escort cards

When Jon proposed, we didn't set a wedding date right away (savings draining away into the condo on the market). You'd think I would still be thinking about it, or at least gathering ideas, right? Nope. Through the end of 2009 and most of 2010, before we actually started planning, I had only decided on one thing: How I was going to make sure Jon's mistress got a prime spot at our wedding.

Sports, people. SPORTS IS HIS MISTRESS. Between work, hanging out with me and friends and fueling the devotion to his teams, the man doesn't have time for an actual mistress. And I like it that way.

Escort cards are generally how people figure out where they're going to be sitting when they show up to the reception. They differ from placecards in that placecards tell you which specific seat you'll be occupying at the table. Some people make one big sign, some people combine the cards with favors, some people skip the numbers all together--some friends of ours named their tables after places around the world that they'd visited together.

Here's what we did: Each table was named after one of our favorite professional sports players. We put the jersey icon displayed at a table on the back of the name card for people sitting at that table so they could match it up. Jon was worried that because the numbers weren't going to be sequential, people would be confused. But when we made our grand entrance, it looked like everyone got to where they needed to sit just fine.

 

Henry Ellard is Jon's favorite athlete of all time (Rams). He wore the numbers 80, 85 and 17. Anyone who has emailed Jon will note the significance. Michael Jordan (Bulls)? Well, duh.

Kai came over a couple days before the wedding to help us get some "conceptualizing" done about how we were going to decorate the space. She and her husband have been gutting their new house and re-doing it for the last two years, so she's pretty practiced at mocking up her vision. I wanted the escort cards pinned up on glassless frames with a fabric background* kind of like this. Here's the mockup for the escort card table, just outside the doors of the reception area. I designed a poster based on our wedding invitation so that we'd have a nice even number of frames. I think that was a nice touch.

 My brother and his M couldn't stand the frames up against the wall because of some pillars, so they just laid them on the table. Honestly, I didn't even get to see what it looked like. I hope it was nice.

Three nights before our wedding, I was typing out all the guests' names and printing out the little cards. Jon and my sisters-in-law and Steve were wrangling it all together, gluing the correct tables with the correct jerseys, punching the holes and making sure everything was going to work out, mathwise. 

Steve (Jon never goes without socks) did a great job with quality control.

My mom had helped me figure out the whole who can sit with whom thing (very tricky when you're dealing with the Auntie Patrol, in which some people cannot be sitting at the same table together). I agree, this is clearly the hardest thing to do when you're planning a wedding, floral tape notwithstanding. As you can see, we had a very sophisticated method of  Post-It Notes cut into strips to designate who was sitting at which table.

 The batik fabric was not half bad, though.

These are the escort cards. The table numbers were simple orange cardstock with a jersey image. Each of those was meticulously cut out by my dad, my cousin's husband, my dad's sister and her husband. You know, because when you fly all the way here from Dubai and India, you really want to be sitting at a kitchen table in suburbia with a pair of child safety scissors all night. God bless them all.

 

 

Thank goodness some of my friends took pictures of the decorations/elements--we have about a billion photos of ourselves, but slim pickings of the rest of the stuff. Which is why there aren't a lot of detail shots for me to put up here. We haven't gotten photos back from the photographer yet, and we want him to take his time with editing.

During the reception when Jon and I were sitting on a raised platform and looking out into the crowd, I realized that I hadn't really given my crew much direction as to where to put which table. Our parents and immediate families were very close, but everyone else was sort of scattered around randomly. I think it's funny that the two people involved were the ones with the least idea of who any of these people are, my brother's M and Jon's sister's husband. But I guess it doesn't matter; there wasn't a bad seat in the whole place. 


Oh, and if you're wondering which players we chose, here they are in no particular order:

Jon's guys: Henry Ellard (Rams, 80), Kobe Bryant (Lakers 24), Derek Fisher (Lakers 2), Marshall Faulk (Rams 28), Eric Gagne (Dodgers 38), Steven Jackson (Rams 39), Earvin "Magic" Johnson (Lakers 32), Matt Kemp (Dodgers 27), Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers 22), Kurt Warner (Rams 13), Lamar Odom "Kardashian" (Lakers 7)


My guys: Michael Jordan (Bulls 23), Walter Payton (Bears 34), B.J. Armstrong (Bulls 10), Scottie Pippen (Bulls 33), Andre Dawson (Cubs 8), Patrick Kane (Blackhawks 88), Derrek Lee (Cubs 25), Greg Maddux (Cubs 31), Jim McMahon (Bears 9), Mike Singletary (Bears 50), Jonathan Toews (Blackhawks 19), Brian Urlacher (Bears 54)

