3D Pokemon Models | ROEStudiosYesterday, I think I hit a wall when it comes to the wedding. There are so many things that are great about this experience, but I’m going to be perfectly honest: planning a wedding kind of sucks. Add in the fact that I’m trying to pay my bills, have a great relationship with my fiance, keep up with a regular workout schedule and maybe shower once or twice a month and I’m left feeling drained emotionally, physically and bridally. (I know that last one isn’t actually a word. Don’t worry.)
So in the spur of the moment, I asked a question on the Facebook page. I just wanted to know if I was the only one who felt like this whole wedding thing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be… and a bunch of comments later, I found out something that I had never known: we are all scared and confused about what to do for our wedding. ALL OF US.
With that in mind, I wanted to share some of my fears, excitements and frustration about this whole process because if I thought that I was alone, maybe you do, too. But I promise that you’re not.
1. Everyone wants to talk about the wedding. Friends, family and total strangers all want to know what your color scheme is. And how dress shopping is going. All of a sudden, everyone cares about this one thing and forgets about everything else going on in your life. Don’t take it personally and don’t get offended. And if you really don’t want to talk about it, don’t. There’s no law that says your wedding has to be public domain, and you have a right to your privacy if that’s what’s right for you.
2. No one asks about your marriage plans. I think people just get caught up in the glamour of a wedding day, and it distracts them from the big picture: you have a wedding BECAUSE you’re getting married, not the other way around. And why is it that so many people think it’s weird to want to go to premarital counseling? I didn’t learn how to tie my shoes without being taught (and then practicing a LOT!), and I feel like marriage is a bit more important. Shouldn’t it at least get the same courtesy as my shoelaces?
3. There are times where you will seriously consider an elopement. This was pretty much the basis of my , and before the engagement and wedding planning, I always thought that brides were just exaggerating. They’re not. The pressure of that wedding day is starting to feel more and more like a reality show, complete with makeup artists and hairstylists creating a “better you” and cameras follow like paparazzi. My big fear is that I’m totally going to get stage fright when I’m up there. It’s going to be so sad if I miss the moment because I’m too concerned that I look like an idiot.
4. The groom isn’t expected to care about the wedding. I feel like every woman I know has told me how lucky I am that Cam is ambivalent, which I resent a little. Isn’t it his day, too? I mean, I’m not marrying myself up there. He’s kind of involved. Oh, and what if I spend all this time planning and he ends up totally bored/unhappy? It doesn’t seem like he’s all that excited himself. This double standard never really gets easier (and to the brides who have a groom that’s into planning, I have only one thing to say: you are SO lucky) and you’re just going to have to get used to it.
5. You will feel like your wedding isn’t your wedding. The plus side of this is that you have a lot of eyes and ears on the to-do list. But those eyes and ears usually come paired up with a mouth and opinions. While it’s great to have input from other areas, it can be a bit overwhelming. You’re going to find yourself thinking things like, “Why does everyone care about what I’m wearing? Am I seriously going to disappoint people because I didn’t wear a traditional dress?” Make sure to stand up for yourself and don’t be afraid to ask people to step back.
6. You can DIY your way into a wedding that fits your wallet and wants. It is possible to have an affordable wedding, no matter how much people say it can’t be done. Did you know that the average wedding now costs over $27,000? I’m not sure about you, but if I had an extra $27,000 just lying around, I would probably use it as a down payment on a house. I know that I haven’t spent much time talking about our wedding, but one of the most stressful parts of planning is setting – and sticking to – a budget, and we’re spending less than half the average on ours.
7. The average bride spends 200 hours planning her wedding. And it’s okay if you don’t. I found an article on Yahoo where it said that planning a wedding should, according to wedding consultants, take approximately 200 hours. I can’t begin to imagine the event that will come out of that time, but if I had my way, instead of spending 200 hours planning for a single day, I’d rather take some of that time (how about 25%, okay?) and plan for each and every day that comes after.
8. People come out of the woodwork to give you unsolicited advice. You should ignore most of it. No one means to be a jerk to you, and they don’t mean to undermine your decisions, but it happens. A lot. When someone offers you advice, listen and politely thank them – whether they’re right or wrong isn’t the question. It’s whether things are right or wrong for you and your wedding.
9. It’s normal to worry that everything is just going to suck, and it’ll all be your fault.
So many aspects of your wedding will
feels like this really private, personal and intimate moment. Except you’re surrounded by 150 friends and family. It’s like they’re all watching you at this vulnerable moment, a moment that’s supposed to be all about this new union but instead is more like circus sideshow. Remember why you’re doing all this work (and who you’re ending up with after it all calms down), take a deep breath and let it go. , but it can never be said too many times: things are going to go wrong, and you need to just take it all in stride.
10. There are always people who are willing to help, just because they love you. Weddings make people crazy, but there will be someone there to keep you from going off your rocker. For me, that person is my stepmother. She has so many great ideas and has been more supportive through this than my own fiance, and there is no way that I can fully express how grateful I am to have her on my side for this crazy experience.
