Ellen McCarthy

Washington, D.C.

@WashingtonPost Weekend editor. Author of "The Real Thing: Lessons on Love and Life from a Wedding Reporter's Notebook."

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Articles

Toys are a scam - The Washington Post

Jan 9, 2025 | washingtonpost.com | Ellen McCarthy

Kids keep wanting them. Parents keep buying them. No one is playing with them.
Perspective | How to be a terrible cherry blossom tourist

Mar 16, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Ellen McCarthy |Hannah Good

It’s cherry blossom season again, which means more than a million visitors will be pouring into Washington to see the pretty pink trees along the Tidal Basin. We hope you come and have a fabulous time. But if you’d like to ruin the experience for yourself and everybody else, we have some tips on how to be a particularly loathsome cherry blossom tourist …
What $85 will get you at 5 flower shops in the D.C. area

Feb 8, 2024 | washingtonpost.com | Fritz Hahn |Zoe Glasser |Sophia Solano |Ellen McCarthy

Buying flowers can be fraught. Do red roses say too much? Do white carnations say too little? And that’s before you even get to the jaw-dropping price tags. We’re talking about flowers, not furniture — no matter how much cash you drop, they’re not built to last. To see what we could get for our money, we visited five local flower shops anonymously and asked the florists to help us create a romantic arrangement with a budget of $85. Here’s what happened.