*When I made a quilt for Ale's baby at the beginning of the year, I just fell in love with one particular square: the not-teal-not-green-sort-of-peacock-feathery one. Of course, when I went to the store to get it for the escort frames, I found out that they stopped printing it. I had to settle for some Indonesian batik print that was nice, but not nearly as cool as the original. Oh well.

the cake

There's a girl at work, Brenda, who bakes. In fact, back in the day she made cakes for events until it wasn't fun anymore. Her stuff is AMAZING, guys. I pretty much love most any type of dessert, unlike some people [cough, mom*, cough] whose praise peaks at "it was okay" for pretty much anything. Even she says Brenda's stuff is "pretty good" (read: blue ribbon!). It's sweet without being cloying, fluffy but still has substance and it's just all-around scrumptious. She makes her own frosting that's so light I never want to scrape any off before digging in. And the cakes look amazing, too--she's got a fat binder with all these "Ace-of-Cake" type photos and letters from people who love her stuff as much as we do. I've known I wanted her to make my wedding cake long ago, even before she created that awesome underwear graduation cake for my brother.

I'd seen Brenda turn people's requests down. She's in nursing school and working and has a family and lots of stuff going on. And I can only assume that the kinds of cakes she makes take a LOT of tender loving time. I was worried she'd say no. Somehow, my mom got her to do it.

Unfortunately Jon and I like things very simple, which can come off a little boring. We were thinking a really small, one-tier cake with maybe a ribbon around it for us to cut in front of everyone, and then a couple of sheet cakes the back (made by her, of course). We wanted to make the least work for Brenda as possible. But she wanted us to have a much bigger and fancier cake, with different layers in different colors. She convinced us to go with a three-tier cake featuring a white-on-white design that Jon liked. And then she made two extra sheet cakes as well. Yellow cake with strawberry filling. If anyone knows about the Jewel strawberry shortcakes around this area, it was better than that. And she made chocolate cake, too.

Before the wedding, Brenda had gone with me to the floral shop at the hospital. In a flash of reality a few weeks before the wedding, when mfm was trying to explain to me how far gone I was, I made the smart decision to have the florist make our boutonnieres and corsages because we were teetering on the precipice of too much DIY (before this wedding, I would have said there was no such thing, but I HAVE SEEN THE EDGE, PEOPLE, AND IT IS TERRIFYING). I had picked out some orange spray roses for Brenda to work with.

From the four or five bites I was able to inhale that day, this cake was every bit as good as I had hoped.

As per Syar's request, here is a clearer view of the detailing on the cake. I hope it's a little better.

You noticed the oddly misshapen stick figures on the front of the cake's middle tier? Yep, another sign the DIY train had been way too close to the cliff without a guardrail. My plan was to make a stick-figure caketopper out of floral wire as a callback to our invitations. It was a decent idea--just not one I should have been executing THE DAY OF OUR WEDDING WHILE SITTING IN THE MAKEUP CHAIR. I rave about my photographer not only because he does awesome work and has a great personality; he whipped up the "bouquet" the stick-figure bride is holding while I had to put down the pliers and look to the ceiling for mascara.

I realize that caketopper is not my best work. Another lesson I learned with this wedding is to just let things go, so I got over it. In fact, I'm just happy it was on the cake all: Jon and I were standing behind the cake when we cut it, so when I didn't see it on top of the cake, I assumed it wasn't there and was sad. I never should have doubted my sisters-in-law, cc and pp; they made SO much happen that I didn't even hear about until later. I only realized the stick figures had been on the cake all the time when we went to pick up the top tier and they were there in the box.

Don't take my word for it: There was a three-tier cake, plus two sheets in the back. And, aside from the top we got to save for next September 17, there wasn't a single piece of cake left over.

Brenda, if the nursing thing doesn't work out, please open a bakery.

now wouldn't that be something to talk about while we cut the cake?

My parents are from India. And one thing Indians know how to do are MUSICALS. As luck would have it, my parents enjoy Hindi music, and my father in particular loves him some Bollywood jams*. So the stuff was always on at my house growing up. And LOUD.

Ever since I can remember, on the weekends my parents would play (read: my dad would blast) Hindi music videos while making breakfast. If you want to give me a perfect Saturday morning, wake me up with the smell of fresh parathas and the sound of "the Indian show." Then follow it up with an episode of "Saved By The Bell." I'll be your best friend. For life.

