#save up them diamonds because the premium stories are absolutely WORTH IT

[ohnoohnoohnonotagain]

Playing the interlude route is driving me INSANE

In a good way

I think

[elizabethschoices]

The Freshman, Book 4, Chapter Three: My Thoughts

Are we even legal to drink alcohol?

Alright, so the chapter starts off with Zack being a horrible driver on a bad road. #IBelieveIt We’re headed to the Ashtons’ summer home in Roxbury, and apparently it’s hella off the grid because there’s no maintenance on the roads. Lovely. Zack’s tires are gonna be fuuuuuuuuucked.

Same, Zig. Same.

Zack is poking fun at how snobby Mr. and Mrs. Ashton are, and good guy Chris defends them. We’ve met them before, so we of all people should know, right? Well, I didn’t love them, but they were tolerable. I did have a thing for James and they actually kind of brought us together, which I love. Even though I broke up with James, I still respect him greatly and would be open to getting back together under the condition he quits wearing that hipster outfit and that he’s not a douche anymore. It was hard breaking up with him because I was so whipped for him in all three books, but then he kind of turned into a fuckboy and that is #NotMyStyle.

I’ll say James’ parents are an acquired taste, because that’s exactly what they are. Some will like them, some won’t. MC advises them that while it’s okay for us to stay at their place, we should be on our best behavior. And honestly, that’s what any decent guest should do. Don’t act like an ape at someone else’s expense.

Good news! James’ parents are letting up on the writing thing, which is great! I was hoping they would come around. James is such a natural at writing and he genuinely loves the craft. That should be enough for parents, even if I do understand wanting the legacy to continue on and wanting a good, stable life for their child. At some point, you have to learn to let baby bird fly away.

Hopefully his parents aren’t still upset about the fiancée thing, ‘cause that would suck. Build a bridge, bruh. They’d probably be less upset though if we were still with James. But alas, that ship has sailed and I’m not getting back on it unless I see changes.

That’s right, Zig doesn’t know about basically anything our group has gone through in the first two books! Story time?

Almost story time. Damn you, Zack, for finding the house and shit. And apparently James has left the house unlocked for us, which I think is dumb. Just because you’re in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean people won’t come steal your stuff. Also, be a good host and greet your damn guests at the door!

Alright, we get the staircase from the Cordonia’s castle! You’d think they could be a little more original with it. We first meet up with James’ mother, Olivia. She remembers us! Kind of hard to forget the woman that pretended to be engaged to your son though. Especially on the same night that your son admits he’s been lying to you for months now and is actually planning on doing nothing with the family firm you’ve been guiding him to all his life...

The boys leave the room and we’re left alone with Mrs. Ashton. She’s being very hospitable, and I wouldn’t have really expected anything else. What’s the point of being rude to someone you allowed into your home? We’ll tell Mrs. Ashton that it’s a pleasure to see her again, because it is. I’d rather just start from scratch with James’ parents, honestly.

Approval points for politeness!

She smiles at us!!! She seems to be on the same page as me. Mrs. Ashton then apologizes to us for being pulled into the middle of family problems that we had absolutely nothing to do with and she says she doesn’t hold our deceit against us. At least she knows how loyal we are to her boy!

‘Dear friend’

Is that all he said about us? And by us, I mean the people who dated James and then broke up with him when he was being a fuckboy?

All of the boys come back from moving the luggage, and Mrs. Ashton asks us about our trip. Honestly, during school, I never had anything to do over the summer, so I’d be looking forward to this trip. Approval points for not wanting to be lazy!

‘I’m not really one to sit around the house all summer’

This MC is not me. The past six summers I was forced to stay home and babysit. :/

James’ father George arrives! I hope he’s also chill with us. He says it’s nice to see us, so it’s a start! He introduces himself to the boys. Mr. Ashton pinpoints Chris as the football star of our group, and says he used to play rugby before school got in the way. Chris can sympathize, as being student body president isn’t easy to juggle life with. We can all recognize that, after all the shit from Book 3 that went down.

James’ father is impressed with that! Aaaaand they’re kind of down in the dumps about James not having that to add on his résumé. Olivia seems really upset that the movie deal fell through. I wonder how much James told his parents about what happened in LA.

