So, I’ve sorely neglected the blog. I’m sorry! This has been the craziest few weeks, and it’s just getting crazier. In the next 3 weeks, I need to finish writing/typesetting/editting my cook book, run the commitment ceremonies at Pride, and get everything ready for a big event we’re attending at the end of June – including making crazy costumes. Yeeeow!
Enough about me, my crazy schedule, and excuses for shirking my blog responsibilities. I have something to post about! It’s geeky, wedding related, AND pretty – that’s pretty much the trifecta of awesomeness around these parts, right? Oh, also reasonably priced and FUN – a quintrifecta? I dunno.
Either way, it’s Twitter that’s responsible for the subject matter of this blog. FSM, how I love Twitter! Always hear about the coolest stuff there, probably because I follow – and am followed by – some of the coolest people ever. Love it!
This is Surly Amy… who is a geektacular artist located in Hollywood, California. You see what she’s about to pack in that gift box? Custom jewelry! Not any of that boring, fairly nondescript beaded jewelry that you see pretty much everywhere these days (which, I admit, can be fun to make… I do it myself from time to time!)… NO! It’s custom sculpted/cut/carved/painted ceramic jewelry! Awesome!
Unique is ALWAYS cool in my books.. but when it’s technically well done, artistic, AND with a nerdy bent? Just awesome. Amy’s business, Surly-ramics, is a purveyor of all of that.
You may remember the subject of today’s blog entry from my Valentine’s Day blog entry. Well, I have a really cool update. Also, I SWEAR I make this wedding related by the end of this entry!
From time to time, I blog about stuff that I find cool. It may be what someone did for their Save the Date, it may be a cool product, or an awesomely talented artist. I don’t get asked for those blog entries, I don’t get paid for them. I just blog it because I find it cool, and – assuming you find *me* interesting enough to read my blog – I figure you’ll find it cool too! “Birds of a Feather” and all…
Alex, the ridiculously gifted artist behind The Pumpkin Geek is one of those insanely talented people I tend to “meet” on Twitter. I can’t remember how I came to follow him, but once I saw his work, I was an immediate fan! If you haven’t seen what he does, be sure to peruse his site – he carves the most intricate, geeky Jack o’Lanterns ever! They’re all from fake pumpkins, so you can treasure the art indefinitely!
Where I’m usually lucky to receive a “hey, thanks!” email (which I totally appreciate!), Alex shocked the SHIT out of me by mailing me a custom carved mini pumpkin – featuring Hugh Jackman as Wolverine – to thank me for the blog!
If you know me at all, you know that I shrieked like a little girl when I found out. I have a big crazy thing for Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Not so much a crush as.. hrm. I don’t know. I find the character oddly relatable in some ways, and inspiring in other ways. That, and seriously.. I’d kill for Hugh Jackman’s delts. I have a BIG poster of him downstairs in my gym for exactly that reason! (more…)
I haven’t been shy about my love for Twitter. It’s been great personally AND professionally. I’ve met a ton of awesome people… some virtually, some in person. Great stuff!
A few months ago, I started a collaboration with one of my twitter buds, @RBKCreations, who makes the most amazing bouquets out of felt, fabric, and buttons! I’m a huge fan of incorporating fun, unique touches in weddings, really personalizing them – and these bouquets really speak to me. Well, more like scream “WANT!!!” to me . Absolutely adore her work.
The fruits of that venture will be blogged about in the next month or two. Her bouquets are such a unique art, I can’t resist giving you guys a sneak peek!
When hubby and I were setting a date for our wedding, he floated the suggestion of pi day. He was completely serious, by the way.
While his suggestion got vetoed, it did sort of pave the way for how we’d be spending March 14th *every year* thereafter. We host a Pi Day Party… honestly putting way more effort into that, than we do our own wedding anniversary! In hindsight, maybe I shoulda just caved on the date
While I appreciate nerdiness/geeking out in almost any form, I’ve always been confused by his obsession uh.. extremely enthusiastic appreciation.. for pi. But then, irrationality in any form tends to get on my nerves (That was a lame pi joke, for the record.. not *totally* a dig at my husband!)