One of my favorite songs of ALL TIME is this 1980 gem from Qurbani, sang by 15-year-old Nazia Hassan:

Dude, this was NINETEEN-EIGHTY. Before the Internet. And 1980 India was more like 1973 in the states. 

I distinctly remember being about three and singing this song ad nauseam at the top of the stairs with a hairbrush. A lot. In 1995, I taught my friend Kai how to sing it, even though she's Taiwanese and doesn't know more than a few Hindi words. She can still sing it to this day, but I'm pretty sure she's forgotten that it loosely translates to "If someone like you were to come into my life, that would be something to talk about/make news." Hindi never translates well. Which just adds another layer of entertainment when you stop to read the subtitles.

I wasn't sure how to go about asking Jon if we can have this cheeseball Indian Disco jam play as we'd cut the cake. I mean, in all the episodes of "Namaste America" I've made him sit through these last six years, I'm pretty sure "Aap jaisa koi" was not featured (though it REALLY SHOULD BE. Are you reading this Obaid?). I finally managed to make my request and Jon says, "Ok, but on one condition, okay?" [Dramatic pause.] That this is the final answer and we WILL NOT BE SECONDGUESSING THIS DECISION."

We didn't. And I was happy.

People came up to me later professing their love for the song, too. You like it? Maybe you'll also enjoy this:

The part that anyone can ever remember starts at about 0:55. And ends at about 1:10. I didn't even bother watching the rest.

unexpected

I'm sure you've noticed, but I never talk about work. A) Maybe I would if I were an astronaut or cowboy or pirate or something that warrants a "way of life" B) It's a liability C) I don't really share this blog with that many people (unless you count the 260-ish people who came to the wedding*).

Anyway, so I don't talk about what I do. But I will make an exception today.

I'm sort of a middleman, a fixer, a person whom they send in when people are angry and screaming and they're pretty sure are going to write a letter. I run around among many departments to try to solve some of the problems. And for some reason, they think I can. But here's the secret, which I learned in my old career: You don't actually have to know anything. You just have to know whom to ask.

There's a department I don't technically work in; it isn't even in the same building. But they call my office a lot. And while I haven't even met many of them in person (and those I did meet, just for a few minutes when I wanted to build credibility and went over there to introduce myself), I know all their voices. They called me over to their department the day before I went on vacation for the wedding to give me this:

It's a wedding cake. 

 Made out of bath towels.

I think I love the little white flowers the best. 

The woman who made it was fairly new to the job. And look at how much work she put into this; gluing down all the little flowers and pearls and the ribbons. Some of them were on recon, trying to figure out our wedding colors and when I'd be there. It was very very sweet. They all chipped in and got us the towels plus a giftcard to Macy's. You know I'm a sucker for thoughtful and handmade. I don't even work in their building.

I was so surprised and touched, I can't bring myself to take it apart.


*Please don't count all those people, because we shared the blogs with all of them and in the week after the wedding, I believe ONE new person visited it. Yes, we're lame enough that we checked. How could we not? This is how we met, for goodness' sake.

except without the half-naked male models. and more personal

I come from some pretty crafty stock, and as luck would have it, I have married into a very talented family. You've seen a little of what Jon's older sister, M, can do, and I'm sure you've heard of Madelyn's craftastic endeavors. No? Well I'll let her share her stuff with you as she wishes, but know that it's pretty legendary, all across the country.

Three nights before our wedding, the apartment was a veritable sweatshop (Hello, have I EVER finished a project with time left to spare? Ok, that was only because everyone was on my case). Jon's immediate family from California and Ohio had flown in that day, so his sisters and Steve dropped in to lend a hand.

They got to work helping Jon and I get the escort card situation going, which in a shocking development was complicated (that's another several posts all together). But then Madelyn suddenly disappeared. Then M. Then A, and finally Steve. Apparently there was a convention going on in the bedroom and Jon and I weren't invited.

They were gone a LONG TIME. We were wondering if someone had fallen into a coma and the others were trying to revive him or her but didn't want us to be alarmed. Just what could they be cooking up in there?

His and hers personalized t-shirts.

Apparently, the iron-on lettering was NOT cooperating, and Madelyn had to call in for backup to try and get them to behave. They just couldn't get them to cooperate. So they decided to fill in the blanks with marker. How I would have loved to have taken a peek into the room and seen them all crowded over the shirts, scribbling furiously.

This is the most even coloring I have seen in a very long time.