What are some things you wish you knew before you started planning your wedding?
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Enter your email address:Delivered byApple Music is a nightmare and I’m done with it
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to this post]I love Apple. I love them because they take difficult problems and come up with innovative, simple solutions. The things they make just work and we trust them. Unfortunately, my experience with Apple Music has been exactly the opposite. As of today, I’m missing about 4,700 songs from my library with little hope of getting them back.I had high hopes for Apple Music. I really wanted it to work and become my default music streaming service, but after the problems I’ve experienced over the last couple of weeks, I’m disabling it altogether.My problems started about a week after installing Apple Music. While Apple Music Radio and Playlists worked well, adding music to my library is nothing short of a mind-blowing exercise in frustration.I started to notice that whenever I added an album to my library, not all of the songs would get added. When I looked at the list of songs, there would be some missing—sometimes, most of the album would be missing. When I clicked the “Show Complete Album” button on my Mac, all of the missing songs would show up with an “Add” button beside them.Why do that when I already told Apple Music to add the album?From what I can tell in my tests, Apple Music is deciding itself, based on your library, that it will not add duplicate songs. For instance, I purchased a lot of Black Sabbath albums over the years, but not all of the compilations. I went into Apple Music and added a compilation album, but it didn’t all get added to my library. When I looked at all of the songs that didn’t get added, they were ones that I already had in my library.In another example, I added Bob Dylan’s “Blonde On Blonde” and his “Greatest Hits” albums. The “Greatest Hits” was short three songs—the same three songs that are on “Blonde On Blonde,” so Apple Music chose not to add them to the “Greatest Hits” album. It’s not unreasonable to want to listen to an album in the context the artist wrote it, and then other times, just listen to their greatest hits. It’s my choice to make.However, if I decide I really want those songs, when I click the “Add” button, nothing happens, which seemed odd to me. If adding the songs is an option, why won’t they add to the library. I went to my iPhone and tapped “Show Complete Album”—when I tapped on the song to add it, the option was to “Remove from My Music.” This means that my iPhone thinks it’s already added, but the song isn’t showing up. What I had to do is go through all of the songs, remove them from the library, and then click add to get them back in the library.I went through about 15 albums one night and manually added all of the missing songs. It was frustrating, to say the least, but I did it. I nearly lost my mind the next morning when I checked my iPhone and Apple Music and taken out all of the songs I added the night before. I was right back where I started.In some cases, like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, a few of the songs show up twice on one album. When you tap to play the song, they both show the animated icon in iTunes, as if they are both playing. Note in the screenshot that the songs are different in terms of their length of playing time. Either Apple Music shaved a few seconds off one of the tracks, or they’re from different albums.Other strange things have happened too. For instance, I added ZZ Top’s “The Very Baddest” album. Instead of downloading all of the songs from that album, it downloaded them from multiple albums. So now I have several ZZ Top albums, each with a few songs on them.Apple Music also decided that I like Electronica and Pop music. I found this out by going to the setup screen to redo my entire account and see that if that helped fix my original problem. I deleted the categories and bands that Apple Music put in, but it didn’t help the overall problem.In another case, I own Led Zeppelin IV—and all of their other albums. However, when I look at it in Apple Music, it doesn’t recognize that I have it and gives me the option to add it to my library. With all of the other problems I’ve been having, I didn’t even bother trying that.I tried adding one Neil Young album six times and it just wouldn’t go into my library. I finally just gave up.If all that wasn’t enough, none of my devices seem to sync, so my Macs don’t have the same songs that my iPhone has, and neither of them match my iPad.The Recently Added from one of my MacsTaken at the same time, the Recently Added from another of my MacsI’ve tried logging out of my accounts on all my devices and allowing Apple Music to rebuild itself. I’ve turned iCloud Music Library on/off and I’ve done just about everything else I can think of doing. Nothing I’ve tried works.The only thing that changed since I started using Apple Music is transferring my Beats account to my new Apple Music subscription. I can’t say for sure if that caused all of these problems or not, but it was around the same time.I know I’m not the only one having this problem. There are threads on Apple’s support forums detailing similar issues to the ones I’m having, and I’ve noticed tweets in my stream reporting the same problems.At some point, enough is enough. That time has come for me—Apple Music is just too much of a hassle to be bothered with. Nobody I’ve spoken at Apple or outside the company has any idea how to fix it, so the chances of a positive outcome seem slim to none.As if all of that wasn’t enough, Apple Music gave me one more kick in the head. Over the weekend, I turned off Apple Music and it took large chunks of my purchased music with it. Sadly, many of the songs were added from CDs years ago that I no longer have access to. Looking at my old iTunes Match library, before Apple Music, I’m missing about 4,700 songs. At this point, I just don’t care anymore, I just want Apple Music off my devices.I trusted my data to Apple and they failed. I also failed by not backing up my library before installing Apple Music. I will not make either of those mistakes again.I’m going to listen to what’s left of my music library, and try to figure out all of the songs I have to buy again. I’ll also download Spotify and reactivate the account I cancelled with them a couple of weeks ago.