(A bit of explanation for the less nerdy of my readers. Pi Day is the day that celebrates Pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to it’s diameter. You know, 3.14159265358979323.. etc etc. 3.14… 3/14.. March 14.. get it? It’s also Einstein’s birthday. )
         
Pi day in the Porterhouse starts about a week and a half before the actual date, with the construction of our own custom “pi-nata”. Yes, a pinata shaped like the pi symbol! Last year, we posted a tutorial – Click here to check it out.
While you may not have the time or inclination to take on such a project for yourself at this time, there are many small, fun things you can do to celebrate Pi Day. I find Pi day is an excellent excuse to clean the house and have some friends over, at the very least. You know… and bake pie.
- Have a pie potluck party! I’ll be making a lingonberry-orange zest pie this year, looking forward to see what everyone else brings – even though I’m going low carb at the moment, and actually behaving myself with regards to being allergic to wheat (sob!). Ah well. I’m sure it’ll all smell good anyway
- At 1:59pm, (again.. 3.14159…), we’ll be toasting pi (and Einstein)… with PInapple punch. Even better yet… this year, we invested in the Pi symbol ice cube tray from ThinkGeek. We’ll have icy little pi symbols floating in the punch, and more used to garnish the glasses. Very Cute.
ThinkGeek actually has a bunch of cute pi themed goodies, check them out here
         
- Pi Day Trivia! I’d post the link from where I got our questions, but… I know a few of our guests read this blog
- Read off Pi-ku (Haiku with a pi theme!), and then have a pi-ku writing contest. Click here for some examples!).
– Pi Day joke telling. This gets interesting. By “interesting”, I mean the kinds of terrible “punny” jokes that my father in law thrives on. (I’m talking on the order of “What do you get when you cut a jack o’lantern by its diameter? A: Pumpkin Pi!” Groan!).
- Pi Day Sudoku! Click here for the Pi sudoku that managed to fry everyone’s brain at last year’s party!
- Serve pizza. Not only is it ripe for another play on words (PI-zza), it’s round. Perfect. This year, I’ll be repeating my “St Patrick’s Day” pizza recipe that I made last year. This year, I’ll probably get around to actually posting the recipe. Trust me, it’s worth the wait – insanely yummy, and *completely* unlike any pizza you’ve ever tried. Guaranteed.
         
– Cookies! I bought this cookie cutter last year. Expensive, but GREAT quality. Love it. May end up using it to cut pie/pizza dough to decorate the other food items, in addition to making pi cookies.
- Get stuff. I had no idea that other people were as obsessed ^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H enthused about pi as my husband is, but there must be quite the pi-cult out there – just found this site, and many others. This one in particular has a ton of cute stuff. Maybe next year!
- Of course, recite pi to whatever insane number of digits you happen to have memorized. I consider myself pretty sane at just 10-12ish digits off the top of my own head.. my husband is quite proud of the fact that he used to know 205 digits. Holy crap. If there was any doubt as to the fact that I married the biggest nerd out there, they’re pretty much quashed at this point. One of the things I love most about him though (the nerd factor, not pi recitation in specific!).*
- I got a bit silly with preparations, and used one of the ice cube trays to make a bunch of melt-and-pour glycerin soaps. Not only will there be a set of 4 pi shaped soaps in each of our bathrooms, each guest will be taking home a little 2 piece set, wrapped in a little pouf of cellophane, and tied of with a green (St Patty’s Day!) ribbon. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out!
So… that’s our pi day suggestion list in a nutshell. Do you have any fun ways to celebrate Pi Day yourself? Be sure to tweet, facebook comment, or email them to us.. or just comment here! We’d love to hear about it!
* Plus, I can’t say much. I used to have the entire periodic table of elements memorized. Not just name/symbol, but location, and most of the atomic weights. Ya. I’d pretty much be a hypocrite if I held his 205 digits of pi thing against him
Like many wedding industry professionals, I find myself inundated with information about “trends” in the wedding industry. While some of these are actually important to me (usually to do with logistics).. it’s the idea of color trending that has me shaking my head from time to time. Maybe I’m just still burnt out from my years in the fashion industry, but I’ve never totally been able to wrap my head around the idea of planning around color trends.
