Pumpkins: Check!

Mr. T and I got some crazy looks at Safeway last night as we bought 14 pumpkins from them. The price was just so good: $3.99 per pumpkin! The lowest price I got from the pumpkin farms I emailed was $5 per pumpkin, and that would've also meant a long drive out to pick them up. Still, I bet the pumpkin farms would've had prettier pumpkins than Safeway. In the photo you can see that some of our purchases have...character.

Because of that, I also went to another store and bought 8 more pumpkins--they were more expensive, but also prettier. Those will probably end up on the tables. The other ones will be glued and glittered and become pretty much unrecognizable as their former selves in order to take on their role as our aisle pumpkins.

I also got some small pumpkins to scatter on the escort card table and other places, but we need to get a few more of these. So, we're not entirely done, but 22 pumpkins feels like an accomplishment. It also makes our house look like a deranged indoor pumpkin patch. The cats don't know what to think.

And, happily, we only spent about half our pumpkin budget. Hooray to saving money!

This is so true

I found this on another blogger's site. It's true, while we were at Michael's this weekend I noted that the Halloween stuff is already on sale, and crammed into fewer aisles, and there are now a few aisles devoted exclusively to Christmas. WTF?

October is here!

Happy Fall, everyone! I'm still waiting to find out what happened to summer...feels like we never had one, weather-wise. But here we are in October and the wedding is a month away and I'm still chasing down RSVPs (it can't be THAT hard to say yes or no, can it?) and I realized we have so many things we need to do now: buy alcohol, get the marriage license, write our vows, finish our music playlists, coordinate with out-of-towners and possibly plan other activities...

I feel pretty calm, even though intellectually I know that's a hell of a lot of work. I'm really looking forward to October 31. I know that day will be perfect, regardless of whether I've got manicured nails or if we didn't manage to frame any old Halloween pix of us for decor.

Weekend Wedding Warriors

This weekend Mr. T, his mom (Future Mother-in-law T), and I hammered out our plan for the wedding table centerpieces, which she's helping us assemble.

First, we ruled out dry ice as a potential part of the centerpieces. There's actually an Albertson's near Mr. T's mom's house that sells dry ice, so we bought a pound and tested it out. FMIL T thought we could put a dish under the centerpiece pumpkin, with something in that dish to elevate the pumpkin itself, and have dry ice in the dish, waiting to be activated with water at the start of the cocktail hour. Here's what we found:

• Dry ice melts pretty fast. Timing its placement in the centerpieces would be tricky (AKA, a pain).
• Unless you have a lot of ice, and a lot of warm water, the effect isn't as grand as one would hope. When we had everything in place, you could barely notice the steam snaking out of the centerpieces. And for that much trouble, I want a lot more wow factor!

So, we decided to do dry ice in big cauldrons at the bar and the escort card table. Someone will still need to get the dry ice, not too far in advance of the ceremony, and then we'll have to make sure the staff knows not to activate it until cocktail hour, but apparently 5 pounds of ice and a good amount of hot water is supposed to give you enough steam to last an hour, which is perfect.

So now our centerpieces will consist of:

• Pumpkins, which we'll need to buy beforehand and carve a few days before the wedding. We've decided instead of table numbers, we'll carve "icons" into the pumpkins, like a bat, ghost, cat, raven, etc. Then folks will be assigned to the raven table, or the cat table, etc.
• Flowers that will go in the pumpkins. Even the "cheap" websites like fiftyflowers.com are pretty expensive, so we're going to hit the SF FlowerMart and Trader Joe's between Wednesday and Friday before the wedding. This stresses me out a little, as I feel like we have a lot to do at the last minute, but I think it's better than overspending on something I didn't even want to have in the first place! And flowers die so fast--no need to spend top dollar. Unless they're Black Baccara roses. Mmmmmmm. Anyway, filling out the flower arrangements are an assortment of feather and other picks that FMIL T and I have gathered over the last few months. This weekend we also cut branches off her curly willow and spray painted them black, applying orange glitter as they dried. That was Mr. T's job this weekend! So we'll have creepy glittery sticks in the centerpieces too.
• Fake tea lights that will sit in the pumpkins (under the flowers, which are not going to extend all the way down) and hopefully illuminate our icons so they are more visible and just plain look cool.
• Wreaths. The pumpkins will sit in the center of these. We bought some plain twiggy wreaths at Michaels this weekend and my task was to spray them with clear enamel and apply copious amounts of orange glitter to them. FMIL T is keeping them at her house to apply other fun things to them with hot glue.
• Votives, which we already bought.
  
