Mexican Wedding: Los Angeles Style

I realized after sharing photos with friends, family and Facebook, I never placed a proper photo entry here on Modern Day Bullfight. Here you go!

Close up of the escort card table.

Dress from J. Crew. Sash from Olveritas on Olvera Street. 20 bucks.
Way cooler than the ones for 80+ at J. Crew. 

Details of the sash. Had the sash embellished with family heirlooms . The alterations
shop I went to, A Stitch in Time, did an awesome job with both dress and sash!

Ceremony under the Chuppa. Max is holding the Ketubah. 

Details of the floral and styling courtesy of Moon Canyon Design Co. 

Close up of Chuppa detail. Live greens with paper florals
and hand cut flags.

Rings and invitations. 

Best wedding party ever. 

El Violoncello table

El Violoncello escort cards. All cards were hand written. Took me
forever, but so worth it! Amy,  my bestie, and also of Moon Canyon,
designed the pins using photoshopped scans sent to Zazzle to get them
printed and assembled.  

My fam. 

Dancing with our amazing friends.

My posse. I love you all. 

Enchanting dinner. Catered by Loteria! Grill. 

Our amazing parents. Thank you for everything.

Location: Marvimon House, Los Angeles

Floral and Styling: Moon Canyon Design Co.

Catering: Loteria! Grill (Virginia is AMAZING to work with)

Photos: Sara Press Photography

Dress: J. Crew

Invitations: HANDMADE! Woo! Go me and Nick!

The Wedding: Part 1

Well, as time would have it, the wedding came and went and is now officially taking up residency in the past. Kind of weird as how so much of the past 6 months went into planning and designing and creating and now poof......it is gone. Bins of crafting scraps and floral centerpieces in their last day of beauty are littered around the house. Normalcy is slowly returning with unanswered work emails that need tending to and five mile runs that now actually have a time and place........

The wedding weekend went off with a bang....or a pop shall I say.....

Thursday evening after a beautiful rehearsal dinner at Blair's, David and I noticed a strange noise on the highway. Wait. That strange noise was actually coming from my car. More specifically my tire. Driving got wobbly and as we pulled off the freeway onto Eagle Rock Blvd, we saw the damage to the rear tire. After unsuccessfully attempting to inflate the tire at the Chevron, we opted to take advantage of being SoCal AAA members and call for roadside assist. We could have attempted to change ourselves, but the night before the wedding just didn't seem the best time for amateur automotive repair hour.

Around 12:30 AM we were all set and ready to head back home on our sturdy donut. The excitement and stress and white wine was just too much and I began to see the all too familiar disruptions in my vision. By the time we arrived home, my migraine was building up momentum. I somehow fell asleep until 1:44 or so but at that point, due to severe nausea, had to relocate on the couch and remain completely still. There was no sleep during this period of stillness. I believe it was around 4:45AM when I finally made my last glimpse at the cable box and somehow drifted off to sleep.

At 7:20, I was up again and now trying to suss out the tire repair situation With all the trips that needed to be made hauling things back and forth from the house to Marvimon, driving on a donut was not the smartest option. I got ready and made my way to Glendale to America's Tire to get things fixed. The staff there was completely incredible as after I told them it was my wedding day, they bumped me to the front and fudged the schedule as if I had an appointment arranged from earlier. Amazing. Karma working in my favor there. I was in and out and home by 8:45 and after writing the remaining escort cards, took an hour nap.

My folks came by around 11 and we made our way to Celaya to pick up the pan dulce. I was craving salty snacks (migraine effect!) and we went to get me some fries at Jack in the Box. Fries eaten, I had some strength to load boxes of soda, beer, liquor and decor into the car. My parents and I caravan-ed over to Marvimon and began unloading before I needed to head to the salon for my hair. What a morning........

Under a Mexican Chuppa.......

More pics and stories to come soon. Everything was a dream..............................

Wedding Favors: Mexican Wedding Cookies

Paper source must love people like me. In the wedding world, those who are planning to do many of the details ourselves welcome a store like Paper Source because of the selection, colors and pre-cut goodies. Im sure the true DIY-ers would scoff at pre cut, but in the essence of time for those of us with full time jobs, the pre-cut template is a life saver.  I needed to figure out a wedding favor for our guest and immediately David and I liked the idea of Mexican Wedding Cookies. We placed an order down at Mr. Churro on Olvera Street and then needed a clever way to box them up. I picked up clear bags at Paper Source along with gold business cards. Using the lace heart stamp I had at the house, I embossed each card, wrote the names, punched the hole and tied on the string. Voila! The tags are complete. Just need to fill and tie on when the cookies arrive!

DIY Wedding Cake Stands

Ugh. Cake stands. Well, that was my initial thought...especially after pricing them on sites like Amazon. Sure 25 bucks a pop isn't too much, but when you need 5 and then factor in shipping it ends up being another $150 purchase added to an ever growing wedding budget. Plus, 25 bucks gets you a stand, but not the one that meshes best with the wedding theme. After doing some internet research, I came across a few sites that mentioned making stands yourself using found objects at the thrift strore. Bam! This seemed like the way to go. Many of the sites added the additional step of spray painting the completed project when finished to a color that matches your decor. While I went into the project with that step in mind, I quickly changed my mind after finding the amount of clear glassware (platters, candlesticks, glasses etc) in my search. The clear would be a perfect fit with the amount of color already in the works. 

