ROUNDUP: Celebrity Engagments

Can we all let out a collective groan for TomKat (Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes for those of you who are not addicted to PerezHilton like I am).

Lizzie Grubman's PR analysis of this non-stop ridiculousness.

Paris squared (Paris Hilton hearts Paris Latsis).

Singer Avril Lavigne is engaged to some guy named Derrick who annoyingly spells his name Deryck. Nope, that does not bug me at all.

Who am I missing???

OK, let's add Pink to the mix!

Hurrah, a celebrity wedding that won't make me want to hurl myself through an open window into the icy waters of the Hudson River! Congrats to Josh Duhamel and Fergie. I love me some Black Eyed Peas.

Save-the-Date! Save-the-Date!

Save-the-Date notices (STDs for those of us who are brave enough to acronym-ize them) are becoming more and more a standard part of the average wedding stationery suite, as evidenced by this article (oops, the original link that I posted is dead, so here is a new one!) and a slew of others I've seen recently. I think as wedding planning steadily spins further and further out of this universe, as well as the massive increase in destination wedding planning, save-the-dates are truly becoming necessary for many brides and grooms.

The choices for save-the-dates really run the gamut from magnets to stickers to, (of course my personal fave!) postcards! (online store coming SO soon).

10 things to do to jumpstart success

Ok, perhaps there is nothing earth shatteringly new here, but I still think its some pretty sage advice. I def need to work on the expense stuff, personally. I also love the idea of really trying to keep track of everyone you meet. Most importantly, I think the idea of somehow working on creating your own success every day, whether its keeping lists, going over goals, rethinking your approach or whatever...the every day thing seems key (and majorly lacking in my own life).

'Movin on up...to a DE-luxe apartment in the skkyyyyy?'

According to Forbes Magazine, I'm seriously screwed. Apparently, in order to live "well" here, I need to be making $483,000 AFTER taxes. I will spare you the link to my bank account, but trust me when I tell you that this is not anywhere in the same universe as what I'm making. Or what I expect to be making in the next couple of years as a small biz owner. I know that that these articles just paint broad strokes and should not really be referred to in any serious way...but man. I think I just need to stop reading them. Ok, there...I'm done. Ta-da. That's it. If I can ban Tom and Katie from my life (I mean it folks, I don't want to look at them, hear about them, see them, or even walk by them...EVER), then I can stop reading this stuff. Ok, bookmark deleted, catastrophe averted.

I don't think it gets any cheez whizzier than this...

Whether you've had one or not, we all know that weddings cost big bucks. Star Jones recently brought the trend of sponsored weddings to the forefront, in which you somehow manage to coerce major companies to foot the bill for various aspects of your wedding by mentioning them (over and over and over again) and allowing them to make use of the resulting publicity firestorm. While you can't fault the idea in the arena of ingenuity, as someone who could have paid for her own wedding 10 times over without having her bank account seriously affected, I'm left feeling like any teeny tiny bit of admiration I may have once had for Star Jones has been chewed up, spit out and left in the gutter for my dog to sniff. To me, her entire wedding turned into an appalling, staples center like caricature of itself and ended up so far off the mark from the beautiful, meaningful, "we are in love, honor us" sort of day that I think most of us dream of, I was actually left speechless (and not in a good way).

Much to my surprise, I awoke this morning to find that someone actually managed to take this dizzying concept a step further; Wesley Puryear and Valerie Hernandez did not look for sponsors for their own wedding, they simply charged an admission fee. Should this trend continue, I anticipate many changes will need to be made to the average wedding: instead of valet parkers, couples might need to set up ticket booths where admission fees can be collected and counted. Seems to me that the renaissance of the "cash bar" most certainly is not far behind either. Perhaps we'll need to add a line on the reply card where invited guests can jot down their credit card numbers and expiration dates. Best of all, maybe the bride and groom should consider selling off seats at the most desirable tables at their reception on ebay? Winner takes all!

Ok folks, I fully admit that I am (by some standards at least) still considered kind of young and have certainly not yet graduated from the "hard knocks school of life." However, for me, this sort of behavior waters down the concept of commitment and marriage to such a degree, that I'm not even sure how to define or categorize what you're left with. True love? Family? Lifelong commitment? I imagine that it would be super duper hard to see and honor these beautiful ideas while standing in the heat waiting in the slow moving ticket line at the admission booth at someone's wedding. As my wise grandma would likely say "OY."

Greeting Card "Little Guys"

USA Today, has an article in their weekend Money section about the growing ranks of little bitty greeting card companies.