Hmm, what to say... I don’t really feel like I have the right to tell them that it’s James’ life and not there’s. That’s something only James can say. Also, where is James, exactly? Anyway, we’ll tell her he left because he was miserable.

Ooooh, approval points!

She understands. She loves her son and wants the best for him, but doesn’t want him to hit an emotional health low. Good mama. His papa was worried about him too. They really do love their son, people who said that they didn’t. So take that!

OH FUCKING HELL HE’S STILL WEARING THAT STUPID HIPSTER OUTFIT THAT IS NOT THE JAMES I FELL FOR EWWWWWWW

James enters the room suddenly and I hope he plans on changing his clothes before we leave because otherwise I’m not letting him in the fucking van. DON’T HUG ME WITH THOSE GLASSES ON DAMMIT I’LL LET THE FLANNEL SLIDE BECAUSE I LOVE PLAID BUT THIS IS RIDICULOUS.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be so salty if the red in the shirt was a blue color. Like a darker blue, almost purple shade. And the glasses were gone because they look dumb. And honestly, I’m fine with the shirt he’s got on underneath the plaid one.

The Ashtons are heading for a vacation in Greece, so the place will be all ours. Oh lordy. There’s a winery; we’re gonna get smashed. Can we get some kind of drama to this story now? It’s kind of boring with all this setup. There better be decent payoff, because nobody likes foreplay without an orgasm. Well, some people do, but not in the literary sense, anyway.

Zack is teasing James on the plaid.

James says it’s summer, so he’s gotta stay cool. And then he mentions his lightweight sweaters are at the dry cleaners. <3 But, let’s be honest, PB didn’t feel like animating new designs. The only one so far who has gotten lucky is Zack. Bastard.

James tells us he’ll be at Hartfeld next year, as he didn’t get all of his credits the previous year. And I’m sitting here like ‘i thought he was a junior this whole time shit’

Super senior James! That feels odd to say.

He says it’ll be good for him and give him more time to figure things out. He may even stay longer! Might as well start on a master’s degree. He says he’d like to enjoy the real world though.

Tour time! Horses first! After our latest encounter in The Royal Romance, all I can say that will make this chapter worth playing is if Drake saves us from being run over. Otherwise, I’m pretty bored.

Same background as in The Royal Romance too. Does that bug anyone else like it bugs me? It’s just the continuity of it all and I’m kind of OCD in that sense and it messes with me, not because I think that PB should design a new background for everything.

Zack tells a total dad joke and James might as well just prep himself for the road trip because that’s all it’s gonna consist of.

AWWW ZIG IS PETTING A HORSE AND HE’S SO GIDDY ABOUT IT

He likes animals! Ugh, he’s such a dork and I love him.

Lmao a horse is using us to rest its head on. Same. We’ll ask for the horse’s name.

Shut up, Chris, that was meant for James to intercept and tell us.

Apples McHooves? What the hell, Zack? He must be inhaling leftover pot from the van.

The horse’s name is Ezra! Isn’t that the teacher dude from PLL? Idk, all I know about PLL is what’s on Episode. Also, didn’t they say they would update that in January? I haven’t seen an update on it yet!

YES I WANT TO EARN THE HORSE’S LOVE FOREVER AND IF YOU WANT TO EARN MINE TAKE OFF THE GLASSES FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

Yaaaay, we get to feed him! Maybe Zack should get a pet! He’d probably like a cat. They’re lovely. Assholes, but also lovely.

We inform James on the breakup and for the billionth time we’re hearing about it. Good god end this torture.

Fuck me I hope this is a premium choice ‘cause I’m gonna skip it so hard!

FUCK YEAH PREMIUM CHOICE WOOOO THIS DAMN CHAPTER WILL END SOON!

Sorry, Ezra. And sorry, Zig. But I have no interest in horseback riding as it is. At least James will back us up, even if he does have his sad face on. Fuck you and your attempted guilt trip, game.

Nap time!

Zack wakes us up when they’re done.

Wine cellar time!

Who needs this much wine?

Is this all this chapter is going to be? The boys amazed at the richness and me being bored out of my mind?

James takes us to where the magic happens, in his own words. I wonder if they make the wine themselves of if they have it made for them?

Little bit of both.

Ahh, here’s where the MC gets to make a fool of herself. We fall into the vat of grapes. Lovely feeling, I’m sure. At least James is cool about it.

