In the Shameless Self-Promotion Department, I have started a blog on newsobserver.com that will run through my daughter's June wedding. It is at http://fatherofthebride.newsobserver.com. It was launched Monday, the day before my story on the same subject ran in our Life, etc. section of The News & Observer. The story was published under an illustration by Tim Lee, a very talented N&O artist. The caricature -- an image of a sweaty, swarthy, bug-eyed, middle-aged bald man sausaged into an ill-fitting tux -- wasn't really me, notwithstanding the hurtful consensus of my so-called friends here.

Blogging is hard work if done anywhere near well. It has become a whole new source of guilt for me. Typically, I have only been guilty about not exercising enough and watching "Reba." Now I have two blogs (my other one is on share.triangle.com). A blog has to be fed constantly, and it should have utility. It should be more than a Twitter.

A digression: For the uninitiated, Twitter.com is a place where people say what they are doing at any given moment. Originally, I had just one entry in my Twitter account: "Sitting at my desk. Working. 12:37 PM September 18, 2007." Realizing that most of my entries would read like that, I stopped going there. But then I'm thinking, what if the boss checks? Bosses peek at Twitter. So I'm thinking about resuming with this kind of entry so as to put me in good: "2:45 AM October 6, 2007. Been working for hours on new value-added strategic plan. Desperately need sleep ... but this is so important to the company."

At any rate, I hope you visit my new blog -- which will be more than just a Twitter -- and post your own comments (you can do that pretty easily at the bottom of each post), particularly about your own wedding experiences. Particularly from similarly situated fathers of brides. I have already heard from one guy who gave me the Three S's advice: Sit down, shell out and shut up. Thanks. I had a long talk about favor boxes Friday, which I am stunned to admit.

Any questions and suggestions are welcomed. I am not an expert in weddings, but I am becoming an expert in what it's like to march toward this event as a father, which is a perspective you don't often see in bridal magazines.

I am restraining my impulse to put the catering contract online as a PDF. It is two pages, single-spaced.

I would also invite you to check out the other blogs on newsobserver.com, of which we have a bunch. The easiest way to find them is to go to the tool bar on the home page and look, logically enough, for the button that says "Blogs." If you pull down the blog menu, you will see my "Father of the Bride" link between restaurant critic Greg Cox's "Epicurean" blog and Joe Miller's "Get Out! Get Fit!" blog. It has a nice symmetry to it, because Greg points you to the best short ribs and Joe helps you work them off.

Our nearly two dozen blogs are a way to peek into reporters' notebooks and personalities. Reporters learn a lot in their daily hunt for news, but only a fraction of it can make it into the paper for space reasons. Before blogs, we didn't have many places to put this extra stuff that might be interesting but couldn't fit. One of my favorite N&O blogs is Under the Dome, which is a digital, intra-day version of the print feature The N&O has run for more than 70 years. This is written mainly by Ryan Teague Beckwith, and it reflects his high energy. It is not unusual for the blog to have 15-20 entries a day (he gets help from editors Bill Krueger and Michelle Valenzuela and other reporters).

I would kill to be able to blog as often and well as Ryan, but I will just have to do my sweaty and bug-eyed best. We'll see whether that's good enough.

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