Jon and I wore the shirts the next day; I had to change for my Mehndi party, but he kept his on. Not a single person made a comment about the shirt until I pointed out that my sisters-in-law made it and one for me. More than three people at the party remarked that they had just assumed the shirt came from somewhere like Abercrombie & Fitch because it looked trendy and distressed. I love that people think that, yet no one else would be able to buy anything like it anywhere.

Detail of the front upper left chest.

the food

Jon has said that the best wedding meal he ever had was at his sister A's wedding. Apparently every single person at the reception was served their meal at the same time and it was warm, cooked well and delicious. So he really wanted a sit-down meal. I really wanted Indian food, which generally consists of a buffet. So we compromised on serving our wedding meal family-style: 18 items laid out on a big square table for 12, so people had plenty of stuff to choose from and didn't have to get up or stand in line.

The place where we held the reception (and the wedding itself) is owned by the restaurant who catered the meal. It's been nearly two months since the wedding and people are still commenting about how much they loved the food. And because people had been telling me for years that the meal is one of the few things guests actually remember about any wedding, that makes me very happy. Especially because the food Jon and I had tasted before making our selections was good, but not phenomenal. However the dishes served to us at the sweetheart table were some of the best Indian food I've ever had outside of my mother's house. We were wondering if our meal was extra scrumptious because it was our wedding day, but hearing everyone's rave reviews, I'm very glad to say it was all very good.

Indian food is not for everyone. Cc's son b enjoyed the Penne Alfredo, and some of Jon's family members who weren't so sure about the ethnic options seemed to like it, too. A family-style meal (when someone else is choosing the selections) is a great place to try it if you haven't had the opportunity. It was the first time for the husband of my coworker who made our phenomenal cake, and he enjoyed it so much that he's asked his wife to start trying out recipes. My mom has been sending some samples home for him with her.

Of course, there's always something that gets lost in translation. The day after the wedding, the boyfriend of a coworker facebookposted this picture of our menu, describing the gulab jamun dessert.

His caption: "@ a wedding and has Golden Fried balls of milk!!! WTF!!"

I commented that I knew how that was going to look when I made the menus, but it's really hard to describe them any other way (there isn't!). She was worried I was offended, but I think it's just as funny. That said, one of my brother's best friends here asked my mom if she would make him the "sweet balls" the next time my brother came to town. Now that he's moved back home, I'm pretty sure she'll be making them all the time. 

I made Jon get up during dinner so we could visit all the tables. But then we got to talking and only made it to about four before it was time to get on with the program. I felt sad about not being able to greet all our our guests personally after not having a receiving line (though my parents did manage to make it to every table; they didn't eat much) before the dancing. If I had known that I wouldn't be able to say hello to every guest, there's a good chance I'd have gotten myself some golden fried balls of milk. 

11/11/11

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone.

Thank you to all the servicepeople out there--and their families--who sacrifice so much to make sure we all have the lives we have today. I'm especially thankful for my new brother-in-law, who came home from his undisclosed location just a few days before Jon and I got married and could celebrate with us. He was key in ensuring our outdoor wedding space was decorated properly (with my father-in-law), held us to strict quality-control standards while we were scrambling to get the escort cards together the week before the big day, and he was absolutely tearing it up on the dance floor. Plus, he's an all-around wonderful person.

We love you, Steve.

shower

Somewhere in July during the flower madness, our friends and family threw us a beautiful wedding shower. Penelope's Press made the invitations--taking the gazebo detail from our invites and making it the focus, and they even put it on the cake.

 

It was at this little Italian place down the road from my parents' neighborhood that I had never really thought about, but my brother's friend worked there and the food was DELICOUS! Angeli's on Chicago Avenue, people. It's good.

I've been to wedding showers, and played a lot of games, but these guys had me guess Jon's answers to important questions. Easy ones like favorite color (duh, orange); favorite movie (Ocean's 11) or "What would you name your firstborn child?" (something Indian); ones that would be impossible for me to answer such as favorite vacation spot: His answer? " I've never really been on a vacation." How was I supposed to get THAT right? Also biggest fear? His answer: "Horrific knee injury like Napoleon Mccallum." What gives, Jon?

I really blew it when I missed "What is Jon's favorite food?" I said Fettucine Alfredo, and immediately realized the correct answer was peanut butter and grape jelly. And that's a shame because by that point I was practically choking. You see, for every wrong answer I gave, I had to add another piece of full-size grape-flavored chewing gum into my mouth and continually chew it. That makes for very difficult recall.

