From L.A. to LA: diy

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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

From Miss to Mrs: Reception Details

Before our wedding, back when I was reading everything I could on weddings, I used to love detail posts the most. So where when I started writing our recaps, this was the one post I've been looking forward to the most. Except that I've put off writing it, because what if I couldn't do it justice. But the wait is no longer, because it's finally here, and hopefully you feel it lives up to expectations! I've already posted the ceremony details, so these are just the details from the reception.

Our reception was in the Neptune Ballroom, named so because of the old submarine inside it. I can't say I would have ever expected to have our wedding reception was a submarine, but I don't think most people noticed it. And if they did, at least it made a conversation piece.

The photo above doesn't have the room completely set up, but if is the only shot I have which gives you an idea of what the room as a whole looked like. One thing you should notice though, is that we had chiavari chairs. It wouldn't have been something I'd upgrade for, but since they were the only option our venue had, they were included.

When our guests walked in the room, there was a table at the entrance with the escort cards. Depending on the table number assigned, I had either the symbol itself, or the symbol with its name. (If you're curious this post explains how the holders were made.)

On the same table with the escort cards was our guestbooks, which included family wedding photos, photos of the two of us growing up, and well as photos and mementos of our relationship. In the photo above of my sister-in-law and niece, you can see a few Halloween themed photos as well as an almost-empty escort card holder.

Personal PhotoThis photo is one of my favorite photos including our guestbook and it wasn't even taken by our photographer. It shows MOH, her mother, and my grandmother looking through the various photos together (all 3 of whom made the guest book a few times).

Each table had a centerpiece with a wine bottle containing blue and purple fabric flowers. (I collected wine bottles in the months leading up to the wedding, and had enough for each table, plus some for the escort card table and candy buffet.) Also we two small glass jars with blue and purple stones with votive candles. And of course, a sign showing the table number as well as a picture frame explaining what that number meant. The photo above shows the explanation for phi, the golden ratio, and the one below is one of my favorites, aleph naught which represents a countable infinite. (Remember how in The Fault in Our Stars they talk about different types of infinity? This is one of those.)

All food was served on Houmas House china. This was actually the pattern used by the homeowners in the 1800s. Pieces of the china were discovered, and the current owner commissioned modern day china to match it's historical inspiration.

Speaking of food, the cake was 3 square tiers frosted butter cream with a blue fondant ribbon. The actually cake stand was borrowed from our bakery.

I actually picked up the cake topper from Michael's the day before our bakery wanted it to make sure the cake would be strong to hold it. Funny enough, even though I picked it up on a whim, I fell a little in love with it and was surprised by how many people commented on it.

The flower was a light yellow gum paste rose. When ordering my cake I was told to keep the rose and it would harden and become porcelain like. Which it did and is still sitting on my dresser as a keepsake.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

From Miss to Mrs: Ceremony Details

With our ceremony at such a gorgeous location, off the porch of a grand plantation home, framed by towering oak tress there wasn't a lot of decoration needed. Except since we was having a primarily Jewish wedding, the one thing we needed was our chuppah.

The structure of this was actually made by the boy using pvc pipe, flower pots, and a bag of cement from an online tutorial. If I remember correctly, my FIL was the one who put it all together, and my SIL took care of the flowers at the bottom.

The chuppah in progress - personal photoAs for the covering itself, for a long time I wasn't sure how that would come together. As it happened, once the boy and I were first engaged, the one request my mom made was that she make our chuppah cover. Since it was something I hadn't really thought about, I told her I agreed, and from there she asked me to come up with ideas on what I wanted it to look like. I think I bookmarked a single image since I really had no idea. (And yes, I mean bookmarked. Pinterest hadn't quite taken off yet.) Except, by now you probably know what happened, and my mom died about 10 months before the wedding which meant not only did I have no idea what I wanted it to look like, I had no idea how it would be made at all.

I didn't really want to ask anyone to help at this point. I figured at some point it would come together, and I'd find a solution. Instead what happened is I said something in passing to my MIL, and without a hesitation she decided she'd sew our chuppah for us. Which is how my Catholic MIL happened to make the centerpiece of our Jewish wedding. I still had no idea how I wanted it to look, and left it up to her. She wound up embroidering it with flowers, our initials, and even a small tribute to my mom.