It’s a long standing thing for me, I remember failing a project back in fashion school over my views. We were asked to write a paper on.. jeez, I think it was it meant to be “in style”. I wrote my paper on my own views – that to be really stylish, one should embrace their personality, appearance and go with what works for them. That it shouldn’t matter if a certain color is “so last year”. That if that’s the color you look best in, wear it, rock it, own it… look and feel your best, and THAT is what it means to have style.
Yeah. My instructors and I didn’t really see eye to eye on that at all.
All these years later, I find a constant stream of information on color trending for weddings. Purple, it seems, is the hot color for 2010. If purple is your color, whether favorite to wear or to see, or your favorite flowers happen to be purple.. hey, more power to you!
What I’m wondering is.. how much do brides really follow these trends? Do people really put aside their “favorites” to meet a trend? I swear, whenever I hear “(color) is the new (color)”, I throw up in my mouth a little.
Of course, this trend forecasting does have an inpact on availability of wedding related items. If your absolute favorite color was popular 2-3 years ago, it may be difficult to find a good selection of bridesmaid dresses in that color this year. It gets even worse when picking out tuxedo rental accessories, as they tend to be available in an even smaller selection of colors. Between that, and all the features written about trendy colors for weddings, I can see how it would be easy to give in and go with the flow.
Here’s the thing with trends, as I see it. Trends are dated, time sensitive. Look back at the 80s.. bright fuschia and teal taffeta, big pouffy sleeves, and butt bows were hugely trendy. How many 80s brides look back on their wedding photos and DON’T ask themselves “what was I thinking”?
Weddings are an amazing vector for personal expression. For most people, it is not only the biggest party they will ever throw, it will be the most detailed. Most people will never spend that much time selecting color choices for wardrobe, decor.. floral choices, menu, stationery, and everything, into one complete package. It’s a once in a lifetime thing.. so why let something as fickle as the fashion industry dictate what you want?
No matter what you see on the blogs, in wedding magazines, or on the racks… there are always options. Have your bridesmaid gowns custom made – it’s not always a more expensive option, and it ALWAYS gives you ultimate control! Not only can you choose the exact fabric colors and textures you truly love, you can have the gowns cut to really flatter your best friends. Not everyone looks amazing in whatever the cut-of-this-year happens to be (see pouffy sleeves and butt bows!). Be nice to your bridesmaids! Not only are they your best friends… they may ask you to be a bridesmaid for you in a year when “mustard yellow” is the hot new thing. Ew. Best to build up some karma points now!
The same thing goes for your own wedding gown. Do you have a style you love, that you’ve always dreamed of getting married in, and looks great on you? If you’re a “mermaid” style gal, and this year happens to be ballgowns (as an example.. cause I really have no idea what’s “in” this year, nor do I care!).. you rock that mermaid gown. So pastels & tiny flowers are in when you get married, but you love deep dark jewel tones and big, statement-making stargazer lilies? Go for it! I can all but guarantee you that none of your guests will be thinking “Ugh! Doesn’t she know that stargazers are SO last year”. .. and really, if they are.. your friends are losers.
To quote/paraphrase the ever-wise Madonna.. “Don’t go for second best… express yourself!”. No matter what the industry dictates, personal favorites are never “out of style”. Going with what you love will NEVER lead you to regret years later.
Never feel forced to use – or NOT use – a particular item, style, color, or whatever when it comes to your wedding. It’s your day… own it.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about guest books. Obviously, I think it’s great to have a souvenir record of the guests that attended your wedding … but why do they have to be so freaking boring??
Sure, you can buy some guest books with a pretty or otherwise interesting front cover.. but usually, the insides are all the same. Just lines for information. Although my now-husband and I picked up a guest book with the intent of personalizing the cover… we were thoroughly uninspired by the interior. There had to be a better idea.
Well, when we first got engaged, we started a scrapbook for all of the photos, knick knacks, cards, and whatnot that were associated with our upcoming wedding. Wouldn’t it be great, we thought, if we could incorporate our guest’s signatures into this scrapbook?
So, here is what we did:
We bought several nice 12″ x 12″ pages of heavy white scrapbook paper (the size of our main wedding scrapbook), along with more scrapbook paper in colors to match our wedding color scheme. We cut up the colored pages to add accent color & design to the white pages. We cut out stargazer lilies from some of our leftover invitations, and added those to the mix.