• Possibly scattered (fake) Fall leaves. FMIL T had bought some of these.

Hopefully it will all come together! My concern is that folks aren't going to be able to see around the centerpieces, so we've committed to buying shorter, fatter pumpkins.

We were also on the hunt for cheap frames that could hold the various signs we'll need to post, like our menu for the bar, the menu of cupcake flavors, etc. We didn't find a ton, but the ones we found were only 99 cents, so I'm not complaining.

We pretty much traipsed all over town in hunt of frames, spray paint, containers to hold all our crap, wreaths, glitter, fake tea lights, and other fun decor elements. At the end of the weekend, I was exhausted! So much for a long holiday weekend. We packed most of it up and brought it to our house, where it's all cluttering up our front entryway. And the wedding mess begins! The cats were very puzzled about all the new stuff.

And of course, I didn't take any photos because I'm a bad bridal blogger. You'll just have to see it all later, I guess!

Invitations Mailed: Check!!!

We had a wedding whirlwind weekend, and among the things we did were: taking the envelopes to the P.O. to get weighed, buying postage (we picked the king and queen love stamp, above, and we were actually pleasantly surprised by how they looked on the black envelope), hand stamping each envelope with our return address, addressing the remaining invitations (I'd done about half already), affixing postage to each envelope, sealing the envelope with a sticker, setting envelopes out to dry, and, this morning, dropping the finished product off at the post office! Woo-hoo! We still have about 4 addresses to track down, but for my purposes (and sanity), invitations are firmly checked off the to-do list.

The return address stamp was a good idea in theory but bad in practice. It was hard to align, and the silver ink from the ink pad just WOULD NOT DRY. We left those out for 36 hours in 80 degree heat, and they were still smearing when we touched them, and even after we blotted them with paper towels. So, if you are our wedding guest, and you have silver ink all over your envelope, my apologies! If I had it to do over I'd have spent quadruple the amount and gotten an embosser instead of a stamp. Oh, well. In the meantime, there is silver ink all over every surface of our home. I'm mighty glad to be done with those! We've gotten one RSVP already (we hand-delivered a couple of invites this weekend), and I can't wait for the rest to roll in. Exciting!! It's nice to see all our hard work taking shape.

This weekend we also went to Michael's because I decided I didn't trust the glue of the envelopes and I wanted something to seal them with. We ended up using the seals we initially purchased from Martha Stewart Crafts for our favor bags: little grinning skull and crossbones--they are black and white, and they glow in the dark! And then we bought other stickers to go on the favor bags at Michael's. Halloween is in full force there and it was hard to stick to our shopping list. Well, for me anyway. I really wanted the silver sign with the skull on it (with jeweled eyes) that said "Beware of Bling", but Mr. T wouldn't let me. But seriously, how perfect would that have been??

While we were there I did talk Mr. T into one frivolous purchase. No, two. They were both Martha Stewart "mad scientist" products. She just has such a nice Halloween aesthetic. One was favor bags, to mix in with the ones we already have. The second was labels for the wine bottles that will go on the tables; they say "Poison" and stuff like that on them. See below; aren't they cute? I promised Mr. T I wouldn't have to go back to Michael's again before the wedding, for the sake of our budget. Ha!

Stasis

I did nothing on my wedding to-do list this weekend, not even finalizing the wed-site, which just requires me nagging Mr. T to get me photographs of his brother and nephew. He has them; he just hasn't chosen his favorites to put on the site. The weekend felt plenty busy without any wedding tasks, but I would like to check things off our list at some point!

I did do one thing: I bought some more decorations. That wasn't on our list, but I couldn't resist. At Pottery Barn they have these silver-tone vampire teeth that hold business cards; I think they'll be perfect for the buffet table, telling people what the dishes are. I actually already have one that a friend gave to me, so I went ahead and ordered two sets (they were on sale). Even if we don't use them on the buffet table, I know they'll be put to good use. Here's a pic:


Cute, huh? We didn't get the plates, just the teeth.

Wedding Recap

So, as you all know, I went to my friend and codancer's wedding this Sunday, and I've finally downloaded the few photos I took from my camera, so I'm ready to blog about it!