Speaking of my mom, almost a year ago I wrote this post about leaving flowers on a chair in memory of my mom. Except as it got closer to the wedding, it became something I didn't want to think about. Which is why I was so surprised when someone, I believe my godmother, pulled the extra flowers from our centerpieces to leave them on the chair where my mom would have sat.

On a less sentimental note, I put the boy in charge of buying the wine for the ceremony. I didn't tell him it had to be Kosher, just that it was something I wanted him to take care of. He remember that a few weeks prior we had gone to Doe's, and shared a pretty delicious bottle of wine. He actually tried to track down a bottle of it in an actual store, but wound up going back to the restaurant to see if they'd sell it to him. And while it wasn't their standard practice, he must have been convincing.

The ring bearer pillow was bought on clearance at Michaels. I didn't really care what it looked like, only that it was plain so I could dress it up. The blue and purple ribbons, may not have been gorgeous, but they did tie it into the overall colar scheme. Plus I had the ribbon leftover from when I crafted the escort card holders.

The flower girl basket came from our florist. One aspect I loved was that the petals weren't simple rose petals but actually matched the flowers in the bouquet. Of course, they weren't actually thrown, but if you look my niece didn't actually have a free hand to do so. I was told that about half way through the ceremony she whisperered in realization to my SIL, a bridesmaid, telling her she forgot to throw her petals and was reassured that it wasn't a problem.

Really the only other item on display was our ketubah, which we signed before the ceremony. I had it custom framed at Michaels, and asked them not to put felt over the back so we could take the print out to sign it. The stand itself was provided by our venue.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

From Miss to Mrs: Programming Break

I've gone on and on about our wedding programs without actually showing you what they look like. At least till now! As a guest would read the program before the ceremony starts, before I start my ceremony recaps, finally, here our are programs!

The only professional photo I have of the inside of our programs, and the pages are stapled in the wrong orderI got the basic idea of the programs, of using vellum paper as the cover from Mrs. Pony of Weddingbee. Which worked out since we had several sheets of vellum left over from our invitations. The inside of the program was computer paper, of which we also had a ton. And while computer paper isn't that fancy, the vellum did at least dress it up.

personal photoThe flower graphic was a free piece of clip-art included in my version of Word. Although I believe I changed the color and played with the shading. And since the flowers were printed on the vellum itself, it meant when you turned the page...

personal photo...you were left with our title page. As well as the outline of the flowers on the back of the cover.

personal photoThe next two pages showed the names of our families (at least those in the processional), as well as members of the wedding party. (Names have been edited for privacy.) I may have gone a little overboard describing exactly how each bridesmaid and groomsmen knew us, but I'm always curious about that information, and figured at least some of our guests would appreciate it.

personal photoThe next page had a basic outline of the ceremony (which I'll describe in more detail in my ceremony posts). Again of course, I wanted to make sure to describe just how those speaking were connected to us.

personal photoA lot of the wording regarding Jewish traditions I borrowed from Weddingbee's Mrs. Cream Puff. I also googled a few traditions for descriptions, and likely found some off Chabad.org as well. (If the print is too small, feel free to click on the photo for a closer view.)

personal photoI was inspired by Mrs. Tartlet of Weddingbee to include a menu in the programs as well. I loved the idea of including menus on the table for plated receptions, but since we were serving a buffet, I thought this made the most sense. And it gave our guests the chance to get excited for all the delicious food to come.

personal photoAgain on the last pages I borrowed from Weddingbee bloggers using Mrs. Pretzel's Thank You and Mrs. Elephant's In Remembrance page for my mother, whose funeral was barely 10 months before our wedding.

personal photoThe last page had the photo from our STD, and on the opposite side you could see out moo card. I had about 4 different cards that I rotated throughout, and just to prove it...

personal photo... here's a second version.

personal photoClosing the program, you could see our photo through the vellum, but now saw the side of the MOO card with our photo sharing instructions. (Which unfortunately, wasn't used nearly as much as I had hoped.)

I'm linking this post up to Kelly's Korner for this week's Show Us Your... DIY projects!

