It is considered the most important day of your life—and you don’t want to spend it worrying about tables, décor and dealing with vendors. Brides who want to plan their own festivities often feel overwhelmed by the way things will—or will not—come together on the big day, and St. Louis event organizer Kate & Company offers a unique semi-planning services to help these brides stay blushing, not flustered.

Story: Katha has a high-powered job in the city that keeps her in high-stress mode. Her husband Ryu is a plastic surgeon who seems always to be on the run. One day, when Katha by chance meets a dapper fellow named Dean on the street and inquires about his ‘retro’ look, he hands her a brochure about the Society of Dynamic Obsolescence.

If you’ve ever been through it, you have true sympathy for others. Trying to soothe a colicky baby is one of the greatest initial trials of parenthood. One day your baby starts to cry—and he keeps on crying. For weeks. And then...it stops as mysteriously as it began.

Food in America is more than a necessary aspect of survival: It’s a part of our language, culture and social experience. We gather around meals. Our idioms and phrases make food references. We represent and define areas and events by the meals or snacks that coincide. While this may be many people’s America, dinner isn’t on the table for every family. Despite misconceptions about hunger, a lack of food is a sincere problem for Americans every day, including the approximately 57,100 individuals who depend weekly on the St. Louis Area Foodbank.

Story: Chance and Money have been friends since childhood. They struggle to pay the bills in their Spin City neighborhood, but dream of having careers as hip-hop artists. When Money’s girlfriend Joi tells him that she is pregnant, Money sees joining the Army as the only way he can make a steady income to support his growing family. He departs for active duty, leaving Chance and their No Plan B hip-hop duo in mothballs.

The Champagne toasts and wedding cake may have passed, but there still is time for claiming whose is whose. Postnuptial agreements, the figurative younger sibling of the better-known prenuptial agreements, offer legal documentation of spousal understandings, should marital circumstances change in the future. But if you’re happily married, why bring attorneys into the picture?

Any time blood flow to the brain is interrupted, you have a serious problem. In many cases, this is known as a stroke, and it can have life-threatening and long-term consequences. In some cases, the body’s natural anti-clotting properties are able to break up the clot that is blocking blood flow. This is known as a ‘transient ischemic attack’ or TIA.

Belching is a sign of appreciation for a fine meal in some cultures. But it’s not such a positive thing when it’s accompanied by heartburn, coughing and throat irritation—the classic symptoms of GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease).

My oldest child is 11 years old. And I believe that if you do something every day for 11 years, experience alone should make one proficient. However, parenting is more of an art than a science. What works one day may not work the next, and there are many factors that contribute to the ebb and flow of family functioning.

As the executive director of Nurses for Newborns, Melinda Ohlemiller sees the struggles families face first-hand. “The families that we serve are in need in ways many of us could not imagine,” she says, recalling a recent home visit where a 4-year-old sibling sat on her lap and asked if she had a pencil. “She was so grateful; she had nothing to write with. We take a pencil for granted, and we take diapers for granted.” But despite the lack of basic necessities, “we also see incredible resiliency,” Ohlemiller notes. “Some of these families are beaten down, but they stand up, pick themselves up and move on. We want to be part of the solution. That’s our mission, to support them.”

One in 88. That is the stunning statistic defining how many American children have autism, based on recent research.

Story: Roz is struggling to make ends meet as the proprietor of a daycare facility. Her only employee, Joy, has taken early education classes and badly wants to work with children, but instead is stifled handling secretarial chores. It doesn’t help that she is Roz’s niece and has a troubled love life that she just as soon her aunt wouldn’t divulge to her mother

It’s a common sentiment: You want to be healthy and you want your children to be healthy. Exercising with your children provides benefits outside the realm of fitness.

Kim Eberlein (Volunteer Leadership)

Among the most common orthopedic injuries, rotator cuff tears cause shoulder pain and temporary disability for millions of people each year. And while we associate rotator cuff injuries with baseball pitchers who are constantly putting strain on the shoulder, this problem is most often diagnosed in adults age 60 and older.

The humble knee is a true orthopedic workhorse. With its combination of bone, cartilage, ligaments and fluid, it carries us through life—until something goes wrong.

The secret of Best Transportation’s success is out: In the past 10 years, sisters and company co-owners have built Best into the largest limousine/party bus/shuttle service company in St. Louis.

For most of us, work is stressful. But for Avani Nayak, her job actually makes her more relaxed. “We have a beautiful, relaxing atmosphere; and it always smells wonderful in here,” she says of her Avani Day Spa in Frontenac. “And I love seeing the looks on people’s faces when they leave: They’re smiling and have more self-confidence, and they feel relaxed and invigorated.” We asked her about the rough and dirty business of getting the best care for your skin.

When Nicki Myers’ son, Reece, was 18 months old, he itched so much he bled from scratching. Reece suffers from eczema, a non-contagious, inflammatory skin condition that may be caused by an array of triggers. “He had a moderate to severe rash on his lower legs and arms that became so inflamed and irritated he would scratch in his sleep,” says Myers. “He’d wake up with open wounds, and it was quite hard to manage.” The Ladue mom recalls slathering her child’s legs with various prescription and over-the-counter creams and ointments, and then wrapping them with gauze and compression bandages to prevent Reece from continuing to scratch.

Following an engagement at Busch Stadium, a local couple welcomed guests to their wedding weekend with a Cardinals’ galvanized pail of game-day treats at the Hilton St. Louis at the Ballpark Hotel.

Story: It’s a typical morning at the Goodman household. Dan is getting ready to leave for work, while Diana rouses their son and daughter for school. It becomes quickly apparent, though, that all is now well when Diana begins to make sandwiches on the kitchen floor.

A backyard is just a backyard—until you turn it into something more. Outdoor living spaces are gaining in popularity and have potential to increase a home’s value and saleability. And there is almost no end to the number of uses they can serve for your family. We asked experts for creative ideas to make the great outdoors a selling point for your home—whether you’re putting it on the market in five years, or next month.