sì, tutto cangerà

Pro Tip - Never drop the word wedding while planning if you don’t need to. Most things can be for “an event you’re planning.” This obviously doesn’t include things like the venue, DJ (who needs specific wedding songs), and the wedding dress company if you’re going that route versus just buying a dress.

For my wedding I got “discounted” cupcakes, flowers, decor, bridesmaids dresses, groomsman attire, and invitations. I did this by either searching for things that aren’t marketed for weddings or not telling the companies I was working with it was for a wedding. Because honestly, most of the time they don’t need to know why you’re ordering.

These companies target people planning their weddings and markup everything the second “wedding” is said. And it’s said often because people assume the services change exponentially for weddings. They absolutely do not. 

The best example are the cupcakes I had for my wedding. I used a designer cupcake store in town instead of spending $1000 on a wedding cake. If you place a large order of cupcakes with a cake tree for display - it costs about $150 for 100 (which is what I did). When you order their “wedding” package - the price raised to a $700 base for 100 cupcakes. The only other perk includes a “tasting.” Forget that. Our tasting was buying a few cupcakes in flavors we thought we’d like and picked three. It cost maybe $20. 

What these companies do is scummy and targets people who don’t have information about the event industry.

"Rainbow (Fancy Dress Costume Design)" (1860s) by Léon Sault

The first thing is that you have to preheat your oven, and also your pans on the stove. You think "oh I can just throw Thing in the oven and wait for it to come up to heat" that is the devil talking. Whatever you're cooking, you want it to go in the oven and the oven be a consistent temp and start those tasty chemical reactions that cook your food: crisping edges of veg, causing cookies to rise.

You also have to preheat your pan on the stove. Every time. You think "oh the pan is fine I'm gonna put Thing in it now" and then nothing happens so you turn up the heat thinking the stove needs to be hotter because Thing isn't cooking and then all of a sudden it's too hot and you ruined the Thing. Let the pan preheat. For several minutes. To test if your pan is hot, run your hand under the sink and flick a couple drops of water onto the pan. Sizzling? Good your pan is hot. Water just sitting there? It's not preheated.

Can't tell you how many times I've talked to someone who "can't cook" or "the recipe didn't come out right" and when I asked if they preheated the oven or pan the answer was no.

For example, Rigoletto. The libretto emphasizes that Gilda doesn't know her father's name, because he doesn't want her to know that he's Rigoletto, the court jester. But we the audience don't know his real name either, because "Rigoletto" is a professional nickname. It's derived from the French rigolet, "to laugh" or "to giggle." We have no idea what his birth name was.

Or Madame Butterfly, a.k.a. Cio-Cio-San. I think a common misconception is that "Cio-Cio-San" is her birth name, while "Madame Butterfly" is her geisha name. Not so. "Cio-Cio-San," or rather, "Chōchō-san," means "Madame Butterfly" or "Miss Butterfly" in Japanese. They're the same name – her geisha name. We never learn what she was called at birth.

In a subtle way, this adds to the tragedy of these characters. They're both marginalized figures who have no choice but to entertain (in very different way, of course) in order to survive, and cater to people who see them as less than human. Both of their professions force them to go by a name that reflects the role they play: his of comedy, hers of delicate beauty. And not even we, the audience, learn the real names they were given at birth.