50th Anniversary wedding decorations

Reaching 50 years of marriage is a huge achievement — the golden anniversary. So if you or your parents decide to celebrate this remarkable milestone, you might decide to do it up big, the way you may not have done it 50 years ago.

Golden anniversary altar arrangementThis wedding at St. Elizabeth Seton Church in Rowland Heights was, yes, a 50th anniversary wedding renewal, so naturally, there are a lot of gold-tone flowers — yellow roses, orange daisies — accented with areca palms spray painted gold. This is simply a closeup of the flowers.

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Valentine’s Day bargains from Costco

Valentine’s Day is coming up fast, and while retail experts believe people will be spending more money for the love holiday this year than they did in 2012, all of us are still feeling the economic pinch. That’s why a place like Costco is an undercover bargain hunter’s dream come true.

I’ve written before about Costco and products you can buy here for weddings. But, as I’m sure you know from Christmas shopping, Costco is a spectacularly awesome place to buy gifts. (And, not to worry, Costco is not paying a dime for me to write this. I’m just a fan. You know how Target has fans? I am a Costco fan.)

I get Costco’s sale emails, and they’re pretty gosh darn tempting. Say you don’t want to spend more than $30 on a Valentine’s Day gift. I think that’s fair — it’s kind of a Hallmark holiday, and you’d rather spend the big bucks on a big deal date like an actual anniversary or his/her birthday? I think Costco’s gift baskets are a gift anyone can get behind.

I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t love to get something like this. Out of all the Valentine’s Day-themed gift baskets on Costco.com, this is the one I’d be all about — hint, hint, Mr. Powells. It wouldn’t be great for my waist, but one of these were delivered to my work, I probably wouldn’t care at that point. These are just $24.99, and that spectacular price only lasts until Feb. 17, but supplies are limited.

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American Christmas trees at the Reagan Library

Recently, I visited the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, where I stumbled upon this exhibit — An American Christmas. It was an exhibit made up of Christmas trees, decorated according to a corresponding decade.

This tree was the last, devoid of any decorations from the decade, since this decade isn’t finished yet. I didn’t get to photograph all the trees, and some of my photos came out all fuzzy, because the trees were in dark rooms. But I figured I would share them here, because I always like to see how people decorate their Christmas trees.

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Hang decorations from the ceiling

Sometimes, the ceilings of reception halls and hotel ballrooms are ugly. So having some decorations up high is nice, gives your guest something interesting to look out when they pass out from dancing so much at your wedding (hopefully!).

Flickr photo by The Prop Factory

For example, I love this dance floor from The Prop Factory out of Boston. It appears that they erected this open canopy over the dance floor in order to hang varying sizes of red, white, pink and purple paper daisies. If you’re wondering how they got the flowers to hang over the open area, I am betting they hung clear fishing line in a grid over the dance floors so they could hang more flowers. So nice!

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