Additionally, we bought metallic silver letter stickers, with which we wrote “Love”, “Devotion”, etc etc.. one on each page.
At the wedding guest book table, we left out the stack of pages, along with gel pens in colors to compliment the color scheme. We had our wedding party each sign a page, “yearbook style”, with whatever they wanted, to get it all started.
Before the wedding, decorating the pages was a fun thing for the two of us to do together.. but AFTER the wedding, it was fun to read the passages, jokes, and well wishes that our guests had left, uninhibited by restrictive lines
It’s also nice to have those included with the rest of our wedding memories, rather than in a boring book, relegated to the back of a book shelf and ignored… as we know would have been the fate of our original, purchased guest book!
When I got married, I was a seasoned and highly efficient event floral designer. Of course I was going to do my own arrangements! Hiring out wasn’t even a consideration – I’m very Type A, I knew exactly what I wanted, etc.
Even with my experience… if I had my time back, I definitely would have hired out, just to minimize that bit of extra stress the day of/day before. Would have liked to be enjoying time with the girls the morning of, not running a hot shower in the hotel room to coax some stubborn lilies open! I always recommend to hire a professional floral designer for your wedding.
Sometimes though, it’s just not in the budget, or not what the bride wants to do, for whatever reason. That’s fine.. but definitely requires some planning ahead! Try to design arrangements that will last several days, and pick sturdy flowers that don’t require a lot of special care.
Here is a cute, cost efficient floral arrangement that can be made several days ahead of your wedding! You can use these on each table (and the individual arrangements can double as guest favors!), or just on “special” tables.. the guest book table, etc. The instructions are for the arrangement as pictured – you can use less containers, and do a smaller heart if you’d like!
Per table, you will need:
- About 15 mini Mint Julep cups (plastic looks fine, and is cheap!)
- Ribbon to match your wedding/floral colors
- Floral foam (Oasis) for FRESH flowers (wet)
- Fresh cut flower food/nutrient, prepared in water per product directions
- Clear plastic floral tape (not the paper wire tape)
- 4 or 5 roses per cup
- Tiny filler flowers (we used wax flower)
- Greens of your choice
Before getting started with the actual floral design, you’ll want to prepare your cups. Tape or glue lengths of ribbon around the bottom of each cup. If it suits your wedding, they can be further decorated with rhinestones, etc.. and you can do this well in advance of the wedding.
Several days before the wedding, cut up your Oasis foam into chunks small enough to fit into the julep cups, but big enough to be snug. Soak them in your prepared water/floral food solution, then insert into the cups.
Use the floral tape in an “X” shape across the top of the foam to secure the foam in the cup. The greens will hide the edges of the tape on the cup rims.
Cut your greens into small pieces. Create a small “wreath” of greens around the edge of the cup by sticking the stems into the foam. Allow the greens to hang slightly over the edge of the cup.
Cut your filler flowers into small pieces. Stick them into the foam, creating another small wreath.
Trim your roses to about 3-4″ long stems, cutting the stems on an angle. Carefully stick your roses into the foam. Be careful where you place them – you shouldn’t remove them and reposition after you’ve stuck them in the foam once.
If there are any gaps in the arrangement, fill them with greens, and/or filler flowers.
Arrange the cups in a heart shape, scatter some flower petals on the table, and add some glass votive holders/candles for drama!
This site wins for offering the *most* personalized gifts out there!
DNA 11 Gallery offers custom artwork, based around a few of the elements that make each person unique – DNA and Fingerprints, for example! No, I wasn’t abusing the word “unique”!
On this page, DNA 11 Gallery details some of their products that would be particularly great for gift giving. For example:
The blissful union of two loving people is more than just a joy; it’s a relief! When you find that perfect couple (especially if it’s your own), bless their union with a DNA SplitScreen artwork. Visually stunning, unarguably romantic, SplitScreen artwork combines the DNA of two people onto a single canvas. The presentation is intriguing, the effect is inspiring, and the colors actually match your carpet (if you want).
Want!
They also offer kiss portraits and fingerprint portraits! Also, if you don’t know what you want to give, they offer gift certificates! How awesome is that?
