggression from my peers, specifically from friends of my husband’s who are more conservative than my…

My family is the least alike-looking biologically related group of people I have ever seen. My mom’s a freckly ginger, my dad’s got olive skin and black hair, and they’ve both got brown eyes and sturdy builds...yet they managed to produce three kids with super fair skin, light blue eyes, tall skinny builds, and hair…

I felt the same way as you, and decided it would be better to have the gender scan so I’d have plenty of time to embrace the idea of having a boy rather than having it all happen in the moment. I had a strong feeling that I would be one of those people who took a little bit of time to bond with the baby rather than…

The song you are referring to is called American Middle Class, the title track of her album. I believe it is partially autobiographical - her dad was actually a coal miner - but if you look at the lyrics as a whole there is just no way it was written in earnest. She is basically making fun of the entire concept of…

LOL, different set of twins.

Now that I think about it, Pepsi was doing a huge promotion there for this short-lived soda/energy drink called Josta, and my parents, not really realizing what it was and being kind of cheap to boot, kept encouraging us to drink the free sodas so they wouldn’t have to buy us drinks. So we were super hopped up on…

Apparently the town was founded by a set of twins, hence the name and later the festival. But if you aren’t a twin or a proud parent of twins, it’s just a bizarre thing to experience.

We almost never went on vacation when I was a kid, but when I was about 12, my parents decided to pile my identical twin brothers and me into the minivan and drive 10+ hours to Twinsburg, OH for the town’s annual twins festival after seeing it featured on some TV program or another. Imagine attending your typical…

I don’t know how it works at Nordstrom, but I worked at a Clinique counter at Filene’s (since bought out by Macy’s) about eight years ago, and returns did get deducted from an employee’s commission. I would assume that’s standard, though some brands employ their staffs directly rather than through the department store…

If you like Kacey Musgraves I can’t recommend Ashley Monroe highly enough - I suggest starting with Weed Instead of Roses, though everything she does is great. There are actually quite a few badass female country singer/songwriters just outside the mainstream - Angaleena Presley and Brandy Clark are two more great…

According to Wikipedia PFL began in 2004. I am not at all an expert, just someone who is currently utilizing these programs, but it looks like CFRA only applies to companies with more than 50 employees in a 75 mile radius, so if your company was small you might not have been eligible for the full 12 weeks, but like…

Makes sense. Now that I think about it my doctor did have to provide certification for my pre-birth leave, though they took me at my word when I provided my delivery date.

When I decided to make my cake myself, I never really paused to consider how it was going to get from point A to point B. Everything turned out fine in the end, but my poor dad and father in law were tasked with transporting a three tier round cake for 100 in the back of my parents SUV via a route that included half a…

According to the CA Employment Development Department’s FAQ page for PDL, the disability period for a normal pregnancy begins four weeks prior to the estimated due date.