Mr. T and I were lucky enough to score street parking half a block away, so we didn't need to pay for a parking garage. Hooray! Chalk one up for Sunday weddings. Apparently Sundays are a traditional day for Jewish weddings, which I didn't know. As Mr. T and I battled the light rain on our short walk to the venue, we noticed other folks in red and black--the invites called for "fashionable red and black attire." It was easy to spot other wedding attendees! And once inside, everyone looked so fabulous--it was fun to see everyone's take on the red and black ensemble.

The wedding was held at a gorgeous historic San Francisco building. The ballroom had dark wood paneling, red carpet, and beautiful light fixtures. It was hard to take photos due to the dim lights, but here are a couple of crappy ones that I got:




After we arrived we checked our coats at the "self-serve coat check" (so smart!) and waited for the other guests to arrive and the action to begin. While we were waiting I occupied myself with taking photos of the lovely floral arch over the doorway in the cocktail area:





There were also rose petals scattered on some of the tables and all of the windowsills. After mingling for a little while, we all gathered in the ballroom where the rabbi--who was hilarious, and could have had his own stand-up act--gave us a little explanation on what goes on at Jewish weddings. This wasn't an orthodox situation, since the groom isn't Jewish, but they found a progressive (and funny) rabbi who would perform the ceremony for them. He taught us a little wordless melody to sing as the bride and groom entered, one at a time. If you look closely, you can see the bride entering on the arm of her parents in this picture:


Shortly after we'd entered the room, Mr. T murmured to me, "Oh, they have the good chairs. What are those called again?" I said, "Chiavari. And they're $10 per chair at our venue, so don't get too attached!" But I thought it was hilarious and a little sweet that he's taking notice of little details like the types of chairs.

Unlike your usual ceremony, where the parties head straight up to the altar (or in this case, the chuppah), instead the bride and groom sat down at a table in the back of the room, while we all stood around them in a large circle. They each read very sweet letters to each other (they did it without crying, which I'm not sure I could've managed), and then they and their witnesses signed the ketubah, or Jewish marriage contract. After that we all took our seats and the groom proceeded up the aisle to the chuppah (their wedding attendants were already holding the four poles holding the chuppah up).

The bride came up the aisle next, again accompanied by both of her parents. I really liked this and I wonder if I could talk my parents into it. Hm. I could see my mom feeling shy about doing it and my dad feeling a little hurt that I didn't want to have just him escorting me. They stopped halfway, hugged, and then the bride's parents walked up the rest of the aisle on their own, leaving the bride there. They walked up the chuppah, hugged the groom, and then took their seats. The groom then walked to meet the bride in the middle of the aisle and they did something that I've never heard about before: The bride circled the groom three times, and then he circled her three times. It was pretty sweet and also funny--both of them were grinning and giggling the whole time, and so were all of us. Then they walked up to the chuppah together, which I also liked.

The ceremony was nice--not too long, and involving audience participation--we had to say "Amen" frequently, and of course "Mazel tov" at the end, but I'll get to that. What struck me most was the bride's face--she was beaming the entire time. I couldn't see the groom's face, but I imagine he was the same way. I wonder if I'll be beaming or crying? Hopefully beaming. It's easier on the makeup. The rabbi included some personal details in his ceremony about the couple, which made it that much more special (and funny--the groom himself is hysterical, and one of the details the rabbi mentioned about the groom had us cracking up for a couple of minutes straight).

At the end the groom stomped on the glass and we screamed mazel tov at them, and they were married! They left the room to be alone together for a little while, which I totally plan on having us doing. It seems like a nice moment to celebrate what you've just done, without friends and family pulling on you for your attention.

They'd hired a great band to play immediately following the ceremony (a Balkan brass band), and once the happy couple was back, we all danced! We did some quasi-traditional Jewish line dancing (the horah), although most of us didn't really know the steps (that's what made it "quasi"), and after that came the part where the bride and groom were lifted up in chairs. I just kept thinking of that Sex and the City episode where Anthony tells Charlotte to keep her legs together while she's in the chair, "because no one wants to see the bride's beaver." Crassness aside, the bride later told me that the chair dance was "terrifying"--I guess it feels pretty unsteady, although neither of them were dropped, so it was a success (and no one saw anything, either, in case you were wondering). After that they lifted the two sets of parents in the chairs.

After the chair part was a really fun part where the bride and grooom sat in those chairs on the dance floor and we had to do crazy stuff try to make them laugh. Of course the belly dance ladies did a little piece (comprised of all of the dumb stuff we do in our rehearsals to make ourselves laugh), and their other friends and family stepped up too. I loved it! This devolved into just a general dance party with everyone on the floor. And this was all before dinner!

