new blog!

Like I mentioned in the last post, I've been toying with the idea of starting a new blog since this one was so much fun. Well, earlier this week, I jumped right in and formed Mischief and Madness. It's my outlet for displaying all sorts of pretty things that inspire me: art, design, fashion, film, and, of course any new DIY projects I'm working on. And get this - my new blog will be updated daily. No more of this posting once in a blue moon for me. So, if you're at all curious, or just need to look at something pretty during the day, feel free to check it out. Maybe I can even convince Jesse to guest post on there every once in a while. Cheers!

Farewell!

This is the final post of our wedding blog. You probably guessed the same since we haven't updated this thing in months. We're loving our first year of marriage and are ready to move beyond our wedding to the rest of our relationship together.

Jesse and I just want to say thank you to everyone who's stopped by to check out our little blog and to those of you who have taken the time to leave us so many nice comments. We have no plans to take this little shindig down, just in case any of our planning experiences can be of use to any future brides or grooms-to-be.

We both really enjoyed our time posting. In fact, I've been turning over the idea of starting a new non-wedding related blog for some time. If that plan ever actually happens, and I have enough design-y, crafty goodness to share, I'll make sure to post a link here.

In the meantime, good luck with your own planning!

Thanks again and much love,
Jesse and Deanna

blurb wedding album

Happy 2009! We finally got around to designing our wedding album...yeah, almost a full six months after our wedding date. We decided to publish it using blurb again, since we were so pleased with how our guest book turned out. For the second time, blurb passed the test with flying colors, so we thought we should post a couple of images of the finished book in case anyone else is thinking about trying them out. You can see a preview of the first 15 pages here if you're in need of layout inspiration for your own album.

(click to enlarge the photos)

wedding video

I think I've mentioned this before, but Jesse and I first met years ago at art school. One of our closest friends there (and Jesse's roommate for several years) was a very talented video major named James Favata. James is awesome for many reasons - he once completely painted himself red for a photo project, he used to work at a picture people in the mall and would hang random people's portraits on their college fridge, and he and our friend,Chris, inadvertantly are the reason Jesse and I met one fateful night.

The main reason that James is awesome, though, is because he offered to shoot our wedding video. And he did a seriously great job. If you live in the Washington D.C. - Baltimore - Philadelphia area and are looking for a videographer (wedding or otherwise), check out his website - he's a cool guy.

And now, a little snippet of our wedding day! Watching this the first time brought all of the emotions from that morning right back. The music used throughout the video was taken from either our ceremony or reception playlist. Enjoy!


Jesse and Deanna's Wedding from JPstudios on Vimeo.

Music (Part 3)

And finally, the promised post about our ceremony music. First a little back story, though.

After deciding to get married in Lititz Springs Park, I spent a few weeks worrying that our day might devolve into Joy and Darnell's fabulously trashy park wedding from the television show, My Name is Earl, hostess twinkie cakes and all. Their wedding looked fun on TV, but wasn't what I had in mind for my own. So we decided we would hire a violinist to play at our ceremony to "class up" our little public park soiree. As the date loomed closer, though, our budget got tighter and our violinist contacts dried up. So we decided to stick with the itunes laptop again, and pay a really nice friend of Jesse's to man the operation. In the end, I'm actually really happy we made this decision. It was way cheaper, we got to pick very specific versions of personal songs, and we were able to hide Brett (Jesse's awesome friend) and our laptop on the side of the gazebo, so it didn't detract from the ceremony. The park even provided most of the speakers and cables.

The only ceremony photo including our awesome laptop helper. The expression on his face cracks me up.
(click to enlarge)

We couldn't make another mixwit compilation because most of our songs are either very specific or kind of obscure. So, instead you just get a little list. Sorry. We didn't want our ceremony to stick to the traditional music since it felt too stuffy for us, but we also didn't want to go crazy with pop music. I think we ended up with a nice balance, while still including a lot of subtle nods to movie sountracks since we're both such film nuts. Whenever I hear any of these songs now, it just brings me right back to that morning and makes me giddy.

Pre-ceremony Music (Played while the guests arrived)

1. String Quartet in F Major - Ysaye Quartet (Royal Tennenbaum's Soundtrack)
2. La Valse D'Amelie (Orchestra Version) - Amelie Soundtrack
3. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness - The Smashing Pumpkins
4. Claire De Lune - Debussy

Processional Music (Played while our mothers and my sister entered)

1. Les Bulles - Carlos D'Alessio (Delicatessen Soundtrack)

Bridal Entrance

1. Ave Maria - A simple piano & Violin version by the O'Neill Brothers

Recessional

1. Happiness (Jesse edited this down to just the chorus) - Elliott Smith
2. Hey Jude (The Beatles Cover) - Mutato Muzika Orchestra (Royal Tennenbaums Soundtrack)
   

Up Next: we'll finish up our wedding blog with a very fitting final end post - our wedding video shot and edited by one of our extremely talented friends.

Music (Part 2)

Now we move on to the post meal dancing...
Again this is an abbreviated version of our dance playlist.
Deanna and I are not clubbers, and we aren't usually too up to date with the latest radio and MTV chart toppers. So when it came to picking out the dance music we had a little bit of trouble finding a way to balance the music we like, with the music you can actually dance to, and that our guests would enjoy. I think our only regret with the playlist is that we would have played slow songs more frequently. We found that people over 35 will not dance to anything but slow songs. There were plenty picked out, but we only ended up playing about 1/2 to 2/3 of our dance music. There were many reasons for this...
1- people didn't drink too much, most likely because it was an afternoon reception.
2- we had a really long playlist
3-we had to fit in cake cutting, throwing the bouquet, throwing the garter, announcements and so on.

So on with the music!

The MixWit songs are pretty accurate on this one. So I will let the list speak for itself for the most part. Here are a couple notes.

The songs are not in the order they were played.

#4 I like Ben Folds, Deanna does on occasion, but isn't a fan of this song. We did find that our parents and the older couples really liked this one though.

#9 This was our first dance song.This is credited to Jon Brion because he did a different mix of this song for the Punch Drunk Love Soundtrack (which was the version we used). It is actually sung by Shelly Duvall and was originally on the Popeye Soundtrack.

#10 This was Deanna's dance with her father.

#11 was my dance with my mother. Our family has always had close ties to all things Muppets, so this was a good pick for us.

#12 Everybody's Gonna Be Happy is a Kinks song, it was not labeled on the mix.

#13... no, we don't watch American Idol. We liked this song before it was ruined, and only hope there was enough space between that version and the wedding for people to forget Sanjaya's version of it.**Deanna thinks this comment sounds mean and claims no responsibility for it.**

#16 Ok, so the lyrics don't exactly speak of marital love, but its a really great cover, and Deanna likes "old sounding" songs.

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.