Jon and I are arguing about what his favorite food really is. Notice the half-empty pack of gum in his hand--the guy couldn't give me more sticks to chew fast enough.

To be fair, we flipped it around and he had to guess my answers. In the end, both of us got eight out of the 20 questions correct. I'm sad it was such a low number, but happy that we got the same score. 

One of the oddest-but-best moments of the day was when Ri asked me to guess what Jon said to the question "When did you know that Cadiz was the one?" I had no idea. His answer: "The second time I had to get on a plane to fly home and I seriously considered not getting on."

diy flowers III

By far, the most torturous portion of the flowermaking ended when we could put down the floral tape, but we still had a lot of work ahead of us before we could get to the final product.

First, we had to open up all of the tightly wrapped flowers. Any lazy floraltaping was certainly discovered when the centers fell out or petals started falling off.

This was another stage where they were pretty nicelooking and we considered just leaving them that way. But we were too committed by this point.

Then, the painting--by watercolor. Madelyn and pp had a talent for this step and risked sore backs and stiff shoulders to help us get through it.

 There's a reason tattoos are used to identify criminals; they're pretty distinctive.

 

 This is pp. It's only fair to out her, too.

Coffee filters are very absorbent, but they also take a long time to dry. Jon devised a very complex "station" consisting of two folding chairs and some twine, but it worked fabulously.

No two were painted exactly the same.

Jon had always said he wanted the orange to be used sparingly throughout the wedding stuff, just a pop of it here and there. I like the way monochromatic looks, so we decided the flowers would all be tones of green-blue--one good thing about making faux flowers is that you can have any color at any time of the year, even roses. Everyone seemed to think that a little variation was nice, so the painting got purposely splotchier as we went along. Madelyn even went so far to paint a few of them orange, just for kicks. 

 

The orange ones were gorgeous, especially when wet.

After they were dried upside down, the petals were all sort of stuck together and misshapen.

 I love the way that texture looks with the paint.

So that meant re-forming them again. And topping that off with giving each and every petal a signature roselike curl.

Jon did the bulk of the curling, with help from a few people like my parents. I did some, but dang it wasn't my favorite part of the process by far. I'd rather tape, if that says anything.

 Everyone was right, the ones with more variations of color really were the best looking.

 

Mfm and Angel07 were INSTRUMENTAL in arranging these badboys into the vases. I won't bore you with all the things we tried before we decided on tulle and foam for innards, but there was plenty of discussion and trips to the store. Jon and I just prepped the vases for them, and these two went to work, making sure the dozen or so roses in each vase were secure and lovely to look at.

These two did a much better job than I would have. You'll see more of Mfm's work when you see our bouquets.

We thought it needed just a little something. So we added some orange ribbon. And then the ribbon wouldn't stay put, so we used some of the big return labels left over from the invitations to seal the deal.

 Doesn't seem like much to show for so much work, does it?

Oh my goodness, was this a labor of love. I will forever use this flower project as a yardstick against which I will measure the insanity of any other project I try to undertake. There is NO WAY Jon and I could have pulled this off (with seven days to spare!) without the love and support we got from our family and friends. Even the people who continually checked in with me to make sure I was on track were essential for me not to have lost my mind over this.

And I'm happy with the way they turned out. Which is something I never say.

How one of the finished pieces looked at the end of the night.

The materials for each of these centerpieces cost $7.00. That is a STEAL. If we paid my mom, my dad, Madelyn, cc, pp, mfm and Angel07, as well as myself and Jon $10.00 per hour (and that would be a very low wage considering the occupational hazards of tape, skewers, hot glue and sheer fatigue) that was spent on these, each of these centerpieces cost around $1,800.00 apiece. THAT IS A CRIME.

That said, I won't be subjecting my loved ones to this kind of torture anytime soon. I thank each and every one of them from the bottom of my heart.

Aren't you all glad I'm only planning on doing this once?

diy flowers II

Before I get to the highlights, let me say this: Planning a wedding is a good test of how your marriage is going to go (or so I suspect, with the infinite knowledge that nearly two months of marriage has given me). And this flower project would test the limits of anyone's sanity. God bless the guy, he went with me to so many stores and gave insight constructive criticism and, most importantly, he helped a lot. One thing my mom always says about us is that Jon and I work well as a team. You can't get a better endorsement than that.

Onto the show.

