Lamar bought v vanilla cupcakes and 8 chocolate cupcakes for the party. Write an expression that shows how many cupcakes Lamar bought in all.

To find the total number of cupcakes Lamar bought, you can add the number of vanilla cupcakes (v) to the number of chocolate cupcakes (8). The expression representing the total number of cupcakes is:

\[ v + 8 \]