Marriage is good and weddings are great but I hate modern wedding culture. You don’t need to bankrupt yourself to have a nice wedding. Stop supporting the wedding industry, stop buying outrageously priced engagement rings, stop spending 10k on a dress you’ll only ever wear once.
Coming from a professional event planner - weddings are egregiously expensive because companies openly raise prices at the word “wedding.”
Pro Tip - Never drop the word wedding while planning if you don’t need to. Most things can be for “an event you’re planning.” This obviously doesn’t include things like the venue, DJ (who needs specific wedding songs), and the wedding dress company if you’re going that route versus just buying a dress.
For my wedding I got “discounted” cupcakes, flowers, decor, bridesmaids dresses, groomsman attire, and invitations. I did this by either searching for things that aren’t marketed for weddings or not telling the companies I was working with it was for a wedding. Because honestly, most of the time they don’t need to know why you’re ordering.
These companies target people planning their weddings and markup everything the second “wedding” is said. And it’s said often because people assume the services change exponentially for weddings. They absolutely do not.
The best example are the cupcakes I had for my wedding. I used a designer cupcake store in town instead of spending $1000 on a wedding cake. If you place a large order of cupcakes with a cake tree for display - it costs about $150 for 100 (which is what I did). When you order their “wedding” package - the price raised to a $700 base for 100 cupcakes. The only other perk includes a “tasting.” Forget that. Our tasting was buying a few cupcakes in flavors we thought we’d like and picked three. It cost maybe $20.
What these companies do is scummy and targets people who don’t have information about the event industry.
I will yell it from the rooftops until people realize there’s a better way.
Here’s further awesome proof that cosplay is for everyone! Brazilian cosplayer Solange, aka Tia sol (“Aunty Sun”) has won the heart of the internet with her wonderfully accurate homemade costumes and convention appearances around her home city of Manaus, Brazil.
“A friend said that I wouldn’t have the guts,” Solange told BuzzFeed News. “I chose a character and had the costume made without saying another word.”
“I don’t miss a single event in my city. I’d really like to visit other ones, but have you seen the price of the fares?”
“I never thought that I would be well received among the young people, I’ve made a lot of friends during all of this.” Cosplay conventions have become a sort of a haven for Solange: “I can launch myself into the world of make-believe, where anything goes.” Her next event is coming up in December. “I’m finishing up the painting on my new cosplay, Granny Juju from Jorel’s Brother.”
Unfortunately controversial take but you chosing to identify as ace as a way to not deal with something internal isnt the fault of the ace community. I see so many aphobes and exclusionists going “I told myself I was ace when i was younger to not deal with depression so its a harmful label for children!!” or “well i thought I was ace and so I forced myself to shun sex and it harmed me so the ace comminity harmed me!” and every time it kills me more.
Like, having depression or trauma or dysphoria or whatever made you choose to call yourself ace isnt your fault! But its also not aces fault, for accepting you and allowing someone calling themselves ace to be a part of the ace community!! Thats what communities are supposed to do!
When I was younger I just assumed I was a lesbian, and involved myself in lesbian communities. I talked to other lesbians about my disconnect with womanhood (spoiler alert; it was the trans in me making that disconnect), and they told me that thats normal and okay, that I can still be a lesbian regardless. When I accepted the fact that I like boys, I just figured it was on addition and identified as bi. Other bi people told me that my strong preference for guys was okay (it was the gay, actually). Then I realized that I was just trans and gay and now here i am today.
Did I choose to identify with those labels to avoid dealing with my own personal problems? Oh absolutely I did. I clung HARD to both when I was younger, because it was easy. Has this happened to other people? Of course, plenty of other trans people have gone through other sexuality labels! Is this lesbians and bisexuals faults, since they treated us as if we were lesbians/bi? Absolutely fucking not.
Yall need to calm down and actually acknowledge the fact that communities are supposed to help and support people within them! They arent supposed to try to steer you away from them. Do you guys expect every community to disclaim every resource with “but also you might not be this so ://”? Because all that is doing is ostracizing people that arent “cookie cutter” examples in the community, and thats wrong.
I fully understand being upset at trauma or lost time, and I get that its easier to place the blame somewhere for bullshit that you shouldnt have had to go through, but this aint it. Yall need to grow up and realize you are putting blame on a community for treating you as one of their own WHEN YOU YOURSELF SAID YOU WERE ONE OF THEIR OWN. You are vilifying them because of your own personal shit, and what you are actually doing is projecting.
This is an incredibly common part of self-discovery.
Nearly none of us get our labels exactly right on the first try. I didn’t. I know maybe 2 people who kept their very first one, out of literally hundreds I’ve met who were either not cis or not straight.
But blaming the communities who accepted you, took you in, gave you resources to self-discover, and sheltered you as one of your own for your own mistake is not okay. You don’t get to blame others for your mistake. It wasn’t their fault.
It’s easy to blame others. But no one needs to be blamed for this. It was a mistake. That’s all. You’re allowed mistakes. Learn about yourself, change your label, move on, and be grateful there was a community there for you to help you feel welcome and safe, and to help you on your journey. It isn’t their fault if you clung to the label too hard, they did not force you to do anything.
When you go to a community and tell the people in it that you belong there, it is profoundly fucked up to say they wronged you by believing you and accepting you.