So to make each flower, you need eight pieces in varying shapes and sizes. You cut each out of coffee filters and then somewhat painstakingly (for some reason this really made my left thumbnail sore) attach them to floral wire with floral tape. My mom, Madelyn, cc, myself and Jon cut out some 3200 pieces and separated them out into plastic baggies; we still have a ton of them left. Jon and I taped together nearly 300 roses--that's 2400 individual pieces for those of you not interested in doing the math. Most of our other helpers weren't excited about trying the flower construction, because working with floral tape for any length of time is a serious beeyatch.

If the devil had a torture tool, this would be it.

Utilizing floral tape takes some finesse to start with, because you have to draw out the stickiness by pulling on it, but not pull too hard or it will break. Plus you don't want your stems to be too bulky; you want to get the job done with as little as possible. Oh, and you'd better pencil in about half an hour after you're done to clean off the residue from your hands. And prepare for them to feel weird for the rest of the day, too. Dawn dish soap is effective on oil-slicked ocean life, but only works so-so for victims of floral tape abuse. The only good way to get it off is to scrub some really crunchy pots and pans.

I had been lulled into a sense of security with that first rose I made, because I started with a crusty old roll of floral tape from seventh grade when we made boutonnieres for all the dads at church on Father's Day. Apparently, the older and crustier your floral tape is, the better it works. We found that out the hard way when we ran out and had to buy some new stuff. It sucked! It was slippery, wouldn't stick to itself and generally was a ginormous pain. One night after a long day of struggling with it, that last rose was taking more than an hour (I was supposed to have finished getting all the petals on each one within 15 minutes to stay on track) and kept falling apart. I'd had it. I threw it on the floor, chucked the devil's spawn tape at the wall and had a good old-fashioned temper tantrum, stomping and all. Jon was there to witness that and still married me. 

Soon after, it was with great luck that we happened to find a fabric store that was relocating to a bigger space and getting rid of all their merchandise. Not only did we clean up on floral stem wire, but got a huge pack of really old and crusty looking floral tape. The box it was in had yellowed a bit, so we knew it was going to be good. Thank God for that store!

My original plan of being done with the flowers long before the wedding was ludicrous--we dragged out cutting pieces until June and didn't really start the factory until July. But for most of the summer, the apartment looked something like this: 

 

At the completion of each step, we were tempted to just leave them as they were.

M had brought us a few beautiful Pilsner glasses that she'd found--at the dollar store of all places--that would be just perfect for what we were looking for in our centerpieces. I spent the summer trolling dollar stores all around Chicago looking for more (we needed 24), but couldn't find the same ones! I just didn't want to have to order them online because we were already having bad luck with fragile items being delivered (several of our gifts arrived having broken during shipping). By the end, we were getting down to the wire and I saw some vases that would work at a great price at IKEA--I could get 30 of them and take the home in the trunk that day. Unfortunately, they were a little bigger, so instead of 8-10 flowers a vase, we'd need 12 or more. Which meant cranking out more flowers.

diy flowers I

Somewhere along the line I convinced myself that we could *fairly easily* make our own flowers for this wedding. This very typical behavior for me. I see something in a magazine or in a store and say to myself, "Self, you could totally make that!" So I don't buy it. And then I either forget about it all together or spend WAY too much time trying to figure it out and replicate it at home, spending three times as much money in materials and God knows how many hours making it happen than it would have cost to just purchase the perfect thing right then and there. But I had never fully understood the lunacy of my ways until I got the idea for these wedding flowers.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves--this is obviously going to be a multi-parter. My eldest sister-in-law M (not Madelyn) is supercrafty and makes really beautiful things just for kicks, like lifelike flower arrangements and wreaths and really awesome Halloween decorations. Her table settings seem like setups for home decor photoshoots and she asked for a jigsaw for her birthday. I really wish she lived closer (not just for the jigsaw). Last fall, she heard we were considering paper flowers and suddenly a big package arrived in the mail from Ohio, full of sweet little prototypes of all kinds.

I especially loved the rolled-up roses, but we couldn't figure out how to make them work for what I thought I wanted: a smallish centerpiece that would leave enough room for a family-style dinner and all the place setting stuff for 12 people per table.

She included a couple tissue-paper flowers, and I really liked the look of them, like this one.

 

Pay no attention to my poor camerphone-focusing skills.

Then I started doing more research into tissue-paper flowers, and of course I stumbled onto Martha Stewart's website. I tried a couple of them out.

Not too bad for stuff-in-a-gift-bag tissue paper, eh? 