Thursday, December 20, 2012

Show Us Your... Holiday Cards

This week Kelly's Korner is linking with holiday cards. Except, we didn't send out holiday cards. Which begs the questions, why I am here linking up? Well, instead of sending out cards wishing happy holidays, our friends and family had these arrive in their mailbox recently.

Yes, those are our thank you cards from our wedding! And to be honest, only most of our friends and family received this recently. We do still have a handful left to send, which should all be in the mail by the end of the year. But about half of the cards did make it out by Emily Post's supposed 3 month deadline.

I was the one writing out each and every card, but the boy did at least sign his name. He did want to know why I chose I photo where only I looked nice. He thinks he has a silly look on his face, and doesn't like how his pocket square is crooked. Although since he's refused to look at any of our wedding pictures and I have no idea which one he would have preferred, he doesn't really have a lot to contribute here. (And just to defend myself, I like his grin in this photo because it feels true to his character.)

We did also include a small photo on the back, except I don't think the boy even noticed that one was there. (You can also see in this photo I did have them printed by Snapfish, but no, this isn't a sponsored post.)

For the return address I used a box of square Avery labels I had purchased for the wedding but never used. I went to format them, and realized I hadn't reinstalled word on my computer since I reinstalled windows. Luckily avery had an online template I was able to use. Except when I needed to print them, I needed adobe which again wasn't on my computer. That was at least easy to do, so finally I got them printed.

Except... they were supposed to be purple, and they're looking awfully pink. Turns out we were out of blue ink. But with all the trouble I'd already gone through, and knowing I had already printed 2 sheets labels, pink it was! (And for anyone curious, the Louisiana forever stamps were leftover from our invitation suite.)

How long did it take you to mail out thank you cards after the wedding? And if you're stopping by from Kelly's Korner be sure to say hello in comments!

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

From Miss to Mrs: Weathering the 'Cane

I woke up Wednesday morning expecting to be without power and in the middle of a hurricane. Except while it was raining outside we still had electricy. So I made myself a cup of coffee, wasted some time on the internet, and got to work of finishing up projects.

Unfortunatly not too long after I started we did wind up loosing power. So I lit a candle and continued on making programs.

The boy started complaining about being bored and having nothing to do, so I put him to work wrapping presents for the bridal party, alphabetizing our escort cards, and making a card box.

Now I had actually attempted making a card box, but since it was such an epic fail the boy agreed to remake it. Seriously, the slit for the cards was all jagged on my version, the wrapping paper was ripped, and it truly was a disaster. So much so that not a picture exists of it. But thankfully the boy was able to save me here and create a card box that was presentable.

Wednesday afternoon is also when the calls started to come in that Thursday's flights into Louisiana were canceled. It took several phone calls to various airlines, but the end people had rescheduled to fly into Dallas or Lake Charles, and then planned on driving or flying into Baton Rouge on Friday.

After about an hour without power, with no idea when we'd be getting power back, we drove over to the boy's parents' house, who still had power. I beleive at this point Isaac had been downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm, but there still was quite a bit of wind and rain outside. We would have liked to wait until things died down a little more, but would rather leave while it was still light out, then drive in the dark. Surprisingly we were by no means the only car on the road. A lot of those were police cars, but most looked to be normal people like us.

My in-laws kept power throughout the night, through the entire storm even. And once there we played a few games of Settlers of Catan and had gumbo for dinner.

Has anyone else ever resorted to doing diys by candlelight? Or would you be willing to drive through a hurricane if it meant that you had access to electricity?

Miss a Recap Post?
From Miss to Mrs: The Calm Before the Storm
From Miss to Mrs: There's a Hurricane Coming?
From Miss to Mrs: Here Comes Isaac

Monday, September 24, 2012

From Miss to Mrs: Here Comes Isaac

As quickly as Monday flew by at work, Tuesday crawled. By now everyone knew the hurricane was coming, and everybody was just ready to be home getting ready. And for me, I was ready to get home to finish off the final wedding projects.

I did talk to my DJ on Tuesday and we quickly went over the songs I had chosen for all our big moments. We did confirm that the wedding was definitely on, and that we'd be in touch after the storm.

