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This weekend was Val's wedding, so we were in Houston for several days. Houston has its charms, including the following: 1. BFF from Lyondell. I seriously adore my former coworkers (both from my first job at the Bayport plant and my second job downtown).  Serious love fest. Here we are in the photo booth: Then we took more pics with new friends: Then I had a photo session with the bride (cost: priceless): 2. Delicious and cheap foodstuffs.  My fave foods from Houston that I still crave are the $6 Doozo dumplings and the $11 Barnaby's Chef Salad (that feeds 2 people). We also randomly ate at this cafe in the Heights and it was delicious. 3. The fancy Barnes & Noble on Gray. 4. The bizarre downtown Houston tunnel system. I can still navigate it pretty well! 5. Our random stop at a day spa in the Heights for a quick massage. 6. Saturday lunch with my downtown friends and their charming spouses. 7. Random break from the heat to watch "Thor" at Edwar...

I've been thinking about weddings quite a bit recently. It seems like we attend about one per month, and that sometimes they are the only events where we see a large number of our friends. This weekend I am heading to Houston to witness two extremely lovely people tie the knot. And you may have heard about the little British family wedding that took place last week, which was watched with much excitement by these 2 fascinator-wearing anglophiles: And thinking about my lovely, hardworking friend, and all the stress over all the wedding minutiae that she is probably feeling right now took my right back to that stressful week in January 2010 preceding my own wedding. Wedding culture is strange and over the top, and I was never really aware of it until I had to plan one. There are countless magazines and websites which purport to help you plan the perfect event. They claim to give you ideas for how to make everything simultaneously elegant, funky, traditional, unique, fun, staid, y...