Through the Looking Glass

Huzzah! We finally got our official wedding photos back from our lovely & very talented friend and photographer, Rebecca Fishman. My favorite part about looking at these photos--aside from seeing all the moments captured on that day--was the DIY details. Most people probably didn't notice the color of the vases or the stamps on the bag, but it gave me some satisfaction knowing my month-long searches through thrift shops and flea markets and eBay and Etsy had come to fruition at last, dammit!

Here are a few of my faves. All photos are by Rebecca Fishman.

Our groomsmen's boutonnieres: crespedia (billy buttons), blue eryngium, succulents, and seeded eucalyptus, wrapped in lamb's ear.

My bridesmaids' dresses were all the same infinity dress (purchased from a dressmaker off Etsy) tied different ways. Note my mom's 40-year-old wedding veil, which I cleaned and glue-gunned back to tip-top shape.

Can't take credit for this one, but I just love that big-ass rock and the towering ents trees around us.

My little nephew ringbearer. Note adorable grey hipster Sperry Docksiders, which I thought would be much more comfortable than kid dress shoes.

These flowers doubled as aisle bouquets and table arrangements. They included many of the same flowers as the boutonnieres, plus ranunculus, lisianthus, scabiosa pods, geranium leaves, and I forgot what those long green thingies are. The mason jars were bought on Craigslist and tinted with glass paint by me and my mom, as you may remember from this post.

The ceremony took place in the bones of an old greenhouse, overlooking a canyon.

My amazing bridesmaid Shianling hand-sewed this ring pillow in the likeness of my spoiled cat Pilsen. Kinda creepy, lots of awesome. Rowr!

Yay! We're a Mr. and Mrs. now. Exiting to the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice."

One of our thrifted Pennsbury Pottery succulents and vintage books as decor for our cocktail hour. Note delish crostini in the back (which I missed, dammit!).

We saved some money by using ecofriendly bamboo plates for cocktail hour at the crostini station provided by our caterer and granddaddy of the lasagna cupcake, Heirloom LA.

Part of our crostini station...can't believed I missed this nomnom while we were taking photos...

Our BBQ pork sliders on ciabatta. Glugglgguguguugaglugugggg (that's the sound of drooling)...

 

Instead of traditional numbers, our table signs were cities that we had each lived in at some point in our lives. Eight of them were painstakingly created by Alex's mom, who is a fantastic artist and does these awesome collages. Each strip of paper was sourced from materials from our lives in those cities--old letters, programs, favorite books, scripts, etc.

To supplement our table arrangements that did double-time as aisle bouquets, we also used vintage-y bud vases and medicine bottles.

Those DIY honey jars came into use as more than favors that get thrown away! Because of the wind, our friend/wedding coordinator extraordinaire Sara used them as place card holders-weight-thingies-that-don't-blow-away. She also designed the menu, which was folded into the farmhouse-style napkin.

The lights flicked on as the sun began to set and the guests got drunk nursed their strawberry fixes by the pool...

Please note our Han Solo / Princess Leia cake toppers. Ahem. We also placed old family photos around the dessert table to remind us of ... our ancestry?

Our DIY photo booth. We used Sara's polaroid camera and threw a bunch of props on the table for people to use. That hat is from an acting class assignment where I played Annie Hall. [Not seen: vest, tie, and tennis racket]

...and this was our photo booth backdrop. I'd originally bought the paper pom poms to use as arch decor for the ceremony, but we ended up hanging most of them here. Sara ingeniously fastened some flood lights from Home Depot too to brighten up the area.

Feasting at dusk...like vampires.

who's got more lasagna cupcakes?

I love this photo. I mean, c'mon, everybody's clapping for us! No, actually I just love seeing our mishmash of friends and family in the same photo.

The groom's dad makes his speech. Again, I love seeing everybody's expressions in the audience.

My aunt and cousin using my hand-stamped dessert take-home bags! Yeeeaaaah! Those chocolate chip toffee and sea salt cookies in the foreground were the BizNess!!

regret pie

Ding ding ding ding! Kiss! Kiss!

The ol' balls and chains

And they lived happily ever after. Now that I've thoroughly exhausted all wedding-related stuff, I'm going to turn this blog back toward its original aim, hardcore nudity!  designing/nesting in your first home!

Giving Thanks

I'm grateful this year for my beloved family, friends, and a husband who's helped LA become home to me.

Miniature Moon

We're not taking our real honeymoon until December, but in the meantime, my amazing new in-laws treated us to a few days of minimoon in Palm Springs.

After all that wedding stress, what better way to unwind than luxuriate by a pool with my new spousal unit? Because we deserve it, dammit.

fancy bathroom stuff from C.O. Bigelow!