On my lunch break I did stop by Michael's to pick up a few last minutes items. (Now I realize in my last post I said I went to Michael's on Monday. Except what I meant to write is that Monday I stopped by our florist to drop off my handkerchief to be wrapped around my bouquet. I promise that Tuesday is really when I stopped by Michael's, and then Smoothie King for something quick to eat. Basically what I'm saying is it's barely been three weeks and I'm already getting details wrong. But thankfully I'm here blogging it all, so years down the line I'll be able to say my last pre-wedding Michael's trip was Tuesday not Monday.)

Also on the topic of things I forgot to blog about, Monday was also spent on the phone with various friends and family going over their flight plans. I actually had about 10 people who were supposed to fly in on Wednesday. Except since Isaac was supposed to hit Wednesday morning I advised everyone to move their flights to Thursday. That probably would have been fine, if Isaac hadn't decided to slow down to 6mph, and push the estimated landfall from late Tuesday night to early Wednesday. Basically what I'm trying to say is I spent most of the day wondering when or even if people would actually be able to fly in.

I finally got home from work to the house to see the boy and my dad. Since the boy's work had been canceled that day the two had been hanging out all day. And by hanging out I mean the boy had spent the day on his PlayStation, and my dad had spent the day on his ipad.

My dad made spaghetti for dinner, and afterwards I wrote this post and tried to escort cards inspired by this image.

Source: weddingbee.com via Shoshanah on Pinterest

Except the Martha Steward punch I was using was strong enough to punch through the two layers of card stock. I spent far too long obsessing over this, and even had the boy try to help fix it. I finally settled for punching the sides of the cards instead and went to bed expecting to wake up to a hurricane.

Did you leave as tasks till only just before the wedding to discover they wouldn't quite come together just the way you've wanted?

Miss a Recap Post?
From Miss to Mrs: The Calm Before the Storm
From Miss to Mrs: There's a Hurricane Coming?

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Welcome to LA

We don't have our pro pictures back yet, but less the two weeks from the wedding I wouldn't expect to yet. But it works out anyway, because there's still a few projects from before the wedding that I haven't had a chance to share yet. Enter...

The Welcome Bags!I bought 2 packs of these bags from Michael's. Along with the polka dots, there were stripes, as well as a damask print. The label was made using word, using the same basic method from our invitation wrap-around labels.

As for the goodies, I started off planning to include Louisiana themed products, but wound up using items on sale. Included are a bag of Zapps Cajun Crawtators (aka the main Louisiana item), 2 bottles of water, 2 bags of cookies, 2 granola bars, a pack of tissue, and included in the purple pouch are mints and bazooka gum. Also included in the bags were a blue and purple string of Mardi Gras beads (aka the other Louisiana touch).

I realize the it isn't the easier to read the wording here, but if you click on it, it will let you zoom in. I pulled a lot of the wording from Mrs. Brooch's welcome letter. At the bottom was a brief schedule of the weekend, showing the time of the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, day after brunch, and of course the wedding itself.

The second page was a map to Houmas House, using the same basic map from the invitations. The directions themselves were pulled directly from our venues website, and slightly customized based on the hotels people were staying at.

The third page was a map of Baton Rouge, with a few suggestions of things to do and restaurant recommendations. Basically a smaller version of the suggestions I had listed on our wedding website.

And the last page was a list of directions to brunch which was at the home of the boy's sister and husband (Officially now my Sister & Brother-in-laws).

The original plan was to drop these off at hotels and have them waiting for guests. But with a hurricane hitting only days before the wedding, we weren't really driving around town to drop them off. Although at one point sent my dad to a hotel with a few bags, but due to some miscommunication they were never actually left at the front desk. Although in the end, it didn't really matter and I think everybody did wind up with a welcome bag. I think if we had a large wedding with more bags haphazardly handing them to people as we saw them wouldn't have worked, but considering the circumstance there wasn't really an issue.

Have you ever been to a wedding where you've received a welcome bag? (The answer for me is still a no.) And if you have, or even if you haven't, what's something that you'd love to receive in one?

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Post #1,000

In good news, this is officially the 1,000 post I've published on From L.A. to LA! In not so good news, we're expecting a hurricane tomorrow.

