Wedding Photos

Thanks to a colleague giving me a few baskets, a gift of some cool metal tins (I get them from a coworker of my mother’s every Christmas – they come with shortbread cookies), and a inexpensive metal rack (via Amazon) this area is starting to give me a little piece of mind.

I don’t want to say too much, but we have several lovely surprises in store for our reception guests, including mustaches, which we trust will be a big hit.

Since we’re broadly defining our wedding as “Depression-themed” we’re limiting our musical choices to music from that era, or roughly so, or indie-folk/indie-alt music (which has the character, if not the feel or production quality, of the 1930′s). However, we feel confident that our selections will please most as conducive for a happy, party atmosphere, and most fitting for our celebration.

Most exciting, we’re looking forward to hosting the reception at the Conservatory for Coffee, Tea, and Cocoa, located in downtown Culver City across from Sony Studios. We’re very proud to know the owners and operators, who graciously lent us the space for the evening. Aside from having the most divine coffee roasted on-site, the space is perfectly situated for an occasion as this, and we anticipate a magical evening for all (not just the bride and groom, nudge nudge wink wink).

Photo by Tina Modotti

We’re three days away from lift-off, and things are seemingly all set to go. We lost our guitarist, who was going to be playing some acoustical tunage prior to the ceremony, but a death in his family means he’ll no longer be in town. We may get a violinist, but it’s not certain.

In other words, everything is going smoothly!

We, of course, didn’t do anything according to tradition. We sent out two batches of cards to friends and family. To those not able to make the wedding, we sent announcements, which is posted below. These contained information to our gift registry, and this website, which is meant to detail all our fun wedding planning.

The other was an invitation that looked the same, but contained address info for the reception celebration.

We’ve been blessed with a lot of people volunteering time or services to us to make our day happen, and we’re excited that so many of our friends and family have understood why we’re doing things the way we are. It’s not cheap getting married in LA, but we’ve managed to keep our budget reasonable and more importantly, our perspective.

Add your comments to the right to send us some love, or feel free to check out our gift registry.

Some suggestions, other than gifts, are to donate to the Honeymoon fund, go in with friends to get a more value-added gift, or, if you really feel like the gifts here don’t quite measure up to your generous nature, you can always make a down payment (in the form of check or money order) for our new (used) car.

If you want to keep track of our wedding progress, you can keep checking this page or add our feed to your favourite RSS reader.

That is right folks – Jeremiah proposed the night we were in DIY mode – turning a coffee table into a plush ottoman.  Though he had been thinking about popping the question for a while, it wasn’t exactly the moment he had in mind.  However, if you know Jeremiah, you know planning is not his strong suit.  If he picks a restaurant it is closed for the night type of thing.

Anyways, we did try to plan the wedding months in advance, but thanks to high location costs in LA, the lovely state of the economy, and, well, let’s face it, my choice to get two master’s degrees still haunts me when those monthly bills come around. We were constantly met with that cruel financial beast.

In August we thought March 27th was plenty of time, but in February we still had no clue where we would hold the wedding (and our stubbornness meant we weren’t going to change the date). Luckily we are resourceful and have supportive friends and family who understood our desire for a very low key, small ceremony and celebration.

Inspired by the economy, my vintage art deco ring and our love of Carnivale- we switched our 1950s theme to the 1930s (which also went with the concept of economic depression).  We will be dressed in style (the biggest expense – but completely worth it) and majority of items from our wedding can be used again in our crafts and it will cost below $1,000 when all said and done.

Take that Los Angeles – we beat your system!  Stay tuned to see what exactly we accomplished and for the price!

According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs, and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves.

To say men and women are two halves of a whole is to make the automatic deduction that we are intrinsically incomplete. I don’t believe that is the case. Rather, I think of men and women together as being greater than the sum of their parts. It isn’t a matter of .5+.5 = 1, or even 1+1=2.  Or for that matter, 1+1=1. I actually think 1+1=∆.

∆ is the mathematical delta, the symbol for change. When applied in mathematics, it is the macroscopic variance in data, or if applied to the field of chaos theory, ∆ is uncertainty.

And certainly that is what two people together are. Uncertainty. Change. But ∆ means something more. Delta can equal the great unknown, the limitless horizon, the infinity of love, the unmatched brilliance of selflessness and sacrifice. Delta can be the beginning of a new life.

As Emily and I begin the process of life together, we each wake up with different thoughts and feelings, and we experience the world in totally unique ways. We bring those things to bear as we interact with each other.

The sum of our togetherness is greater than what the simple mathematics tells us. And ∆ will change and grow as we do the same. As years pass, ∆ will continue to surprise us.

Are we two halves of a missing whole? No. Rather, we’re two wholes creating the new. Pretty cool.

Unpainted and unnailed, the raw simplicity of the DVD box

We figured out we could fit two DVDs edgewise into the shelf space. So we decided to build four DVD boxes out of particle paneling, wood glue and finish nails, and some nice paint that would throw some new color into the room but not overwhelm the place.

Piece of advice: don’t get your lumber cut at Home Depot. Their employees may be Olympians but they’re definitely not carpenters. You’re better off cutting the wood yourself with a table saw or circular saw, or find a pro wood shop near you that can take your measurements and cut the wood precisely (probably even better than you can do yourself).

So after cutting the wood to the measurements, we glued all the pieces together and let them dry. After drying, I nailed them all with two small finish nails on every edge, since these boxes will likely take at least some punishment, and will need to be sturdy in the offing. Here’s what we had after gluing and nailing.

You can see how the DVDs are arranged in the box.

Next came the painting. Em and I opted for a four-color scheme using colors we both felt would work within our space and within the vintage/retro look we wanted to achieve. We got paint mixed at Home Depot and bought sample sizes (7.25 fluid oz each), since we knew we didn’t need a crazy amount to get the job done. The sample size turned out to be the perfect amount, as one jar of paint was able to supply two coats to one box apiece. The only exception was the yellow, which, because we didn’t prime the wood, took three coats total.

Label Holder from Paxton Hardware

After letting everything dry for 48 hours, we put these funky little index label holder thingies on the front. You can get them cheap at Paxton Hardware, but you have to buy them in bulk.

The final step was to spray adhesive to the bottom of the boxes and place on it a pre-cut rectangle of gray felt that we had from another project. This enables the boxes to slide in and out of the Lack shelf with ease, and without damaging either surface.

We could have refined the process, but as we really don’t have great workspace, we have to make do with our small apartment living room floor. The result is pretty satisfactory. The boxes are not perfect, but do have imperfections that kind of make them more interesting. At some point I’d like to do some illustrations or line work across them, though I’m saving that for when I have absolutely nothing else to do with my time.

As it is, the finished product really makes a great space saver, and turns the ordinary Ikea shelf into something a bit more interesting.