Melissa Petro

[I]t looks like our wedding will cost us more like $10,000. That is a hell of a lot of money. Still, it’s our one and only wedding. And for a wedding in Manhattan that includes most of the typical expenditures [...] that’s not too bad. Here’s what I’ve learned about how to make your big day (relatively) less expensive.

My relationship with my father was never father-daughter picnics. Maybe when I was very little — or maybe this is less a memory and more of a wish — I have an image of myself as a very little girl sitting on my father’s lap, and we are both laughing. Perhaps my father enjoyed fatherhood when his children were very little, but that joy seemed to curdle into constant frustration as my brother and I grew up.

Especially if you’re a woman, people assume you’re hungry for a man.

Sure, "friends forever" sounds nice. In theory. But sometimes it's better that two people just not be friends.

Sometimes the fights I pick with my fiancé are really fights with myself.

Drunk or not, it’s a fact that white people are more prone to acting like assholes to authority figures—because we’re more likely to get away with it.

How do you break up with a best friend?

We’ve all been in a situation where we've thought NO ONE CAN EVER KNOW THAT THIS HAPPENED TO ME.

The biggest fashion mistake of my lifetime may not be what I wore, but what I didn’t.

Want to work responsibly on the issue of sex trafficking? Here’s some of what you should know.