When asked, "What is jazz?" Louis Armstrong reportedly answered, "If you gotta ask, you'll never know."
Now, there is something to be said for intuition, for just knowing something at the core of your being. And those sorts of things are often so difficult to put into words because they're based on pure emotion. You know it or you don't. That's what art, music, and dance are for - expressing things were words are just inadequate.
Unfortunately, I seem to have let this quote influence me a little too much. I just don't ask. I'm afraid to ask. And when you (and I) don't ask, you (and I) often miss out.
Recently, I've been stressing out about my wedding cake being gluten-free. So I decided to suck it up and ask. I researched gluten-free bakeries in the area where the wedding will be, and came up with this list of possibilities some of which aren't dedicated gluten-free, and some of which are, but I'm not sure if they do wedding cakes because I haven't asked:
There's just one thing. None of them are on the "approved vendors" list for my venue. I haven't asked the venue yet...but I thought I'd check with the approved vendors and see whether they can do gluten-free.
Out of five, one plainly stated on its website that it could not do gluten-free. Another I knocked out simply because I know what their kitchen is like, and didn't feel comfortable with a gluten-free cake coming out of it. A third emailed me back saying she couldn't do it safely because of cross-contamination issues. She was really nice about it, and I can totally appreciate her honesty.
To my surprise, the last two emailed me back to say they can do gluten-free! I'm still getting information from them (how they prevent cross-contamination being the big one), but if I hadn't asked, I would never have known.
Sometimes you just gotta ask.
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