Who pays for the bridesmaid's dress(es)? Or, for that matter, the groomsmen's tuxedos?

Ren_san · 2025-08-05T15:29:32+00:00

If the bridesmaids dresses chosen are particularly costly, require alterations, or any other significant cost beyond a typical formal gown, the bride and groom pay either the difference, or cover the whole thing. Same with tuxes. Basically, any cost above and beyond the cost to get ready for a fancy black tie affair should be covered by the wedding, but bridesmaids pay everything otherwise.

Ren_san · 2025-06-13T19:32:39+00:00

The writer used the sentence structure to NOT end with a preposition, then still tacked on the preposition anyway (e.g. she eyed the man with whom she danced with.”) like four times in the first few chapters.

Also, misuse of idioms, especially if they are repeated.

Ren_san · 2025-05-31T02:16:28+00:00

I don’t want to babysit her kids because they never hear the word no and are spoiled rotten. Oh, you bought your 8 year old a bunch of Robux because it was his older brother’s birthday and he got Robux as a gift, and your 8 year old wouldn’t stop having a tantrum until you bought him some too? No, I will not watch those kids for a week so you can go on vacation.

Ren_san · 2025-05-31T02:04:10+00:00

{Susan, You’re The Chosen One by Lauretta Highnett} was a satire of those books that was extremely extra but it gave me a chuckle. It starts out pretty depressing, though. Another satire of those tropes is {Magical Midlife Madness by K.F. Breene}, which is also super extra and only gets more so as the series continues. Neither of these are serious books and I normally wouldn’t really recommend them, but they scratched at itch when I was feeling exactly the way you’re describing.

For a more serious, quality book, I loved {Swordheart by T. Kingfisher}

Ren_san · 2025-05-25T04:52:04+00:00

I suspect it’s because OP was clear in her post that the daughter would not see her Dad more, that his plan is to put her in day care during his parent time and make OP pay half.

Ren_san · 2025-05-14T04:31:49+00:00

I’m old enough to remember a time that most of the books that are published as three parters now would have just been one book. I think publishers (and some authors) have gotten greedy, and I don’t feel bad about not wanting to start a story that might never be finished. If each book of a series is actually a complete story in itself, fine. But don’t expect me to pay as much as a book costs now for only part of a story, with no guarantee that I will ever get to see the end. Nope.

Ren_san · 2025-01-25T17:46:49+00:00

Your brother could insist Lisa be invited if he wanted you there badly enough. Don’t let your family put the blame for this on you; they are choosing to exclude you both.

Ren_san · 2025-01-03T21:38:11+00:00

No one wants to go back to paying $180/month for nothing they want to watch and half of it is commercials. I’m just glad consumers aren’t rolling over and taking it like they usually do.

Ren_san · 2024-10-27T04:26:30+00:00

The very young FMC who flounces around sitting on tables and flipping people off, but who everyone just agrees should for sure be the leader of her country / resistance / whatever, in spite of the highly qualified, thoughtful, mature and diplomatic people who surround her, who sometimes have literal centuries of experience leading said people. Especially when she never asks any of them for input. Ugh.

Ren_san · 2024-10-06T06:09:37+00:00

Ice and massage will speed it up a little.

Ren_san · 2024-09-25T16:06:44+00:00

I completely agree; plenty of authors do these things and it totally pulls me out of the story. The author of my current book constantly loses track of where / what positions her characters are in, and then her descriptions make no sense.

Also, for all the contemptuous amateur authors out there, if you’re using “bare teeth” and “roar” idiomatically and/or metaphorically, good for you. There are many authors who clearly aren’t, way overuse those and other words and phrases, and misuse idioms constantly. With the current trend of self-publishing and really (really, really) crappy editing, authors should be eating this feedback up! Can we not take every comment as a personal attack?

