Quality, not quantity

According to my self-imposed schedule of a post every other day, I would be posting something now, but am working on other posts and ideas and am also late for work. So I figure — why post?

This post is really to get a thought out of the way. I will likely scale back my posts so that I have quality posts to offer, rather than stuff you can read anywhere else. That takes time. And I am right now getting a few posts about outdoor weddings ready, since October is right around the corner. October, if you didn’t remember, is the favorite month for weddings, according to the readers of this here blog.

So, sit back, relax and if you were waiting, expect some good posts soon. And, if you have an idea for a post, or want me to explore a particular topic, feel free to shoot me an email or a comment. They both land in my inbox.
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Wedding traditions from all over the world

Being American, I’ve heard of a lot of different wedding traditions that actually hail from different cultures. But I guess that’s just how it goes — as people immigrate here from other countries, they incorporate their wedding traditions, which friends from other cultures might think is cool and incorporate into their wedding, and so on and so forth until no one is sure anymore where the tradition came from.

For example, here is probably the most well-known of non-American wedding tradition — the smashing of a glass at a Jewish wedding. It’s been made famous in countless movies (by Adam Sandler a few times, I think), but where did it come from?
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My mom’s last hurrah is golden

When my mom passed, I was finally free to tell my siblings that I’d helped my mom with a wedding in February while she was sick.

And even though we were all grieving, we giggled at my mom’s audacity and subterfuge — both me and my aunt and uncle (who also helped) had managed to keep the small wedding under wraps. Not only that, my mom was supposed to be sick but she’d managed to do flowers for a wedding!? Oh, mommy.

The wedding, she told me, was very small, with the ceremony at St. Elizabeth’s in Rowland Heights (a church we’re very familiar with). The aisle is short, so not a lot of draping was needed. And since Catholic churches tend to like sparse decorations, it was pretty simple.

Honestly, I’m not even sure how my mom did it all when she was well. Four of us cleaned the roses and star-gazers for my mom’s funeral flowers and we were exhausted. How my mom put together an arrangement like the one above when she was sick is beyond me. But she really loved flowers, and I know she really loved making things extra fancy — check out those gold-painted palms in the back of the arrangement.

These appear to be bridesmaid bouquets of yellow roses and calla lilies. My mom also loved accessories like gold rope. It gives it some extra oomph. It makes things just a little more ornate, and is perfect for a golden anniversary celebration.

The offering bouquet.

The reception was nearby at the Royal Vista Golf Club. The place was unfamiliar, but my mom told me I’d been here before. The place was a pleasant surprise — lots of character. The draping and lights from the ceiling, however, comes with the place and was not my doing.

The cake table, appropriately golden. I’m really glad I got a final shot of my mom decorating a cake — those were typically the shots I could take without her scolding me for taking pictures of her. As I mentioned at her funeral, she often scolded me for wasting pictures on her while we worked. But I don’t regret it one bit.

My mom loved big arrangements and really loved incorporating fruit. While looking for pictures of her for a slideshow, we found my old 18th birthday photos — every arrangement had all sorts of exotic flowers and fruit. It was awesome. If you can’t tell, that would be bananas, grapes, mangoes and a pineapple in that buffet arrangement.

The party was a small one — maybe 15 tables? My uncle and aunt did most of the heavy lifting on and off the tables, while I took care of draping the tables. The seat covers, however, belong to the site and are not ours. If my mom had contracted seat covers, she probably would have needed my siblings’ help.

The head table, I think, had enough room for the couple and their kids. That backdrop was done on the fly — initially it was just the tulle and lights, but I had some extra gold organza and my mom wanted me to dress it up a bit. It turned out well.

My mom really loved flowers and plants. She could make anything grow. In fact, she planted some really gorgeous palm, guava, calamansi and ti leaf trees in her yard and they are thriving, as are all her other myriad plants. In fact, at our old house, we used to joke that her green thumb kept making one banana tree grow, even though she kept trying to kill it.

My mom also really loved decorating weddings. From time to time, we grumbled about some of the people we had to deal with (not all bridezillas!), but I think my mom just really loved seeing everything coming together.

Aw, mom. Weddings won’t be the same without you.

In memory of the wedding decorator

My mom, who taught me all I needed to know to be creative, intelligent and successful, passed away last night. She was diagnosed with stomach cancer last year and has been fighting ever since. I thank God she’s now delivered from her pain and suffering, but mourn the loss that she means to my life, my sisters’ lives, my brother’s life and all our friends and family beyond.

Call for girlfriend getaway and bachelorette party ideas

This is not really in the realm of wedding decorating, but still — its all creative ideas, right? A friend of the wedding decorator, Amy Chen, is an assistant editor at Budget Travel magazine and wants ideas for girlfriend getaways and bachelorette parties.

Photo by Flickr’s n1kk1best

Her asking me was basically her first mistake, since I’ve only been an active member of a bridal party twice, beyond my stints as a flower girl. So, I have no idea. Basically, what she’s wondering is: what would you like to do like to do with your girlfriends beyond wine tasting and spa treatments.

Anyway, the Girl Getaways site is actually chock full of cool ideas. And because they’re ideas from Budget Magazine’s staff, they’re budget minded — thank God! Because from my most recent experience as a bridesmaid, I was shocked at how expensive being a bridesmaid can be. I don’t know how you repeat offenders can afford it! I don’t even know how repeat wedding guests can afford it!

