Hi, this is Libby Owens, and you're listening to the award-winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books.

I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology,

which you should run out and buy called Moms Don't Have Time to, a quarantine anthology.

All proceeds of that book go to COVID-19 vaccine research.

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Okay, now back to this amazing podcast.

Eleni Gage is the author of Lucky and Love, traditions, customs, and rituals to personalize your wedding, but she's also

written many other books, formerly the articles editor at Oath, the Oprah Magazine, and the executive

editor at Martha Stewart Weddings, Eleni is a freelance writer and editor and the author

of the travel memoir, North of Ithaca, the novels Other Waters, and the Ladies of Managua,

and the folklore-filled gift book Lucky and Love, which I just talked about, the daughter of a

Greek father and a Minnesotan mother. Eleni lives in Manhattan with her Nicaraguan husband

and their Greek-Araguan children. Welcome, Eleni. Thank you so much for coming on Momsdon, have time to read books to discuss your many books, including Lucky and Love, Traditions, Customs, and Rituals to Personalize Your Wedding, but also your novels and your memoir. And you've got just so much going on. I don't even know where to begin. Look who's talking. I was just saying, moms don't have time to read. And yet you're getting everything done. That's amazing. Barely. Barely. I try. Thank you. So let's talk about Lucky and Love. And what made you want to write sort of this beautiful, by the way,

and for people listening, it's a hardback cover red book with this beautiful gold, you know,

not embroidery, I don't even know, decoration on the front. And this is like the perfect gift

for anybody who gets engaged, by the way. So just store that away in your minds. If you need an engagement gift, and actually my cousin's engaged so I could give this to her if I get organized enough to send it, which I will do after this. So anyway, tell me a little bit more about. Well, congratulations to your cousin. Thank you. Well, first of all, the red and the gold, you know, red is obviously a lucky color in Asian cultures because of life force and blood, but also it looks a little bit like a Cartier box that an engagement ring might come in, right? So that's part of it. And I will say it's a beautiful book, and I had nothing to do with that because I did not do the illustrations, which I love. An artist named Emily Isabella did. But as to why I wrote it, I studied folklore mythology in

college and I love rituals. I think they're so important. I think that's one of the things

that was missing during quarantine. I think our society is losing our rituals and cultures a little

bit and we need more and we need to make new ones. And I think they feed our soul. And then in my professional

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