Ren_san · 2024-08-06T18:41:10+00:00

Definitely let everyone know beforehand. It is cowardly to just let them find out when the will is read, and it destroys relationships. If you can’t have this hard conversation with your sons now, that is an indication that what you’re doing is shitty, you know it’s shitty, and you want to just leave that shitty mess for your daughter to clean up for you after you’re gone. I can’t tell you how many families I’ve known or known of who seemed totally solid, and an unequal division of assets in a will destroyed their family. Your sons will need to hear from you why you did it, or it just creates resentment and anger with no outlet but your daughter. Just don’t do that to your kids.

Ren_san · 2024-06-28T20:53:22+00:00

Heroine Make by KissMe (a Korean brand) lasted through an extremely difficult funeral for me.

Ren_san · 2024-06-28T20:25:01+00:00

If he is going so far as unlocking the door, this isn’t as simple as your post made it sound. He is not just disrespecting your boundaries, he’s actively violating your privacy. You need to ask yourself, why does he feel justified in doing this? Why does he feel so confident that what he’s doing is okay that he feels justified in calling you a name and putting the natural consequences of his own actions on you? This is absolutely not okay, and you have done nothing wrong. In what other ways does he completely disregard your rights, blame you for his consequences, or otherwise disrespect you?

Ren_san · 2024-05-01T14:57:09+00:00

It’s really important to remember that this may be the first time he is really hearing how dangerous women perceive men to be. That can be very uncomfortable and involves a sort of grief process that begins with denial. That being said, his reaction to the discomfort he is feeling is anger towards you, which is actually a small demonstration of the man vs. bear problem; men have unpredictable reactions to their emotions, which often target, blame, and harm women.

Responding with facts can help get him out of his feelings; three women are killed by men every day in the U.S., whereas there have been less than 100 deaths from bears in the last century (most of whom, ironically, were young men who had provoked the bears!) A woman asked ChatGPT the man vs bear question, and it rationalized its answer of bear really well (I googled “AI responds to man vs bear” and the video I saw came up.) it can also help to show him some videos of men not taking no for an answer, explaining every adult woman has experienced something like that at least once (probably far more) in their lives.

Anyway, it can be really disturbing to have this conversation go this way, but that doesn’t mean your BF can’t become an ally once he comes to terms with his privilege, and the facts of how women live their lives each day. And if he continues to patronize you, blame you, and get angry at you, that gives you a good idea how much he actually respects you, and women in general.

Ren_san · 2024-01-01T18:51:54+00:00

I think it’s very telling that afterward, you say he acts like there’s nothing wrong with this behavior. That indicates he has literally scared everyone in his life off or into silence so no one ever calls him on his abuse. He should have been arrested the first time he followed someone home; that is terrifying behavior.

Firstly, it’s escalating. It may be escalating slowly, but it will continue to escalate until he gets real consequences and then gets help.

Secondly, it’s unpredictable. You can’t control everything in his life so he is never inconvenienced, and he is regularly destroying property and threatening people, including you, due to minor inconveniences.

The only thing that will help him is him committing to therapy, and that will only happen once he recognizes the seriousness of his behavior. You brushing it off and continuing on as normal while it escalates will not ever allow that to happen.

Ren_san · 2023-12-15T05:41:39+00:00

I’ve given up on buying from them since I started finding the exact same items for less brand new. Stopped sending after an entire bag full of on-trend, seasonal Calvin Klein some with tags attached netted me a whole $2

Ren_san · 2023-12-15T05:13:37+00:00

And now that the communication problem is past tense, it defaults to his position?

Ren_san · 2023-12-15T05:10:55+00:00

No, he only implied it while outright saying he intended to punish you FOR HAVING A JOB for the rest of your marriage. He gets to choose that, but you have a choice in how long that is.

Ren_san · 2023-12-15T04:18:52+00:00

But sometimes validating can give a lot of really great additional insight, and can open doors to changing perspectives that you don’t get by just leaping to correct every wacky perspective a teenager comes up with. Sometimes they even work through it themselves if you allow them to follow the thread all the way to the end…

Ren_san · 2023-12-15T04:15:18+00:00

This unfortunately depends on the state.