OH FUCK FOOD FIGHT MAYBE JAMES WILL CHANGE HIS FUCKING CLOTHES AFTER

Chris, did you really need to remind all of us that you’re a quarterback?

Also, this is not our best behavior.

I just noticed Chris is wearing that hot white shirt of his again. Sweet!

Alone time with James now. I wonder if they were creative enough to do the ‘we were in a relationship and now we’re not’ kind of connection between books.

James grinning ‘wolfishly’ is so fucking hot omg

20 diamonds for a food fight part 2? DA FUCK?!

Nah, I’m fine.

After cleaning up and having dinner, we head to bed. Someone’s at the door though. James?

Yup.

We chat with him a bit about the bed and how he’s got plans for us in the Big Apple. And then we finally hit the end.

Until next week! Hopefully I’m more entertained by it.

[freehealthguider]

How to save money on your big day

How to save money on your big day

I recently got engaged, which of course means everyone who has ever been married, been to a wedding or watched Love Actually has tracked me down with explicit instructions on how best to plan our big day. The advice varies wildly, aside from one key element: everyone is absolutely correct.

You don’t want your wedding to be too big, as it becomes too impersonal, but you don’t want it too small either, as this is your one big day, and why not make it a large celebration? They use their own wedding as the litmus test for how big or small is too big or small, insisting their day was perfect. To them, it was.

People who talk to you about weddings suddenly become stoic philosophers, offering circular meditations like “it’ll cost what it costs”, “this day only comes around once” and “it will be perfect, even if things don’t go perfectly”. Perfect.

Choosi released its Cost Of Love report last month, which clocked the average price of an Australian wedding at $24,660. MoneySmart has it at $36,200, which jives with most of the anecdotal evidence I’ve heard.

FOR MORE STORIES LIKE THIS GO TO NEWS.COM.AU

Both figures seem unreasonable to me and Choosi’s findings suggest I’m not alone in this thinking, with 90.7 per cent of those surveyed claiming the cost is too high. Yet, that’s the average cost. That’s a serious disconnect between what people think and what they do.

The actual day itself is just one element, too. There’s a buck’s party, a hen’s party, a bridal shower, an engagement party, a rehearsal dinner, a post-wedding brunch, a honeymoon, the flash mob Thriller dance, rehearsals for the flash mob Thrillerdance, hiring someone to choreograph the flash mob Thriller dance. The list goes on.

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It’s not just the happy couple who are feeling the pinch either. For example, the Choosi report states $513 as the average cost of a hen’s or buck’s party. If you have a destination wedding, there are travel costs, time off work, plus those three cans of Red Bull you need to stay awake through the actual ceremony.

In short: weddings are expensive.

An article ran on this website last Wednesday in which a bride spoke of the cost of her Byron Bay wedding blowing out from $35K to $50 large. (Sorry, weddings make me talk like a ’30s mobster.) Despite this 43 per cent blowout, she mostly seemed pleased they didn’t go into debt, rightly stating: “At the end of the day it’s only one day and you don’t want to be having to pay that back for years and years.”

This is true — going into that much debt for a wedding seems like madness. So does spending $50,000 on a single day, regardless of how pretty everything will look after being shrunk into a phone-sized square and washed out with the Nashville filter. In the aforementioned article, the bride referred to herself as a “huge saver”, which just means she prepaid for years and years. It’s the same thing.

My fiancee was given some smart advice regarding the brutality involved in culling a guest list: break the costs down per head, then decide if that person is worth, let’s say, $150 of your own money. This will help separate the wheat from the chaff, but such mathematical valuing of your loved ones could cast a pall over the entire day as you see invisible dollar amounts hovering over the heads of your guests like an energy bar in a video game.

It seems people regard the money spent on weddings as being in a separate currency with a different exchange rate. Flowers are suddenly thousands of dollars, napkin rings are worth dropping half a week’s wages on, and shoes that will be completely covered by a wedding dress are worth the GDP of a small landlocked nation.