After all that craziness was cocktail hour. The food was delicious and plentiful, which was good since we were all hungry after all that dancing. It was an open bar, so we were all able to order our favorite cocktails, and I took advantage of the time to take photos of the escort card table and the bride's bouquet.

All of the escort cards had little icons on them corresponding to the table decor, and in addition there were maps of the ballroom indicating the placement of each table. I thought that was very cleverly done.



Because I'm a bad blogger I didn't go around and take photos of all the centerpieces. I actually didn't even take a photo of the centerpiece at our table. Ah, well. We were at the "lamp" table, which had a centerpiece comprised of three sweet little candle lamps and lovely red fabric. I liked the non-floral centerpiece idea (although of course now we are doing flowers for ours...but I still like the idea).

Speaking of flowers, her bouquet was gorgeous and covet-worthy:



Love, love, love, the black magic roses, the little curly things, and the hanging things. You can see how much I know about flowers through my use of the technical terms for them.

After the cocktail hour we were ushered in for dinner, which was delicious. The tables were taking turns making noise and being rowdy, which was funny. I can only hope our wedding is as uproarious. After we were done eating various family members and attendants made speeches, all of which were short and heartfelt. Then the bride got up and thanked everyone, explaining that as this was not a traditional wedding the first dance was also going to be untraditional. Then she introduced our bhangra teacher and her dance partner, who did a lively and fun performance. During their song we all got up on the dance floor and danced along--again, this crowd was ready and willing to dance! I loved it. After that the DJ went into some 80s tunes and we danced our hearts out, at least until the cake was ready to be cut:



Look at that crazy topsy-turvy cake! I watched as they wheeled it in, and every bump they hit set the top tiers jiggling like crazy. I have no idea how they cut it all up for us. In the bottom photo you can see part of the bride's gorgeous dress (her second dress, actually--she had major drama with her first dress maker and ended up paying for a dress that didn't fit her at all). You can also see the groom becoming sick of having his photo taken...I think men are just not used to being photographed. That's my theory on why Mr. T didn't like the engagement pix.

Anyway, to wrap up a long post, yummy cake was served (my piece was red velvet with strawberries, yum...I understand there was a chocolate tier in there too), more dancing and drinks were had, and then we went home and were very tired the next morning for work.

The happy couple left for their honeymoon in Vail and is, as I type, sipping hot chocolate and/or hitting the slopes. Mazel tov!

Centerpieces

In a moment of brilliance (I do have them sometimes), I turned to Mr. T and said, "We should ask your mom to do the table centerpieces for us."

Mr. T's mom is an advertisement for DIY; she refinishes furniture and has single-handedly (well, Mr. T helps when he can) decorated her house and landscaped her yard. We showed her some inspiration pix and asked her to run with it.

This is what she presented us with on Thanksgiving (the flowers are a bit wilted b/c I didn't think to take pix till a few days later):





The pumpkin is an artificial one from Michael's that she got for 75% off. As tempting as it was to stock up on these after Halloween, I think having real pumpkins will add a certain something. The flowers are a mix of a $7 bouquet from Trader Joe's and stuff from her yard, as well as a few things from craft stores (the feathers and fruit, dunno if you can see these in the photos).

The wreath underneath is to cover up the dish with DRY ICE underneath, which I love. I don't want folks to be breathing it in during dinner, but I think it doesn't last very long, so we could just have it billowing around during cocktail hour and then it would be done by the time folks wanted to sit down.

So, I imagine Mr. T's mom will come up to stay with us a few days before the wedding, and we'll go flower shopping...it's funny, as much as I thought I didn't care about flowers at the reception, it looks like we'll have them after all, but we'll do it DIY, not the florist route. I'd like more fall colored flowers than what's shown here--reds and oranges--but otherwise I love these. I also got inspired as we were talking about these centerpieces and asked Mr. T's mom if she'd help us DIY the bouquets and corsages, etc. She said she would! I think this will lower our costs considerably.

I'm not sure how we'll work in the candy jars. I know we could have a candy bar, but part of me likes the idea of having them on the tables. We're still thinking about that part.

More Pumpkins!

I don't think I've posted any of these pix before, but if I have, humor me, 'kay? Here are some random pumpkin inspirations saved in my travels throughout the World Wide Web. Of course I didn't save the source info. Who do you think I am?