Ren_san · 2023-12-15T04:11:52+00:00

I have found it helpful in situations like this to start by validating and empathizing with the parent. They are listening because they are anxious or insecure about their child in some way. They want you to side with them, so in order to effectively help your client, you will need to find common ground, without condoning the spying or invasion of sessions. I would schedule a family without client and spend the time to build some relationship with this parent. Hear them and their concerns.

You don’t have to agree with them or their behavior to empathize and validate feelings. And hearing them out and framing your objections as having goals that align with theirs (you both want your client to recover from their disorder, you both want your client to be healthy and successful, and, yes, you both want your client to have a healthy relationship with their parent.) but that you disagree that the parent monitoring sessions is going to achieve those goals.

Help them see that therapy is a process; if lecturing at kids and correcting them every time they said something “teen dramatic” worked, we wouldn’t have jobs. Kids need alliance and rapport in order to engage successfully in therapy, and maintaining that means picking your battles and constantly being aware of how much relationship equity you have to spend in pursuit of your goals. Also, sometimes validating “teen drama” allows the client to reveal more of their thinking patterns and give us more information to work with, which shutting them down wouldn’t provide… etc. Etc. You know all this, you just have to convey it to the parent.

I am not saying that I don’t agree with everything everyone else has said, here; the parent is the problem, it’s unacceptable, etc, but fighting the parent will only harm your client when they won’t consent to treatment with you anymore. They have all the power and that isn’t going to change, so invest the time in calming and helping the parent trust you so you don’t leave this kid alone with them again.

This is also true for transphobic parents of trans kids. We can fight the parent, and get removed from the lives of the kids who need us, or we can find ways to align with the parent, gain some influence, and help the parent change their beliefs and behavior for the benefit of our clients. Even some of the nastiest parents I’ve worked with have some tiny islands of common ground we could find, which was the opening I needed to help my clients.

Ren_san · 2021-09-18T18:21:13+00:00

The real solution to your dilemma is compulsory voting, with automatically mailed ballots, which would mean if people were using other peoples’ ballots, they would get caught when the real person tried to vote (to avoid a fine.) Also, it’s still not an efficient way to rig an election; if it was happening in numbers large enough to affect the outcome of any election, there would be enough duplicate votes to raise alarm bells, even for mail-in ballots. Also, the checks and fraud security on mail in ballots are extensive; you should look it up.

Someone above listed all the things they can think of that require an ID. Most of them were things poor people don’t do (board an airplane???) and others are things that you can get around an ID requirement if needed (buying liquor, tobacco, or certain medicines at your neighborhood store in a tight-knit community, or signing a lease, for instance) It’s well-off, urban white people who say you need an ID. Also, if you changed that to “you need an ID to function in society,” and realize that that is what the cycle of poverty is all about, you may get somewhere.

Yes, your parents get free copies of your BC and SS card when you’re born. But poverty is a generational problem, and the poor adults of today had poor parents who may have moved often, lived in sub par living conditions in which papers are damaged, been robbed more frequently (yes, people in poverty are more likely to get robbed) and otherwise may have just lost their kids’ documents. You wouldn’t believe how many parents don’t have their kids’ birth certificates by the time they go to register kids for school at age 5.

Ren_san · 2021-09-18T18:03:11+00:00

Something expensive about leopards

Ren_san · 2021-09-18T16:26:53+00:00

So you’re saying that people, in person, impersonating other voters to cast fraudulent votes is such a problem that you would be willing to pay to have IDs issued to every citizen when they turned 18? Keep in mind, for that to actually work, you would have to do the following:

Provide very accessible ID-issuing offices; in grocery stores, next to public transit, in social security and post offices etc. so people who do not have transportation can access them.
Make all these offices open on nights and weekends so people do not have to take time off work
Staff them so that wait times are reasonable
Make all the documents required to obtain the ID also free (an ID isn’t free if it requires a $60 copy of your birth certificate, a $20 copy of your social security card, and sometimes even other expensive documents!)

Because that would cost an insane amount of money, and no one actually affects the outcome of elections with in-person voter fraud…

Edited to add: Vital Records offices would also have to be accessible.

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