Contently: Freelance lessons from wedding planning

This is good. The more events I produce the more I realise that my wedding worked the same way – or at least that Angela planned it the way I should do these – and I’ve also realised that the hardest part is other people. Nearly 21 years later, I still haven’t written about this thought but now don’t have to because Contently has done it for me.

And done it well. Yael Grauer writes in part:

STOP TAKING EVERYTHING PERSONALLY
Weddings seem to bring out the worst in some people, amplifying issues and personal insecurities that have been quietly simmering beneath the surface. Handling these situations gracefully is a delicate art, so you have to quickly learn how to take bad news in stride.

Likewise, in freelancing, it’s easy to fixate on rejections or read too much into brief emails from busy, overly caffeinated, or unresponsive editors.

“People will think, ‘my pitch sucked,’ when really it’s that [editors] haven’t had time to look at the pitch, or they are running something similar, or it’s not right for the market. It’s almost never that your pitch sucked, or whatever your knee-jerk scary reaction is,” James-Enger explained.

And if an editor did think your pitch sucked, remember to focus on the eight similar publications that might be interested in your idea rather than the one that turned you down. It’s just business.

7 Freelancing Truths I Learned While Planning My Wedding – Yael Grauer, Contently (14 November 2014)

Read the full piece.

Notification: will you marry me? (Y/N)

Back in the olden days, like thousands and thousands of years ago, you’d propose enough times that someone said yes. And then you were off to the races, if the races were myriad wedding-planning problems.

Back in the not very olden days, like an hour ago, you’d be considered fancy if you had an actual wedding planner. A person. Films have been made about this.

But today, you need your smartphone and a whole category of apps made just for you:

Wedding apps have become increasingly popular in the last few years as millennials begin to wed. “We got Facebook in college, we got the first iPhones,” 27-year-old Ajay Kamat, who co-founded the photo-timeline app Wedding Party, told TIME. “We have an expectation that when we travel or shop or do anything, there are services and apps that will help make that experience better for us.”

These smart apps—which are trying to break in to the $53.3 billion wedding industry—help brides and grooms send invites, organize guests, hire local vendors, gather all the photos guests take, register for gifts and crowdsource money for honeymoon activities. Apps like Appy Couple, Carats & Cake and Wanderable are becoming favorites among savvy couples who want to streamline the logistics associated with events like bridal showers, bachelor and bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner, wedding and honeymoon.

With This App, I Thee Wed – Eliana Dockterman, Time magazine (12 June 2014)

Bet the iPhone apps are better than the Android ones.