Check out ruby red begins for a good recap and links to the companies mentioned in the article (also another fab paper chica blog, so stick around).

Hipster PDA's

I don't own a calendar...or at least not one I update regularly. My phone numbers are kept in a variety of places. I have several email accounts and different folders on different computers that I file identical messages in. For someone who is generally pretty damn organized, I'm kind of a disaster when it comes to my own stuff. So, I've been seriously intrigued reading about the new hipster PDA over the last several months. Just as I love the notion of stationery and personal notes totally coming back into fashion, I kind of heart the idea that we're all just palm piloted/treo'd/sidekicked out.

I was in staples the other day, and found this super cool plastic index card wallet (I would post a link but can't find the damn thing online). I also snapped up some cutesy pink index cards and so now I kind of have my own hipster PDA. The great thing about this wallet is that it has little plastic file dividers so that you can actually separate your index cards. I have a Paper Bride file, a wedding file, a schedule file and a "to do" file. I need to start using it more, but so far I'm sort of diggin it.

There is a fab piece on the hipster PDA on 43 folders.

In the meantime, I was sitting next to a woman the other day at lunch who had this gorgeous Il Bisonte agenda that I am now seriously coveting.

How to be a designer

I really loved this article I came across in Fast Company. I loved it because it had lots of good info, but also because I'm in a business full of super duper talented designers and, well...I aint one. What's worse is that everyone assumes I am a designer and then I have to bashfully correct them and say "no, I'm actually just a writer." This is of course my own thing: getting over the notion that writing isn't quite as important or as admirable as designing is. No one has ever said that to me, yet I manage to postulate it on a daily basis. I even manage to take it a step further by differentiating myself as a quasi writer rather than a full fledged writer: I could write a mean research paper or letter to the editor (or greeting card!) but I could never write a book...I'm not that sort of a writer. Isn't it interesting how we manage to put all sorts of restrictions and limitations on ourselves?

Want to work better with designers? Yeah, me too.

Guess who's a Paper Bride?

Yes indeedy folks, you heard it here first--Greg and I are engaged! Hollah! As of last Thursday, I am the future Mrs. Right-Man (Reitman) and it feels pretty divine.

Greg totally surprised me with a romantic whirlwind proposal. He normally leaves about a half an hour before I do for work, but on that day told me they were interviewing some people in the morn and he did not want to be in the way, so he was going to walk out with me. Totally plausible in my eyes, so I was clueless about what was about to pass. As we walk out the front door of our building, a white Rolls Royce phantom was parked out front. But, hey, this is NYC and I thought "hmmm...cool car...gotta get to work!" and was about to breeze right by. This is when greg said "NO, wait. This is for us. Today is your special day." I was in shock. I still didn't quite believe him until he walked up the driver and introduced himself and before I knew it we were sitting in the car.

Greg told me he was taking me on a trip down memory lane--to all of the special places in the city that were "ours." I think it took me 10 mins or so to get back my ability to form human words and understand language. Then I was able to relax and enjoy the specialness of the day.

Our first stop was the Grassroots Tavern on St. Marks. This is where Greg and I met almost four years ago at a little shindig thrown by our friend Blake. At each stop throughout the day we got out of the car and greg shared his special memories with me of that spot or that day and I did the same. It was pretty pixie stick sweet and I loved every second of it.

Next stop was my old place on Houston Street where I first introduced Greg to the pleasures of Tivo and our fave Indian restaurant Rangoli and the beauty of the Mojito.

We then moved on to greg's old apartment in Murray Hill before we hit up Magnolia Bakery for some cupcakes and, yup, you guessed it, more fab memories.

Our next stop threw me off (good work g-funk) for a moment, but Greg picked the perfect one. He took me right near the park that is by our apartment where we walk with Oliver all the time. It was a beautiful spot that is right out on the water...and this is where he proposed.

The moment really was just as I had always dreamed it would be. It was special and wonderful and emotional and completely unforgettable.

Our final stop was lunch at Balthazar which was just the perfect end to our trip.

My ring is TDF if I do say so myself. It's exactly what I wanted (cushion cut in a cellini setting) and for anyone who has seen me in the past week, may I just make a blanket apology that I just can't help staring at it. Really, I do care about your new job, sold house, great movie review, brush with death...I swear I do. But my ring is just so darn sparkly and well...it needs a lot of attention.

Here's greg's recap of the special day. If you want to see more pics (including a ring close up, you can go here.