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I cry at every wedding.

Not like one tasteful tear either. Real tears. Streams. Sniffling. Occasionally staring aggressively at the sky or ceiling like that’ll somehow stop the tears from coming out. It’s become one of the more consistent things in my life.

Death. Taxes. Cael crying at weddings.

I’m also officially entering the phase of life where it feels like I’m going to a wedding every weekend. That’s obviously not actually true, but there are a lot of them. And for the record, I’m not complaining. Getting invited to someone’s wedding is one of the coolest honors in friendship.

A save-the-date is basically a friendship trophy.

You’ve done enough life with this person, survived enough trips, dinners, bad decisions, group chats, breakups, fantasy football arguments, whatever, that they decided they want you there for one of the biggest days of their life.

That’s pretty sick. Financially devastating at times, but sick.

Anyways, back to the crying.

For a while I assumed I cried because I cared about the people getting married. Logical theory. You watch one of your best friends get married, hear their parents talk about them, think about how long you’ve known them, and boom. Waterworks.

Then I went to a wedding where I knew literally no one.

It was one of my girlfriend’s college friends. I had never met the bride. Never met the groom. Didn’t know their families. Had absolutely no emotional investment in these people.

This was my control group. Surely I could make it through this one like a normal adult male. Nope.

The vows started, I had drank one vodka soda, and within minutes I had tears running down my face watching two complete strangers tell each other how much they loved one another.

Great. Good to know.

So I started trying to figure out what the hell is actually happening to me at these things.

And I think I figured it out. Weddings are one of the only places where people consistently say the nice stuff out loud.

Really, really nice stuff. The best stuff.

A dad gets up and tells his daughter how proud he is of her. Then he looks at the groom and tells him he’s everything he ever hoped his daughter would find. A mom talks about how proud she is of the man her son became. A best friend gets up and says the bride is the most loyal, generous person he knows. People say “I love you.” They say “I’m proud of you.” They say “You make my life better.”

And nobody thinks it’s weird. For a few hours, everyone drops the bit.

I think that’s what gets me.

Because outside of weddings, we’re kinda terrible at this. We think nice things about people all the time and then just… don’t say them.

I feel this way about work a lot too.

I’ve always hated the whole “no news is good news” management philosophy. What a shitty system. Your employee goes six weeks without hearing anything and is supposed to interpret silence as praise.

“Hey, am I doing okay?”

“Well, nobody has complained.”

Awesome. Fired up. Ready to run through a wall.

Imagine using that logic anywhere else.

Your fiancé cooks you dinner every night and you never tell her it’s good because if it sucked, you’d obviously let her know.

Your buddy shoots the best round of golf of his life and you refuse to acknowledge it because you only provide feedback when his swing falls apart.

It’s semi psychotic behavior that we’ve normalized in the work place…

Obviously you don’t need to blow smoke up everyone’s ass all day. Not everything deserves a standing ovation. But if someone does something well, tell them.

“Great job on that.”

“That was a really good idea.”

“You handled that well.”

Tiny sentences. Completely free. I personally could be wayyyy better at this. These small “Attaboys” can genuinely stick with someone for years.

I can still remember random compliments I’ve gotten from bosses, coaches, teachers, friends, family. The person saying it probably forgot about it five minutes later. I did not.

Redo Recover to the damn rescue

This whole idea of saying something before it’s too late has actually been top of mind at Mugsy too.

We’ve been testing Redo Recover. If someone gets deep into checkout and drops off, a real person can text them, answer a question, remove some friction, and sometimes get the order back.

Pretty simple.

Maybe they had a sizing question. Maybe shipping confused them. Maybe they got distracted and never came back. Maybe they just needed a tiny nudge.

The important part is you’re actually addressing the friction instead of waiting around and hoping “no news is good news.”

Which, as we’ve established, is a shitty strategy basically everywhere.

What I like about Recover is we didn’t have to bolt on some giant new tool or build another weird workflow. It was basically sitting inside Redo, which we were already using for returns, and we could just turn it on.

Sometimes the answer really is just: reach out sooner.

We save way too much of the good stuff for weddings, retirement speeches, going-away parties and funerals.

Why?

If your friend is an incredible friend, tell them.

If your employee is crushing it, tell them.

If you’re proud of your sibling, tell them.

If someone makes your life better, send them a text & just let them know.

You shouldn’t need a microphone, an open bar and 175 people in black tie optional to say a nice thing.

Maybe that’s why weddings get me. For one night, everyone says the stuff they usually leave unsaid. And apparently my body’s reaction to basic human sincerity is to start leaking from the eyes. And yes, I’m an ugly crier. There’s actually a few pictures but it’s so bad I can’t even put them in here.

Could be worse. Sorry for loving love.

See you next week.