Music (Part 1)

Here is a selection of some of the music we played during our wedding brunch. We played our music off of a laptop and hooked into the reception location's sound system, so everything was cheap and sounded pretty good after a lot of mp3 testing and playlist setups. We used many instrumental songs as to not interrupt our guests' chatting too much. Most of the music was plucked from some of our favorite movie soundtracks. Both Deanna and I are movie junkies, so it was another nice way of making the day feel more like "us". The "food" playlist, as it was called, ended up being about an hour and 45 minutes. We wanted to give it a little extra buffer if things ended up taking longer than expected. Deanna's mother arrived early to start the music, so it was playing when everyone else entered. I think we played about an hour and a half of music from the start until the end of the meal.
The sampling here isn't spot on, some of the versions of songs were different, but it gets the point across.

1: The Theme from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Jon Brion

2: The Way I Feel Inside - The Zombies ( We used a different version, but its close)

3: Playground Love (from the Virgin Suicides) - Air (We used the vibraphone version, which is an instrumental)

4: After Hours - The Velvet Underground

5: Phone Call (also from Eternal Sunshine) - Jon Brion

6: A Well Respected Man - The Kinks

7: Just Like Honey - The Jesus and Mary Chain (cause we liked it in Lost in
Translation)

8: Hey Jude (from Royal Tenenbaums) - Cover by Mutato Muzika Orchestra (We used a lot of Mark Mothersbaugh music from the Wes Anderson movies, and yes I know a lot of this makes us come off as hipsters... sorry)

9: We Are Going to Be Friends - The White Stripes

I will put up a similar post soon about our dance and ceremony music, so stay tuned.

More details about those birds

I've gotten several requests lately for patterns and more detailed instructions for our little fabric birds.


While I'm very flattered that so many brides-to-be liked them, this is also kind of a touchy subject for me. As a self-employed freelance illustrator, I know how hard it is to make a living off of your artwork, and while my birds aren't nearly as cute as Ann Wood's, they were very heavily influenced by hers, so I'm leery of doing anything to cut into her business. That's one reason why it wouldn't sit right with me to make or sell these for a profit.


On the other hand, I also know what it's like to be a bride on a budget and how frustrated I felt when I first started experimenting on mine. So, instead of detailed instructions, I'll post all of the links that I found helpful and add a few more tips. You can also look back at my original bird post for my very general instructions.

mrs. penguin's handmade bird toppers from weddingbee.com - general details and photos of the making-of process.

spool's bird mobile pattern - these birds look a little different, but they offer a free pdf pattern you can download. I actually used a modified version of this pattern to make the bodies for mine. I extended the belly piece further up to form a face, attached wings, and made a separate larger tail. I also found that threading wire through the tail helps make it bendable.

peonies and polaroids hand made bird instructions - detailed instructions with photos. i didn't use these to make mine, but her tips were very helpful.

So, you can see there are quite a few different ways to make the little birds, but they usually require a lot of time and a little bit of experimentation. I hope this is helpful, without stepping on anyone's toes. Good luck!

Up Next: Music (finally)

Thanks Katherine!

During our super-long engagement, I developed a pretty hardcore wedding blog addiction. I used to check brooklyn bride, style me pretty, a practical wedding, and weddingbee at least every day (and several other bridal blogs more sporadically). My absolute favorite and most inspiring blog, though, was the inspiration-board-a-day extravaganza, snippet & ink.


So, I was incredibly honored when Katherine of Snippet & Ink asked to include our little soiree as one of her "featured weddings". Our post went up over the weekend, and I'm so touched by all of the wonderful comments readers have left. So, thank you so much for the shout-out, Katherine, your site is seriously one of the best out there.

P.S. - Since getting married I've gone cold-turkey on my wedding blog addiction.....almost. And I promise to finish up the last detail post before the next century. Work has been crazy and I'm a pretty terrible blogger.

detail post #6: flowers

I should say up front that flowers were not high on our list of priorities for the wedding. I just couldn't justify plunking down tons of cash for something that would only last for a day. Plus, we knew that we wanted to keep them fun and simple, so we decided to do them ourselves

The Centerpieces

I mentioned our decision earlier to place individual stems in vintage glass bottles. Jesse and I are thrift store fiends and collected most of our bottles for $1 or less. His mother even found a table full of really awesome old ones at a garage sale for $25. I really wanted to fill the bottles with dahlias since they would be in season in July and I love the modern shape of their full-petaled heads.


We ordered the 75 yellow ones wholesale from fiftyflowers.com to be delivered two days before the wedding. They arrived early that Thursday with no problem (I highly recommend their site). I trimmed each flower down and stored them in buckets full of water with plant food until later that evening when some really kind neighbor ladies helped me start arranging them in the jars.


I thought the centerpieces might need some accent colors, so Jesse and I ran to the lawn + garden section of the local grocery store that evening and bought a potted lantana and a couple of small potted kalanchoes in peach, pink, and orange for about $30 total and added their trimmed buds to our smaller jars.

a photo taken by my friend Jen. This was our "chemistry set" inspired centerpiece.

Luckily we were allowed to set up our centerpieces at our reception site the day beforehand which was made even easier by the assistance of several friend and family members. Arranging and storing our centerpiece jar groupings in advance also helped to save time. I was pleased with how they turned out and they weren't terribly hard to do ourselves, especially with so much wonderful help. Plus, now we have a really fantastic collection of vintage bottles!

The Bouquets

Although I'd been collecting clippings for months of tons of different beautful, full bouquets, even a week before the wedding I didn't know what I wanted to do for mine. I seethed with jealousy of brides who got to carry peonies or daffodils, and tried to figure out every possible way to find them in mid-July, but buying them out-of-season would have cost me a small fortune. I finally decided I just didn't really care. I'd only be holding my own bouquet for a few minutes while I walked down the aisle. It wasn't worth worrying about and I really just wanted something small, monochromatic and hand-tied, so I did the unthinkable in bride-land....I bought my bouquet flowers from a grocery store.

We only needed three bouquets - one for me, one for my sister, and one to toss during the reception. So, I bought white, yellow and pink roses, some mixed zinneas and snap dragons, lots of ribbon and called it a day. My mom helped me to arrange the flowers the evening before the wedding and I finished tying their ribbons later that night while hanging out with girlfriends in my hotel room, so it turned into a fun bonding experience. Sure, they were far from perfect and it's obvious that they weren't professionally arranged, but they suited me fantastically for the day.

My sister's bouquet turned into a wildflower mix of zinneas and snow peas tied with a thicker red and white striped ribbon with a thin salmon-colored ribbon on top. I initially wanted to go monochromatic with all three bouquets, but her dress (although absolutely beautiful) was a little bit darker and more purpl-y than the rest of the wedding colors, so I mixed darker, lighter, and brighter flowers in an effort to tie everything together.

The toss bouquet consisted of large yellow roses tied with a thin yellow and white ribbon. In the photos, the flowers actually almost look a tiny bit like yellow peonies (at least in my imagination) because they were so full.


I ended up using the white roses and the same yellow ribbon for my own bouquet. I used to label roses, and especially white roses, as "boring" for a bridal bouquet, but the day I bought them I decided to re-label them in my mind as "classic". It's amazing what a difference a tiny little mind trick like that can make.

(all photos taken by Mariano Delgado unless specified. Click any of them to enlarge)

Up Next: Music