I love this sweet photo of shoes and pumpkins:



Painting, not carving the pumpkins, is looking very attractive. It can be done ahead of time, and won't involve pumpkin goo:


These pumpkins have carving and paint, meaning double the work, but I think they look fantastic:


These are actually papier mache pumpkins. If I had an ounce of DIY creativity I would totally do these. They look awesome, and they would last!


More pumpkins as flower vases. This looks easy, and pretty:


This is more of that, only the colors are different. I love the pale grey-green pumpkin:


Monogram pumpkin. Both Mr. T and I like this idea:


And random glittered squash. I love the glitter. Again, this could be done earlier.


Beautiful cherry blossom-carved pumpkin:


And, for the finale, the Death Star pumpkin. Now that is awesome:

After-Halloween Sale Shopping

The day after Halloween, Mr. T and I woke up (not too early), went out to breakfast, and strategized about what we needed. We then proceeded to go to 13 stores:

Ace Hardware
Halloween Superstore
Walgreens
Andronico's
Z Gallery
Restoration Hardware
Crate and Barrel
Sur La Table
Some random other home store in the same neighborhood as the last four
Paper Source
Target
Ikea
Pottery Barn

I was worried when we set out because it was later in the day (like noon) and I had gotten multiple calls and emails saying that stores were out of things and that some stores had started discounting items earlier in the month, but we did okay, actually.

Here's what we bought (I haven't totaled the receipts yet, but I believe we spent about $150?):

Ace Hardware: 6 strands of lights. There's not a ton of outlets in the room, so we were just going to light up the two sets of railings that separate the sunken middle section of the room:



At the Halloween Superstore, they were pretty cleaned out, and anyway, their stuff is always pretty cheap. I did pick up a cute plush bat bucket for the flower girl's basket:


Tikka agrees that the bat is very interesting:


At Andronico's, I picked up two high-quality pumpkin carving sets, two metal luminaries, and a spider candle holder:


At Z Gallery, they didn't have much, but what they had was 70% off! We got a glittery "tree" and a glittery black cat candle:




You can see that Dobby is very interested by the tree, or maybe it's that paper bag she's spying on:


Target, which I thought would be empty, actually had a lot and was our biggest haul. We got a 5-foot black tree with orange lights (we figured this could go in one of the two large niches in the wall, or over by the bar area), a smaller table top tree with vintage-looking Halloween ornaments for the guest book table, a black (fake) pumpkin with Happy Halloween carved into in orange letters, a cute box for cards for the gift table, runners for the cake and guest book tables that are silver with black velvet webs on them, and two orange frames for photos:





Pottery Barn was our last stop, and again, I was surprised they still had stuff. We probably got there around 5:30 and we were what my friend calls "hangry"--so hungry that we were very irritable. Mr. T didn't love their stuff, but I did, but it was one of those disagreements where it was very civilized and considerate, "If you like them, get them!" "No, if you don't like them, I don't want to buy them; this is not all about me." So, instead of buying their entire stock of skull and crossbones votives (Mr. T had mixed feelings about using a lot of skull imagery for our wedding), we compromised and got one set to help decorate the bookshelves. And we also got a really cool metal bone candle holder. They had cool feathery garland, but those were $15 a piece even on sale, so I thought I'd skip them.




After all that shopping we were exhausted! Our feet and legs even hurt, and this is from a couple of people who walk over 2 miles almost daily. We were also soaked, since it was pouring rain all day.

We still need table decor (and a fog machine for Mr. T!), but we might be almost set for the rest of the room, so that's progress!!

Invite Ideas and Inspiration Boards

I'm tidying up my saved jpegs, so that means they have to get posted before I forget about them!
First up, some invitation ideas. Lately Mr. T has said he wants to do a more typographic design, so I'm not sure we'll end up with anything resembling the following, but I like it all.

First up, a "woodcut" made out of construction paper. Although we certainly have plenty of time to make these, I think it would drive us crazy. Still, amazing, no? So skilled.



Next, an adorable pumpkin bag that holds the invite. A bitch to ship, but cute.



I love the silver ink on the black paper. I wonder how that's done.


Some more "traditional" invites. You can actually buy these blank and print them yourself at home. If we're cutting some more corners, this might be a way to go:




And finally, some inspiration boards about Halloween weddings, exciting! I love the one of the drinks; that's black vodka in some of them! Who knew that existed?








Oh, and one Day of the Dead board. Love the black glitter pumpkin! Hmmmmm....