 

My main reasoning for doing paper flowers was to be able to start working on them way ahead of time and have them all done long before the wedding. (Yes, I actually believed that would happen--what a joke.) With this style of flower, I could just picture six months worth of work taken out by some sort of freak accident where they'd all get crumpled or become a wet, soggy mess. We needed something sturdier. 

 

And then I saw them, the coffee-filter flowers featured on the martha stewart show. It took a bit of finesse, but I was able to put one together pretty quickly:

 We had a winner.

you can't always get what you want

Our photographer was awesome, but obviously he and his second shooter couldn't be everywhere. So Jon and I wanted to have a photobooth at our reception, too. We check out the price tag for those things as well as saw one break down during a wedding we attended, so in what will probably come as a shocker to anyone who knows us, we decided we could build our own.

Jon had it all figured out, from how we'd build the "booth" frame to a one-push-button system combined with a laptop and software connected to his less-fancy-but-still-very-sweet camera to make a very viable alternative to the expensive booths out there. The printer was an issue, however we thought people would just enter their email addresses to send the pics to themselves, but our laptop wouldn't support it and we'd have to get a new one....

Long story very short, we had to skip the photobooth.

After that, I just wanted to create a photo "area" where people could take pictures of themselves. We signed up for this thing, Guest Shots, where guests can upload the photos they took on their cameras/phones after your event and the company will put them all together in an album for you. As part of the deal, you "borrow" a handheld (waterproof) video camera, so people can record personal messages at their leisure--we even took that camera on the honeymoon--you mail it back and then get a dvd of all the footage.We're still trying to get all the photos people took uploaded to the website, so we haven't seen the final product yet, but we think the video aspect of it alone made the whole thing worth it.

The photo area went from a place where there would be a great backdrop painted by me of some beautiful Indian archway to two simple iridescent saris hanging all the way down from the high ceiling. They're actually the first saris I had considered for the bridesmaids way back during preliminary shopping, and I had always liked them, so I went back to get them for the backdrop.

I didn't see anyone posing for pictures in our photo corner the entire night, so I figured it was a giant bust. But when we saw what was uploaded to Guest Shots later, apparently some people did take the bait. Plus, people are adorable in general.

 ***

Way back in 2005, a month after Jon came out to Chicago to meet me for the first time, I flew to California to visit him for the first time. And to be his date to the annual work Christmas party. It was at a hotel and there were all these crazy clowns on stilts and animal-costumed acrobats--even a fortuneteller walking around giving advice. I met the pastor who would eventually officiate our wedding (his wife worked with Jon), and from that day on they'd always ask Jon when his "bride" was coming back to town. At the time I thought that was a little forward, but I guess they could see something that we weren't willing to say out loud yet.

That Christmas party also had a "photo area" set up with a professional photographer, with a cheesy backdrop of fancy fabric and fake flowers arranged in a few tall vases. Jon and I didn't know each other well, but the camera guy made us hold hands and strike one of those tried and true Homecoming/Prom poses. All that was missing was wrist corsage. We looked so young then. And a little apprehensive.

Jon's mom scanned the photo and sent it to inquiring minds (when someone meets a random girl off the Internet and then starts jumping on planes, it's a justified cause for curiosity, if not concern). We always refer to that picture as our Prom Photo. In honor of that, we added this sign to our photo corner at the wedding:

It's no photobooth, but for our constraints, I think it worked out just fine.

the playlist

Most every time I go to a place where there's a deejay I make a request. And I am often disappointed. About 95% of the time I will ask for anything by A Tribe Called Quest just to see if s/he has it or will actually play it, knowing that most partygoers these days have no idea who that group is. Once, at a wedding when I saw the dj was in his mid-50s I requested Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." He said he had NEVER HEARD OF AL GREEN. I don't even know what to say about that.

When the dj seems to have special something, I will ask for Musto and Bones' "Dangerous on the Dancefloor,"* It's a treat if they know it, better if they have it and then amazing if they actually play it. I can only count the number of times that's happened on two fingers.

I didn't want that to happen to our guests, so we let them make requests ahead of time, on our postcard RSVPs:

 

 Despite the "dancefloor will ROCK" language, for some reason a fair number of people thought we were only looking for slow songs. But the ones who got it requested some awesome jams, including my mom's friend, who asked for Salt N Pepa's "Push It." I've got a newfound respect for her.

We submitted a MONSTER list of songs, so I wasn't surprised our djs couldn't get to them all. In fact, people were breaking it down so much that I only heard one slow song the entire evening; I cried the entire time it was on. But I'll save that for another post.