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The entire industry is set up to bleed you of money, under the hard-to-argue premise that this is your special day. The amount of pressure put on the happy couple to spend up big is substantial. Cutting corners on your wedding day seems ominous somehow, like a dark distillation of how much you value the marriage itself. It is also an industry where there is considerable pressure to match the weddings of those around you. There is pressure to spend a truckload of money, then to downplay how much you actually spent. Seemingly throwaway decisions take on seismic proportions, as now you are planning a $50,000 event, and so everything has to go smoothly. Not smoothly, perfectly. See how the wind is blowing the tablecloth corners up so the bare wooden legs are now visible? That’s because you were too stingy to fork out $900 on the diamond-plated tablecloth weights.

Now the wedding, and by extension the marriage and your future-children’s job prospects, are irrevocably destroyed.

We won’t be burdening any of our parents for money to pay for our wedding, as it is no longer 1955 (despite what our bridal-twist dance may suggest), but many couples still expect the bride’s parents to fork out for the pleasure of watching some dude in an ill-fitting suit marry their daughter in a church that cost more to rent than their first house was to buy. I’ve known people whose parents took out a second mortgage on their house to facilitate a party for a marriage that lasted just over a year. They’d have been better off investing in ostrich farming, or Nokia ringtones.

Here’s an outrageous fee I’ve only just learned exists. How much do you expect to pay for a wedding cake? Regardless of how high you punted that number in your head just then, it’s actually a lot higher as, according to mywedding.com, a lot of venues “require a cake-cutting fee that ranges from $1-$7 per guest”. Keep in mind, this site is American, making that higher-end figure $9.60. You invite 200 guests and you’re looking at $1920 extra just for someone to divvy up the cake in those tiny, square, fun-sized portions. (Some restaurants do this too and call it “cakeage”, which would be cute if I wasn’t fuming at the concept.) This is on top of the cake cost, which starts at $650 for one of those three-tier types. You know, the one that the guy dives through in the November Rain clip. If I ever see a bride at a wedding glaring furiously at some little kid whining about how he doesn’t want his cake, I will know why.

Doltone House runs a venue hire and catering company in Sydney. They offer a number of reasonably priced wedding packages, one of which includes the hire of a mirrored wishing well and a crystal chandelier. There also seems to be an undue amount of importance placed on the table centrepieces; Doltone offers a consultancy service for this element alone. Not wishing to be outdone, Ava Event Styling offers up a Pinterest board featuring the 642 Best Wedding Centrepieces and all I see are different variations of flowers in kettles, all presented on white table-clothes that look like oversized doilies.

Because weddings seem to exist in this parallel universe that reflects in no way the actual value of items, services become a lot dearer, too.

I have played in bands over the years and worked as a music journalist, so I know how much musicians are paid in the real world. In weddingland, however, a band can charge $5000 for three 45-minute sets. Those are covers sets too, so you’re not paying a premium for the fact you hired You Am I or anything; these are people playing the same 40 songs you hear at any wedding — or any RSL club on a Thursday night for that matter. As Charles Dickens once wrote: “No wedding is so classy that it can’t be spoiled by an off-key cover of the Goo Goo Dolls.” Want a DJ instead? First of all, you know it’s just a guy playing songs off his iPhone, right? Secondly, that will cost you $3000. And he won’t even have MMMBop.

The Cost Of Love report found the main place people cut costs was on a videographer, with 58 per cent of people highlighting this as the area they most scrimped on. The main areas of scrimpage seem to be those that can be replicated with technology: photography, videos, invitations and entertainment were all in the top rung of areas where people cut costs; all of which can be crowdsourced from phone-toting guests, or done through the wonders of email.

Our wedding isn’t for another year or so, which means we have plenty of time to think about what’s important to us. Mainly, it’s people. We’ve already decided not to waste money on things that don’t mean anything to us, while making sure everything is as photogenic and pretty as possible. Luckily, beauty and taste don’t equal dollars. The most expensive weddings can often look garish and cheap, while a simple garden fare with tea-candles and a small group of people who cherish each other can look and feel a million dollars.

At the end of the day, no matter what type of wedding we land on, whether it rains, or hails, or gets shut down by the police because we forgot to put the permit in, we know we will be deliriously happy with the end result. We will arrive separately, and leave married. Which sounds like the perfect wedding.

Nathan Jolly is a Sydney-based writer who specialises in pop culture, music history, true crime and true romance. Follow him on Twitter @nathanjolly

While we’re on the topic, this is Meghan Markle’s daily ritual to combat wedding stress. Plus, a guide to Australia’s best wedding dining destinations.

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