Garcon! Oh Garcon!

Who wrote the book of love? No, really. Who was the author?

At long last, I get my mojito.

Such excellent croquet form!

The eponymous palms of Palm Springs.

Mr. & Mrs.

Succulent Bites

Here's the only pic I have of our finished succulent centerpieces, which we used to decorate our dessert tables and the tables at cocktail hour.

The succulent plants were found for less than a buck each at the Rose Bowl, and you might recall these silver Indian goblets that I found at the Jewish Women's Council Thift Store for $1 each (along with the vintage books, which were also used to decorate our gift table).

Voila! I can't take credit for these...I left for a few hours to buy some candy, and by the time I came back my mom had planted all of these.

Mad Props for the Booth

Last year, when my gal pal Meryl had her wedding, my friends and I had a blast hogging the photo booth.

Naturally, I wanted people to hog photo booth at my wedding! A look into the costs of renting a photo booth quickly ruled that out for our budget, so I decided to go the super DIY route and build one myself.

We borrowed a polaroid camera from our friends Sara and Tom, who'd bought one for their wedding as well, then hired our site owner's grandson to be our official booth photographer for the evening. Done and done. Now for props! A quick trip to the dollar store and into my own closet supplied some photo booth props...a princess tiara, some sunglasses procured from some film fest swag bag, a pirate's eye patch, a bunch of flowers, a hat from an acting class scene where I played Annie Hall, and some Mardi Gras beads. I also wanted a moustache, but the Howard Hughes in me needed to devise a germ-free way of pulling that off. Luckily, because of Halloween coming up, dollar stores and bodegas were awash in fake moustaches. I picked up this cheap one. Dumb thing didn't even have a sticky back. I guess kids were supposed to tape it to their skin?

Don't feel sad for me, I'm already dead.

I traced the moustache silhouette onto a piece of cardboard...

Then, using the hot glue gun, stuck a dowel rod to it, then glued the moustache to the cardboard.

Ta-da! I look like Terry Richardson, except germ-free.

I'm pretty much Tom Selleck.

As for building the booth itself, we borrowed a desk from the owner of Secluded Garden Estate to hold our props, and I bought a bunch of colored paper pom poms and crepe streamers on line, which Sara hung up between the branches of two trees to give us a backdrop. She also grabbed some flood lights from Home Depot to light up the background.

Thanks to Lynn from The Actor's Diet!

We also left our guest book at the desk so that people could snap one photo to take home, and one photo to leave with us.

At the end of the night, we got to momentarily slip away from our wedding duties (eating cake, drinking to toasts, dancing) to have a little fun with my homemade booth.

Please don't regrow that moustache.

Just Desserts

Besides wedding cake at our wedding (which was a 3-layer, chocolate/marble/vanilla cake with salted caramel and hazelnut cream), we offered our guests chocolate chip & sea salt toffee cookies, seasonal fruit pies (one of the biggest regrets of my life was not getting a slice!), chocolate pie, gummy peaches, marshmallows, chocolate balls, and homemade candy from our family friend, Susan. All of it was laid out on a big-ass table that we revealed about mid-way through dancing...which, in retrospect, was sort of a mistake, since the dance floor cleared out and everyone went to line up for dessert.

Thank you Lynn of The Actor's Diet for awesome dessert documentation!

Confucius say, "Wasting is totes bad," so I wanted to make little personalized goody bags so people could take some sweets to go. After our huge family-style meal, I knew people would be too stuffed to eat it all then and there.

I stamped each one of these pink glassine bags with black ink and a readymade stamp, plus gold ink and a stamp of a ginko leaf, which my bridesmaid Shianling had used when hand-making my bridal shower invitations. This was easy peasy.

I also wanted to make a pennant sign to label the table "desserts," in case people didn't, like, get it. Signs like these were costing up to $45 on Etsy, and honestly, it wasn't all that important to me, so I decided to take the DIY route. I started with some grey felt, and, using a piece of chalk, traced out the letters.

Next, using some leftover fabric from the honey jars, I cut out triangles with some pinking shears. A quick tap of the hot glue gun and it was glued to a long piece of twine. Using more hot glue, Shianling and I glued a long piece of ribbon across the top.

String? String!

A little more hot glue on the letters...

And a few minutes to dry...

Ta da...Signage! Since I had the glue gun, the fabric, the shears, and the twine already, it only cost me a whopping $1.50 for felt and $2 for ribbon. A little homemade, but it did the trick.

Here it is, doing its thang....

Photos courtesy Lynn Chen at The Actor's Diet

And here is Regret Pie.

Photos courtesy Lynn Chen at The Actor's Diet

 Now, time for the dentist.