Here's the back of the postcard:

 

That's a drawing done by both Jon and myself. We were just doodling one day and thought it'd be a nice touch, plus it carried the whole stick figure theme on our invites. He did the faces and I did the bodies. Some of you know may already be familiar with Jon's drawings. If not, check out last November, when a lot of his 30 posts were sketches.

This is a bit of a spoiler, as way too many of our guests have yet to receive theirs, but we also used the drawing on the thank-you cards. We're hoping we get them all out before the requisite year of forgiveness is up.

*I searched for lyrics to this song for YEARS, and someone posted them on this blog. Even after six-some years, that is one of the most popular reasons people stumble onto this web site. I am not kidding. 

Invites, part III

I am no stranger to wedding invitation calligraphy, so of course I was going to address all our envelopes myself. We wanted the peacock envelopes, so the lettering had to be white to show up properly. I tried about seven different types of pens, but finally decided the only way to do this was to break out the old pot of ink and calligraphy nibs.

As you can see, that pen nib and I are old friends.

The "studio."

This is likely not even half of them.

After we'd chosen the envelope colors, I'd really had my heart set on the polar bear stamps that had the same kind of green background. Too bad they were from 2009 and the P.O. only had a few left. However, these were an even better match, have pretty floral designs and say LOVE on them. Couldn't have been more perfect.

I think the one with the birds is my favorite.

I almost didn't want to give them to the post office; they looked so nice all together.

 

I tried to be fancy with the spaced-out zip codes--we had quite a variety of them.

We sent out the wedding invitations two months before the wedding, which some people said might be too early. But we had decided not to do Save the Dates*, so we wanted out of town guests to have time to make arrangements. Unfortunately, about 15 people never received their invites, including Jon's parents (they got another one, obviously). One of my mom's friends got hers one day before the wedding, but of course she had already made other plans. That was really heartbreaking, both because people might have felt slighted and because we had put a lot of love and effort into those invitations. The only thing I can think of that may have hindered the delivery was my calligraphy. Cue the sad trombones.

*I immediately regretted it when I was at a birthday party of a good friend, went to get a frosty beverage from her boyfriend's fridge and saw a wedding announcement magnet staring back at me for another couple with the same date. They wouldn't have been able to come regardless (the boyfriend was in the bridal party), but my friend was sweet enough to attend our ceremony and the reception for the other couple.

Invites, part II

Everything I saw in the magazines and the blogs proved that I'm drawn to the style of a small, intimate wedding. You can personalize everything and put a lot of time and thought into the details. Unfortunately, I wanted to invite everyone I know to our wedding--I have a huge family but most of them live on the other side of the world, so there have been enough four-person Thanksgivings and Christmases for me to long for the fun that a big celebration brings. We were shooting for a "small-for-an-Indian-wedding," with about 250-300 guests.

After we got the letterpress invites back from Debbie, we had to figure out how to put it all together. My main struggle during this whole planning process was to rein in my devotion to all things Indian and find a happy medium. So when it became clear that there just wasn't any room for Hindi script on the invitation, we opted for an orange band to hold all the pieces together within the envelope. But we wanted to keep each envelope as small and light as possible, essentially the opposite of the ornate and sizable Indian-style invites we're used to getting in the mail.

My friend EB has this amazing cutting machine that can help make all kinds of beautiful fonts/shapes cut out of cardstock. But Hindi doesn't smoothly flow together like D'Nealian (which, did you hear, they are no longer teaching in schools!?). The Hindi-ish font was really nice, but if we had to pop out the letters for every single invite, people wouldn't get them until after the wedding. So we had to lose the orange band.

Here's the prototype, a little beat up after the chaos of planning. Another reason it wouldn't work: With the belly band around everything, the invite wouldn't fit into the envelope. 

I wasn't giving up on getting some kind of Hindi in there. I was researching having our names in the script printed on ribbon, and seriously considering writing it out on each envelope, when an express package came in the mail from my Vinu Moushi (My mother's younger sister).

 

She had someone make two custom Hindi-script wooden stamps that say "Karen Nedita D'Souza with Jonathan Henry Muller" and airmailed them to us. I don't even want to think about how much that cost her. The guy forgot to add a tiny dot. I just added the dot (which is the difference between a "z" sound and a "j" sound) with a pen. No big deal. But my aunt went back and chewed him out just the same.

  Jon made envelope liners for each card and stamped our names on each one before cc, madelyn and I glued them in. I'm not sure any of our guests even noticed the stamp, but I knew they were in there. And that's all that matters.