Even though it seems like everyone I knew had weddings to attend on Saturday, mine and Graham’s departure party was totally excellent, and well-attended enough for me to feel worried about not being able to spend enough time with everyone (hosting is tough, yo). A few people still couldn’t be there, though, because apparently weddings are way more important than ME LEAVING FOREVER.

(Just kidding…for the most part.)

Of the photos posted on Facebook by the friends-who-went-to-weddings, three of these photos – taken at entirely separate weddings, mind you – were practically identical. It seems like my friends went to the Pinterestest of Pinterest weddings, and that I would not be incorrect if I hypothesized that Pinterest is less about design, style, and inspiration as it is about having the most generic wedding possible.*

The thing about Pinterest is this: a little inspiration here and there is a fine thing. It’s fine to see a photo of a pretty thing and want to duplicate it for yourself, and it’s fine to have a place where people can share these photos with one another. Not very many things are completely original, anyway, so if you see a pretty purple ombre cake and want it for your own, go ahead. Dip-dye the shit out of that thing.

But.

BUT.

When your wedding looks as though Pinterest barfed all over it, and a casual observer of a single photo of the festivities can tell that you have multiple wedding albums and have probably been caught jerking off to Nate Berkus even though he’s very gay (and you’re a lady), then you have not used Pinterest for its intended purpose, and for the love of god, please stop calling the things you duplicate from Pinterest your “ideas.” You haven’t gotten any ideas, because ideas aren’t the carbon copies of something someone else has done. You don’t have style or appreciate design, because both of those imply a sort of participatory action towards the evolution of a thing. You’re not building upon a concept, creating an image, or doing anything that occurred to you on its very own. Listen very carefully as I pull on my 8-year-old shoes and scream “STOP COPYING!”

The above shouldn’t piss anyone off, because the people who organize their entire wedding based on their Pinterest boards aren’t interesting or funny enough to pay attention to the jokes about people who organize their entire wedding based on their Pinterest boards, so they have no idea that it’s ridiculous to mimic about 700 other women’s “special day.”

I’m telling you this much, though: if I roll up to your reception and there’s a burlap table runner, I’m slamming my mismatched flatware down on my place setting and demanding to know why I RSVP’d to a wedding when what I clearly see is a soup kitchen.

*Once, when I was a kid, I went to the wedding of a family friend’s sister, and she had a mini-waterfall INSIDE OF HER CAKE. As an adult, I know that there was some sort of plastic flume feature that allowed this, but am still secretly amazed that this was offered at some Midwestern banquet hall, that it did not destroy the cake, and that my parents had the gall to cart their 4- and 2-year-old daughters to someone’s nighttime wedding reception.