Now I knew when I was planning this wedding that Labor Day weekend didn't have a good history with hurricanes. It's when Katrina hit. It's when Gustav hit. It's when Tropical Storm Lee hit. But clearly no hurricane would be so inconsiderate to hit the weekend of the wedding. Except I guess Isaac is one rude fellow.

But it could be worse. We could be expecting to have a hurricane hit the day of the wedding. But since it's hitting several days before, I'm hoping that by the time the day arrives we'll have beautiful weather and it all goes as normal. I've talked to all our vendors in the past few days, and I'll be checking in with them after. I'm trying not to freak out because there's really nothing we can do at this point.

While I'm confident the wedding will happened as planned, it will be difficult for people to fly in. Anyone who was supposed to fly in our Wednesday has already changed their flight. And hopefully the airports are open on Thursday. We already received one completely expected call from someone who made the decision not to fly in.

The other major concern is electricity. I spent most of last night printing off programs, maps, welcome letters, and escort cards, and plan to do the same as long as we have power. Tomorrow I'm planning on putting everything together during the storm, although I'm guessing most people won't be too concerned about the details considering.

So I guess I should start printing now, and depending on our internet access I'll try to check in. But who knows, the next time I talk to you guys I could be an old married lady!

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

I'm at Table Number e

Last week I was complaining to the boy about all the stuff I had left to do for the wedding. And as I started listing them off, he asked, "Do you want me to take care of writing the table number descriptions?" Of course I was more than happy for him to do so, and I love what he came up with. I was just planning on using wikipedia for most of these, but I love how the boy was able to come up with personal and easily understandable descriptions. Since I know you're curious know, here's some of my favorites.

א_o - Aleph naught - The first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, א is used to represent the countable infinity. Imagine that you start counting
1,2,3,... , when would you stop? Well, never, but we do know how many
counting numbers there are... א_o.

δ - delta - This greek letter has many uses in modern mathematics. It is most commonly used to represent the smallest positive number when observing an infinitesimal change. A use more relevant to the newlyweds is the distinction of the degree of a vertex in a graph.

And now that I had the descriptions ready I could make a final mock-up of our centerpieces. Just as a reminder, here's what it looks like during the last mock-up. You can see I've since that last post not only have I added the table numbers, but the blue rocks in with the candle.

From the BackSince the mock-up I've boxed all of the wine bottles which have each been stuffed with flowers. I've started filling all the candle jars too but still have a few more to finish.

Under CandlelightI am really happy with the way these turned out. I had some mild freak-outs along the way with the idea of diy-ing my centerpieces, but I think they wound up looking not half bad.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Ribbon, Cards, & Gold Medals

It's so crazy as we get closer to the wedding seeing the projects I've had in my mind actually exist in real life. You would think that would make it start to feel real, but it still hasn't hit yet. There's not a lot of time yet, but at the rate I'm going I don't think it's going to feel real till the morning of.

Back to the actual point, with the wedding projects. Yesterday I shared our table numbers, and today the vision, that's now a reality, is the place card holders. I've had the idea for a while and can't tell you where I first saw it, but here's a version from Mrs. Eggplant.

sourceI thought it seemed pretty, but more than that, simple enough for me to pull off. So Friday night, sitting down to watch the Olympics I got out my supplies.

Yes, I used tape that I had hanging around the house and child-size scissors. Obviously not too difficult to come by, although I probably spent too much money on the ribbon. But there's enough left over for some other type of project.

Basically all I did was wrap the ribbon around the glass pane and tape it down. Although if I was doing this again, I would NOT use see through ribbon. I can't believe I wasn't smart enough to think of that before because you can very clearly see the folded over ribbon.

Thankfully though you can't really see the tape. So while watching Missy Franklin...

and Katie Ledecky swam for gold, I was sitting on the couch making place card holders.

I wound up making 3, and with the other two cut the ribbon short enough so you couldn't really see it.

And while I did a mock-up with cards (ripping up the white backing inside one of the frames), I'm not completely sure how many cards I can fit in a single frame. Hopefully I can fit them all on 2 of the frames and not use the first one. But while it's actually filled with cards, I can't imagine anyone will really pay attention to the slight imperfection.

How did you decide to display you place cards? And how much of the Olympics have you been watching?