For my 40th, I couldn’t have just handed it off to a planner. I have met myself, and that was never happening.

I do not believe a party is the food or the room. It is the hundred decisions nobody is supposed to notice—the seating logic, the memorable takeaways, the menu, the Diet Coke fountain. Forty looked like a woman who placed every name card herself. Correct.

The point was never that it was perfect. The point was that every choice meant something to me, and that’s just how I operate for every special occasion I’m throwing.