Here’s what I found: You can actually skip the whole rigamarole and expense of the traditional bridal salon, if that’s not your thing (it wasn’t mine). A glass of champagne while you shop is nice, but sample stores like Glamour Closet, and secondhand wedding gown shops, with their vast variety of labels and silhouettes and looser vibe, are just more fun. Rather than requiring appointments with overattentive attendants, many secondhand shops allow brides to browse the racks, froufing the skirts of major dresses by Oscar de la Renta, Carolina Herrera, Pronovias, and Claire Pettibone. You can always go for that glass of champagne after.

Destination weddings: to attend or send regrets?

If you are fortunate enough to have friends and family around the globe, chances are an invitation to a destination wedding will occasionally land in your mailbox.

Quartz’s Rosie Spinks—fed up with the unspoken expectation that guests subsidize wedding costs—says such invites should come with a price-tag, clearly stating the cost of attending the affair. Until that’s the case, she and David Yanofsky tackled the conundrum by creating a wedding chatbot that will dispassionately weigh the pros and cons for you.

“Instead of the hand-wringing over whether or not to spend your paltry savings and meager vacation time on your college roommate’s Tuesday wedding in Tulum, Quartzy has a neutral solution: Have a chat with our destination wedding bot,” they suggest. “It will help you decide if it’s time to book that flight or embrace your JOMO (that’s joy of missing out). Take the quiz, then RSVP with confidence.”

How to watch tomorrow’s royal wedding

Quartz’s Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz has you covered: The ceremonies start at noon UK time, and will be aired and live-streamed around the world. Sangeeta has made a drinking game that gets at the essential questions. Will Beatrice and Eugenie wear bonkers fascinators? All we can do is hope.

Have a great weekend!

Image for article titled Get excited for summer weddings: A guide for grumps
Image for article titled Get excited for summer weddings: A guide for grumps
Image: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach

PS: May I suggest a podcast?

If you’re rolling your eyes at the royal obsessing, but you’re secretly mildly amused, you might try Vanity Fair’s In the Limelight. It’s just the ticket when it comes to embracing the pure inanity of celebrity culture, and hosts Julie Miller and Josh Duboff—whose vocal fry is off the charts—really shine when it comes to obsessing about Meghan Markle and all things royal. (My favorite episode so far had the hosts losing their minds over Markle’s encounter with a Shetland pony and her controversial pronunciation of the word scone, to rhyme with “gone.”) I’m saving this week’s “wedding countdown” episode for a drive tonight with my boyfriend. He will pretend to protest, but we both know this podcast is a delight.

Image for article titled Get excited for summer weddings: A guide for grumps
Image: AP Photo/ Dominic Lipinski, Pool

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