GRANDE SKINNY WHIPPED UPSIDE DOWN MACCHIATO PLEASE

I think I had a coffee revelation today. I've never really loved coffee. Growing up, my idea of coffee was a 1:1:1 mixture of coffee, creamer and sugar, which I would prepare myself as a 5-year-old at the Fresh Market. (Just a tiny cup, of course, in my mom's defense.)

I prefer the caffe mocha- almost the perfect ratios.

As you get older, it isn't really socially acceptable to be seen putting that much cream and sugar into your coffee. Acceptable colors are black, and "really close to" black.

At first I tried to hide the color in a lidded coffee cup, but the sweet syrupy smell gave me away every time. So I started thinking, how do I get the caffeine, without the coffee? (Even better, without the calories?)

I first came across caffeine supplements like NoDoz during my paramedic days, when I had to stay up for 36 hours at a time. So, for the past few years, I've been taking a quarter of a caffeine pill (that's less than one cup of coffee, but enough to prevent withdrawal headaches because I can't seem to completely wean off of it.)

IT'S A NICE DAY FOR A WHITE [COAT] WEDDING

My personality has changed a lot during medical school.

(Or so I hear.)

In my opinion, I just have a lot less patience in general. Grocery store lines, traffic– I just can't handle it as well anymore. My mom says I'm just more concise and to the point (much like the doctors she works with), and I agree. Why use 20 words when two will suffice?

Even conversations have become more like patient presentations. You better have a point, and get there quick.

So when it comes to planning a wedding, the same rules apply. If someone asks what kind of glassware to use at the reception, I want a limited number of discrete options.  Even better, a well-formatted comparison table in Excel with bullet points. Which one is more expensive? Does the other one contain lead? Are plastic cups couture yet?

Don't get me wrong. Like every other engaged female, I want a perfectly-executed (down to the second) beautiful wedding that people talk about for 10 years.

The wedding industry is a well-oiled machine. They've got things down to a science. Why isn't there any initiative to streamline the process?

My humble hypothesis is that it has something to do with bridal hype- TV shows like Bridezillas (guilty pleasure), huge bridal shows, magazines and now websites and Twitter accounts. Being a bride has become a 1-2 year marathon (Miss America?) rather than a one-day sprint. If the process was streamlined, brides AND planners would be out of business. (I now wonder if the articles, dresses and "new" DIY projects are just cataloged and recycled every 5 years.)

I kind of get it. It's fun to flip through a wedding magazine and rip out pages of ideas. But in the end, society had still allocated only one "official" day for us brides to temporarily sabotage everyone else's lives, and no one else- not even the groom- will remember much more than the food (and if the dress was hideous or not) ten short days later.