RadioConnectMenu items I’d love to get rid of:Start StationCreate Genius PlaylistShow in iTunes StoreThe UI is so bad it seems as if they hired a bunch of laid off Microsoft guys to design it.on my iPad, when browsing Apple Music library via the artist view, accessing an individual album will make the Music app crash. There are a couple of threads on Apple’s forums, but no solution.on my Mac, iTunes will sometimes refuse to play a giver song and skip to the next one in the queue. iTunes will very often skip at random tens of songs. There are a couple of threads on Apple’s forums, with some people having solved the issue by changing their DNSs. That trick didn’t work for me, but even so, I’m not willing torely on a third party company for my DNS’s to fix Apple’s mess.These are no little problems, but rather critical ones that fuck up the entire user experience to say the least. Or just make the service unusable on Windows. I just cannot rely on Apple Music at work on Windows, it’s. not. working.Rebuild your iTunes library. This is easy, and is detailed on Apple’s website: Duplicates. The duplicates thing is not uncommon but preferable to losing data. My guess is the meta data does not match what is coming in/out of the library, so iTunes errs on the side of caution and makes a duplicate. Annoying but understandable. This is not a new issue with AM but originated with iTM; if you have a corrupted iTunes library, the issue only gets worse.Purchased Music. Any/all music you’ve ever purchased is available on iTunes at all times, even if you delete it from the cloud. Go into (iTS) iTunes Store, click Purchased, Sign-in, then see ALL vs. On My Computer music files. I had an issue where a Bob Dylan track (sensing a pattern here) would absolutely
not join the album it was supposed to be part of. I deleted the entire album from iTM/AM, cloud and all, then went to Purchased in the iTS, and re-downloaded it. No problems after that.Matched vs. Purchased vs. AM. I’ve only seen it happen once or twice and only with specific albums where a Purchased iTunes song (.m4a) got “matched” to iTM, thus sending down a duplicate, “matched” copy of the same song. I’ve not seen it affect Artists or Playlists–only a few songs on the same album. My guess is iTM didn’t pick up the purchased songs’ metadata and thought it was a ripped copy. A bug but not a showstopper. iTunes already has the option to find/display duplicate songs from the same or different albums so it’s not like Apple is just seeing duplicates for the first time show up in iTunes.AM DRM vs. iTM DRM-FREE. Apple predictably released a fix for this. Although I’ve not seen or been able to replicate it, it’s no surprise this was a bug, and clearly an easy one to fix.As an aside, the only bugs/issues I’ve encountered so far with AM have been the following two…Duplicates within specific albums by specific artists (i.e. Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson).“All [Music]” not showing up consistently on iOS. I have to click the artist I want to listen to, and if the “All” category doesn’t show up, I have to go back to the Artist list, then re-click the artist a 2nd time to get it to show. Definitely a bug, everyone I know right now with AM is having the same issue with All [Music] showing up.Were I to switch from AM, the only alternative I’ve seen (so far) that interests me with its capabilities has been Google Music. Otherwise, I’m sticking with AM for the foreseeable future. ?You kept your irreplaceable music on a hard drive that one day will die suddenly??You call yourself tech saavy but don’t even keep your most precious music backed up?So when certain music files were lost, you don’t have an immediate backup copy to use???That was a stupid INEXCUSABLE move.
The lost of your music files permanently is largely your fault, not totally Apple Music’s fault.SOLUTION:Always keep 3 physical backups of your precious data. Hard drives can be replaced, data cannot.Also backup online to CrashPlan. They allow you to keep backups of hard drives you do not always connect to your computer.
They also allow you to keep unlimited VERSIONS of your data. This way, if Apple Music or other app changes your music file, you will always have the original file to retrieve. New versions do not replace the old versions.If you did these correct backup methods, you wouldn’t be throwing a tantrum. You don’t lose your precious originals.Problems adding musicMy Library’s metadata has been wreak havoc-ed ??Songs take forever to load, and stops playing in the middle (while Spotify never does that on the SAME connection. Srsly, Spotify only takes 1-2 seconds to load while Apple Music takes 12-18 seconds on average)My device, which was running flawlessly on iOS 8.3, freezes sometimes when going to the Home Screen from the Apple Music app.Sometimes when I click a suggested album or playlist, it just doesn’t open!!!The UI is bloated, poorly organized. Never expected this from Apple, that’s sad. : /Takes a lot to load on my iPhone 6.Well, it truly is a nightmare, and I’m glad I didn’t cancel Spotify. If only Soptify had a Music Locker like Google Play.(Assuming you don’t do a restore), deleted every song off my phone. Wipe the song library completely from your phone. You could try to delete just the problematic music files on your phone, but I wanted to start from scratch…Drag the songs you want back onto your phone. Bam… That’s it. *If the songs transfer but the artist listings are inconsistent, you can [Command + i] change the Album Artist name so that it’s the same the artist name.That should do it. Good luck.