Thank you, amp59, for tweeting such a cool discovery!
Click here to see the coolest wedding invitation I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s a youtube video!
As you may have noticed, I’m a huge fan of couples that really personalize their wedding day. I CANNOT imagine how much time and effort this must have taken… but they get a big thumbs up from me.. even if it was a little long for my poor ADD-riddled attention span
Weddings, The Industry, and “Trends”
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010Like many wedding industry professionals, I find myself inundated with information about “trends” in the wedding industry. While some of these are actually important to me (usually to do with logistics).. it’s the idea of color trending that has me shaking my head from time to time. Maybe I’m just still burnt out from my years in the fashion industry, but I’ve never totally been able to wrap my head around the idea of planning around color trends.
It’s a long standing thing for me, I remember failing a project back in fashion school over my views. We were asked to write a paper on.. jeez, I think it was it meant to be “in style”. I wrote my paper on my own views – that to be really stylish, one should embrace their personality, appearance and go with what works for them. That it shouldn’t matter if a certain color is “so last year”. That if that’s the color you look best in, wear it, rock it, own it… look and feel your best, and THAT is what it means to have style.
Yeah. My instructors and I didn’t really see eye to eye on that at all.
All these years later, I find a constant stream of information on color trending for weddings. Purple, it seems, is the hot color for 2010. If purple is your color, whether favorite to wear or to see, or your favorite flowers happen to be purple.. hey, more power to you!
What I’m wondering is.. how much do brides really follow these trends? Do people really put aside their “favorites” to meet a trend? I swear, whenever I hear “(color) is the new (color)”, I throw up in my mouth a little.
Of course, this trend forecasting does have an inpact on availability of wedding related items. If your absolute favorite color was popular 2-3 years ago, it may be difficult to find a good selection of bridesmaid dresses in that color this year. It gets even worse when picking out tuxedo rental accessories, as they tend to be available in an even smaller selection of colors. Between that, and all the features written about trendy colors for weddings, I can see how it would be easy to give in and go with the flow.
Here’s the thing with trends, as I see it. Trends are dated, time sensitive. Look back at the 80s.. bright fuschia and teal taffeta, big pouffy sleeves, and butt bows were hugely trendy. How many 80s brides look back on their wedding photos and DON’T ask themselves “what was I thinking”?
Weddings are an amazing vector for personal expression. For most people, it is not only the biggest party they will ever throw, it will be the most detailed. Most people will never spend that much time selecting color choices for wardrobe, decor.. floral choices, menu, stationery, and everything, into one complete package. It’s a once in a lifetime thing.. so why let something as fickle as the fashion industry dictate what you want?
No matter what you see on the blogs, in wedding magazines, or on the racks… there are always options. Have your bridesmaid gowns custom made – it’s not always a more expensive option, and it ALWAYS gives you ultimate control! Not only can you choose the exact fabric colors and textures you truly love, you can have the gowns cut to really flatter your best friends. Not everyone looks amazing in whatever the cut-of-this-year happens to be (see pouffy sleeves and butt bows!). Be nice to your bridesmaids! Not only are they your best friends… they may ask you to be a bridesmaid for you in a year when “mustard yellow” is the hot new thing. Ew. Best to build up some karma points now!
The same thing goes for your own wedding gown. Do you have a style you love, that you’ve always dreamed of getting married in, and looks great on you? If you’re a “mermaid” style gal, and this year happens to be ballgowns (as an example.. cause I really have no idea what’s “in” this year, nor do I care!).. you rock that mermaid gown. So pastels & tiny flowers are in when you get married, but you love deep dark jewel tones and big, statement-making stargazer lilies? Go for it! I can all but guarantee you that none of your guests will be thinking “Ugh! Doesn’t she know that stargazers are SO last year”. .. and really, if they are.. your friends are losers.
To quote/paraphrase the ever-wise Madonna.. “Don’t go for second best… express yourself!”. No matter what the industry dictates, personal favorites are never “out of style”. Going with what you love will NEVER lead you to regret years later.
Never feel forced to use – or NOT use – a particular item, style, color, or whatever when it comes to your wedding. It’s your day… own it.
Posted in Commentary, Inspiration | No Comments »