That was my first thought but I was worried that that might confuse our little believer guests… but Santa is making an appearance shortly after the ceremony for everyone!

Cleaning and panicking. We are hosting the Christmas Eve party, which we always do, but this year I am also throwing my surprise wedding during the party; guests just think I hired a professional photographer to do nice pictures with Santa. Otherwise… no one except us and the officiant know

Organizations doing direct service are almost always in need of cash flow. Any cash donations are a good thing.

It’s a shame that when these large, public donations are allocated they are almost always one time, to one organization, and the organization is almost always a downstream intervention. Feeding people who are hungry is necessary, correct, important and ethical. But there are MANY organizations who are also not for profit who are doing work to address, for example, root causes of hunger and homelessness, or who are doing advocacy to change policies that have made affordable housing inaccessible, or who are working with people who are homeless to help them get I9 ready (which usually includes covering fees to get replacement ID, copies of SS card or birth carts, etc) so that they are eligible to seek employment, etc. These organizations are usually not the recipients of these kind of large, flash in the pan donations because the PR effect isn’t as big. It would be great to see these types of orgs, who work in tandem with and not in opposition to orgs like soup kitchens, also receive the same kind of cash influx to sustain their work, which in turn helps places like soup kitchens sustain their work by reducing demand for those services.

Money going back to the community is always good. There might be ways it could’ve been even better, but that doesn’t mean this wasn’t good.