At any rate, Girl Getaways did have one really cool bachelorette planning article recently. I swear I wanted to send this to every bride-to-be (and a few former brides) to demonstrate that you could do a whole heckuva lot more than just go to the spa and get sloshed. Their best idea? The Beach House Rental:

Dive in by determining what’s most important to you. For the house: Is there a private pool or hot tub? How many bedrooms and bathrooms will you need? For a group of women, assume that no one wants to share beds and figure on one bathroom for every four people. For the location: Keep in mind you’ll need a break from the sun, and zero in on communities where you can walk to shops, galleries, restaurants, and bars, or join a lively boardwalk scene.

Beachhouses in high season are generally rented by the week, so you’ll find a better selection of weekend rentals in shoulder season (May or September in Cape May, N.J., or April in North Carolina’s Outer Banks, for example). Locales with lots of housing stock also work well for a weekend rental; you may not be able to find a weekend rental in Martha’s Vineyard in July, but you probably can nab a lovely place in Myrtle Beach or Hilton Head, S.C.

Work out how you’re going to handle chores like cooking and cleaning ahead of time. Many rental services build in a cleaning fee or let you add a cleaning service for an additional charge. If none of you are inclined to spend time in the kitchen, look into hiring a personal chef or assign a team to breakfast, another to lunch, and agree to eat dinners out.

Have some activities like beach volleyball and Frisbee on standby for those who can’t sit still and, in case the weather doesn’t comply, be ready with board games, a poker set, or guilty-pleasure movies and popcorn.

Something Extra Hire a yoga instructor to lead a group class on the beach. There’s nothing like doing sun salutations in the sand while facing the wild blue yonder. Call a local yoga studio or try yogafinder.com.

My contribution to this idea? Reserve a Crystal Cove Beach Cottage. Sigh. Can you imagine how restful and rejuvenating your bachelorette party could be? Ahhh. That’s my kind of party.
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Wedding cakes of cheese

Here in America, I think wedding cupcakes are the alternative du jour to a full on wedding cake. But is that true?

Photo by Flickr’s honto

Because, apparently, wedding cakes made of cheese are taking New Zealand by storm, according to this article. Hat tip to Doris for finding it!

Photo by Flickr’s melodrama.ca

From the article:

Canterbury Cheesemongers co-owner Sarah Aspinwall said the wedding cheese was a growing trend overseas and, in New Zealand, was requested mainly by couples returning from their OE.

“I guess some people don’t like traditional fruitcakes very much and perhaps have a real passion for cheese,” she said.

“It is a delicious thing to have at the end of a big feast, rather than something sweet.”

The cake is made by stacking an assortment of round cheeses to resemble a traditional cake, and is served with crackers and fruit.

That appears to be the case with both above — pretty simple wheels of cheese stacked on top of each other, or in the case of the second picture, four quarters of different cheeses laid out to form one wheel, plus another wheel of cheese on top. But don’t think cheese can’t be decorated. Oh no.

Photo by Flickr’s emilykreed

Hopefully, this couple doesn’t mind being on this blog, but they are standing in front of one impressive cheese tower there. Its decorated with all kinds of colorful fruit, what looks like salad greens and bright flowers. However, I wonder how hard it must be to cut the cheese? (Hee, hee, I couldn’t help it. Sorry.)

Photo by Flickr’s Miss V Lemon

Here’s another pretty impressive multi-tiered cake of cheese. I couldn’t even tell you what kind of cheeses those were. Those round fruits that are whole and cut look to be figs, plus there are grapes, strawberries and that orange fruit under that extra big thick wheel of cheese. And its all sitting on top of a pretty silver stand.

Photo by Flickr’s The Cake Fairy

This cake is a little less like your traditional tiered cake — it’s got a pretty thick base, but appears to be several ingredients down there — it looks like custard filling the layers of cheese, plus nuts, figs and gerber daisies. Then, a narrow tower of cheese layers topped with what looks like a thick wheel of blue cheese. I may be getting this all wrong, seeing as how I know nothing about cheese. Feel free to correct me in the comments.

Photo by Flickr’s rbrwr

This cake of cheese, I think, is my favorite. They used several, visually different wheels of cheese and used very colorful flowers and red cherries to decorate and topped it with Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker. Too cool!

Wholesale wedding flowers delivered to you

I’m of the opinion that weddings are the type of affair you would like to hand off to someone experienced that you trust. However, I did just up and get married without much fanfare, so take that philosophy with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, if you are the type who taking care of everything herself, then FiftyFlowers.com is for you.

In a nutshell, FiftyFlowers can put together together centerpieces for you and ship them to you — all you have to do is put them on the tables. OR, you can pick out your favorite flowers — say mini lilies and stargazers — and they’ll cut them and ship them to you, so you and your crew (friends, bridesmaids, relatives, what have you) can arrange them the way you want them arranged.

For example, check out this mini sunflower corsage. They can arrange these mini sunflowers as a boutonniere. Let me tell you, this is useful — my mom used to say that the personal bridal flowers were the most work, as they are the most intricate of the vast variety of wedding flowers out there. So if you decide to do your flowers yourself, but have to bite the bullet for your personal flowers, this is not a bad way to go.

And while delivery of personal flowers can be a pill (trust me, I was a delivery person many a time), their delivery boxes are impressively well made to keep the flowers safe from being crushed against one another.

They were even bold enough to list their prices right up front — 20 stems of mini calla lilies for $79.99. And they have a huge assortment of fresh rose petals, ready to ship right to you.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m a cheap bastard. So I would probably spend the gas and waste my time going into downtown to get my own flowers, if I were so inclined to do my own flowers for my wedding (which, as I mentioned, I was not, but that’s an entirely different story). But you might not be near a large flower market like the one available here in L.A., or maybe you want a certain flower you can’t seem to find. This is a good option. And, I’ll do you a favor.

I have a postcard they were handing out. It says they’re giving a Show Special — 5% off your total order. Just enter discount code: BRIDE. Easy as pie.