I liked it, too.

Me too. I definitely benefited from the unpaid internship I did — I learnt a *ton* (including things I still use today, 10+ years later), met people I'm still in contact with, got called back there for a full-time paid job when their editorial assistant broke her ankle a few months later, etc.

Yep. I had a foreign boyfriend and we were contemplating marriage, so I started looking for a staff position before we were even engaged, because I knew I'd need to show I'd been at a higher income for a year or so… I luckily started my job almost exactly a year before we needed to file his immigration paperwork. Ugh,…

I'm nice to people in London as long as they seem even slightly sensible. I'm not helpful at all to people who are being idiots, tourists or not.

I used to get that in Spain but suddenly it stopped — I think the difference was that my confidence had increased. It seemed as though previously they spoke English to put me out of my misery, and then suddenly when I wasn't so desperate and floundering any more they were willing to play along and encourage me. I'm…

"Metro Police" makes no sense — 'Metro' is a newspaper here. The Metropolitan Police is always just the Met.

Yeah, I don't think it's particularly exciting that he mentioned, say, nine names instead of the previous record of eight.

Isn't the "game changer" that it's mentioning so many people? (I'm not at all sure it's actually enough to be a game changer on that front, but wasn't it about that and not the reasonably good internal rhyme scheme?)

You might've just inspired me to start a career as a ordinarily rapper. I could be "Sarah", or "Claire", or something.

Me too.

It's a) expensive and b) may not work for everyone, but Rapid Brow has been really great at making my eyebrows grow. I got it on a whim because I realised I had a ton of loyalty card points at Boots and I've wished I had more substantial/less wonky eyebrows for YEARS.

Tiny note to say that yep, many men in Europe don't wear wedding rings. I was really surprised to find out so many N. Am. men did! The only men here in England I know who wear them are the young'uns — it seems to be becoming more common now.

Yes! If there's anything at all about weddings that you don't want to do, you can just say "that's not how we do it"! I refused to do a "dollar dance", throw a garter, etc…

That makes so much sense. I actually shoot weddings in both countries, and I figured the non-bridesmaid-dress bridesmaid dresses I was seeing were just a matter of taste, but I didn't know that the girls were probably paying for them themselves!

It's definitely not *too* bad here, though. The main costs as a guest are hen night/trip and then whatever you have to spend on the wedding day itself: travel, hotel, dress/hair/whatevs… and then a wedding present.

That's what I'm finding out now! Here the big costs are a) hen night/trip and b) travel to the wedding. Oh, and outfit/beauty if you're *not* a bridesmaid — usually if you're a bridesmaid your dress/shoes/hair/make-up/fake tan, etc, are covered by the bride. (I only had one bridesmaid, thank God.)

Essex girl here… my sister is constantly asked when she and her boyfriend are getting married and having babies. One of her sisters in law actually said that there's no point to life until you have a kid (all the sisters in law have multiple kids with multiple men). There are so many reasons I hate Essex, and that's…

Until coming to this thread today I had seriously never heard of bridesmaids being forced to buy their own dresses. I just assumed she paid for them.

You really don't need to have any! I had just one (my sister) and everyone in the US (I'm foreign) thought I was very odd, but it was so much less stressful and expensive for me to just have to find and pay for an outfit for one person. I'm really glad I did it that way.

We really don't do groomsmen, in general — I'd never heard of the word till I moved to America. And generally the bridemaids just troop in after the bride — there's not usually any of the two-by-two procession that seems to be the norm in the US.