OPINION: DO NOT LET SOMEONE WRITE ABOUT YOUR WEDDING

Vogue ran a piece last week about this very expensive and eye-roll-inducing wedding in the Hamptons. Naturally, it is the subject of much Internet condescension, because it includes details like

To ensure everyone followed the right path toward the ceremony structure, performance artists donning butterfly headdresses provided directions.

and

"Desserts were passed around on the dance floor on long, wooden snakelike structures . . . lollipops and cakes dangled like ornaments to be plucked!"

and

Guests were given papier-mâché masks of famous artists throughout history to wear during the ceremony, so that the couple could feel as though their inspirations were present for the event.

(That last quote isn't real, but I bet you couldn't tell that at first.) These articles always make the subjects look like total assholes, with overly extravagant taste and a flair for the unnecessary and overdone. Nobody reads an article about someone else's wedding -- unless it's a British royal getting hitched, then we're all "HEY LET'S BUY COMMEMORATIVE SPOONS THEY'RE SO CUTE" -- and reacts to it positively.

This is because a wedding is basically the most selfish event you will ever throw. They usually involve thousands of dollars and asking people to take vacation days to get dressed up and eat blackberry cobbler out of a tiny tin watering can inside a refurbished barn that doesn't have air conditioning. We are all okay with this because a) we are your friends and family and b) in theory, you only ask us to do this once in your life.

I'm not gonna kill these people for their choices, stupid as I think some of them are. It's your wedding, and you should be allowed to be as ostentatious and gauche as you like. Somebody's kids are going to college because you wanted an ice sculpture of the groom as Indiana Jones at the buffet table, so it's whatever.

But, goddamn, do not go around letting people publish articles about your wedding! You are intentionally exposing yourself to an audience that does not care about you or your feelings. They will take the details you planned so painstakingly, rip them to shreds, and use them as floss. They will call you trash humans and remind you how many homeless children go unfed and unsheltered while you sup on aubergine bisque. (It's not "eggplant" at your wedding and any motherfucker that calls it that will be asked to leave.)

Why would you willingly subject yourself to that when you don't have to? And, again, you absolutely don't have to. You can have the exact wedding you want, silly frills and all, and it never has to grace the pages of Vogue or the New York Times or Garden & Gun. Nobody will ever know about all the shit you spent way too much money on. Except your friends, of course. They're gonna judge you either way; they'll just have the decency to do it somewhere less visible than Twitter.