Welcome aboard. I press open about 99% of the time and have been doing so for the last 40 years. Really the only time I press to the side is on curved seams. My quilts are designed to be machine sewn, machine quilted, and machine washed. I believe pressing to the side is an artifact left from hand quilting an is unnecessary with machine sewn seams and irons. I also pin, a lot, but below the seam line. You also need a fairly small stitch, but you need that in modern strip piecing construction methods anyway.
I may annoy the quilt police but there is no really good reason why to seam either way, it's more a matter of preference than anything else anyone will say. The people who press to the side were taught to do it that way...
There are some fun things you can do pressed to the side and maybe you don't have to pin as much, but my accuracy is better and I never have the issue of what to do when you have two white seams and leave yourself a big dark line of fabric in that case. When you have a lot of those diagonal lines coming in together, my open seams aren't as bulky but there are time when I need a hammer too to pound them flat