Materials: 

Glassware

Epoxy

Heavy books

Goo Gone

Some of the dish finds from the 1st trip to St. Vincent De Paul. I washed them and found that I needed to use Goo Gone in order to get some of the yuck off from years of who knows what before their presence at the thrift store. 

Using a heavy book to help the epoxy set and cure.

Close up of two of my favorites

The final five which will be donned with cakes and sweets!

The project was pretty easy and just took a little over 2 hours....including cleaning and prepping the glass, applying the epoxy and letting it stand through the initial cure time of one hour.

Loteria! Escort Cards: Button Style!

With the wedding in just 22 days, you can imagine my excitement to have the escort cards arrive. "Cards?" you say? "They look more like pins." Right you are. For the wedding, David really had his mind set on having some sort of punk-rock-pin moment and the escort cards were just the place.  Each of the 12 tables will have an enlarged Loteria! card as the number. We've got La Mano, La Chulupa and La Calavera to name a few. On the escort card table (or jewelry spinner as my amazing friend Amy has set up) will be cards with guests names and their pin with table icon. The name cards have yet to be created but here is a sneak peek at the awesome pins. 

                                          la arana

                                                                         
                                                                       

                                          el tambor


                                                                     
                                                                         

                                          el valiente

Pins created at AffordableButtons.com

I will post more as the project progresses!

Flower Shopping with Moon Canyon

Today I went with Kristen of Moon Canyon Design Co. to the Los Angeles Flower District. Because I didn't have the best idea of what the floral plan would be, Kristen was able to confidently steer me the direction I wanted to go. We are going to go heavy on the lush greens with pops of color (peonies) here and there. Perhaps some fun clover as well. Here are some of my faves:

                                          Poppy Pods

                                          Fun Green Pom Poms

                                          Some sort of fern branches

                                          Peonies

I may not have the right names for all the flowers, but Kristen and Amy have the correct information in that department! I will keep posted on the progress. 

DIY Wedding Decor: Mini Pinatas

After being totally inspired by the JCrew / Confetti System collaboration, I decided that I needed to have mini pinata ornaments in some was shape or form at the wedding. After deciding on a color palette of Orange, Fuchsia and Green, I decided I could begins crafting some of these puppies up. I found the ornament templates at Michael's. When I got home, the first thing was to cut strips of tissue paper and fringe them. Next, I started at the bottom of each pinata and using a tiny amount of Elmer's glue, I attached each row of fringe on top of one and other. The sphere ornament was by far the most difficult to do. The diamond shaped one, while time consuming as each side needed to be done separately, was the easiest because the tissue sat the nicest do to the flat surfaces. I am going to head back to another Michaels location to see what other shapes there are to play with. The Glendale locale was a bit low on supplies.....

I will post more as they come along....we are thinking of either placing them on the centerpieces or in the Chuppa somehow.

Marvimon House and Ames

This was an extra special spring break for me as Ames came out to help me with wedding ideas and decor. Amy and her friend Kristen are also known as Moon Canyon....they do tremendously beautiful styling, floral and decor. When I told Amy that David and I were getting married, she immediately volunteered to help out with her incredible eye. So on Monday, after a pickup from LAX and brunch at Dusty's, we headed over to our appointment at Marvimon so that she could scope out the space.

More pics of our ideas and decor to come! Stay posted!

Finished! DIY Loteria Wedding Invitations!

They're finished!!!!

Finally. After starting this Save-the-date and Wedding Invitation project back in December, the final round is ready to be dropped at the post! The final invite looks something like this:

During my last trip to the Paper Source I remembered to take a gander at their decorative string. My initial thought was one of those red and white intertwined threads, but when I saw the gold there was no question. Additionally, the nice thing about the gold is that there is a bit of a tooth and when tied together, it had the ability to hold the RSVP card securely in the middle of the invite.

The invite, when opened, includes just the two cards, but for the sake of informative blogging, I have placed both sides of the card up so you can have the full effect:


It was a long project in the making, but I am ultimately pleased with the outcome!

Budget Wedding Discoveries

In the midst of the wedding planning, I have uncovered some tidbits of information that I found to be useful in regards to planning a wedding on a budget.

1) Skip the Saturday! I know Saturday is such a perfect day to get married. Most folks have Sunday off of work to rest the next day. Also, for your Monday 9 to 5-ers that you have flying in from other cities, a Saturday is perfect for those that have to be mindful of how many days to take off. However, when pricing venues here in Los Angeles, I was surprised to see such a price difference for Saturday. I can't speak for all venues, but the location we chose, Marvimon House, deciding to have the ceremony and reception on a Friday night rather than Saturday saved us a pretty penny. Had we been willing to do the wedding on a Thursday, we would have saved even more. However, with our work schedules and those of our guests, this wasn't an option with the amount of out of towners on our list.

2) Multiple Cakes! While we haven't secured a cake yet, we have found out that they are pretty pricey if one has a typical fancy and multiple tiered cake in mind. In my cake searches, I have seen many weddings have multiple small cakes in lieu of the big one. This way you can appease different tastes and also save some serious cash. Some places here in LA that we are looking at are Lark Cake Shop and Delilah's. We are also planing on having additional goodies like Mexican Wedding Cookies!


3) Invitations....make 'em! It does't hurt to have a crafty friend here, I'll be honest. Having gone to art school, I am surrounded by creatives! This makes the homemade invitation thing a bit easier to digest, but fear not....it is not that difficult. Just time consuming. If you have patience and some basic organizational skills, this is an areas to save some serious cash. A simple google search for "DIY wedding invites" will pull up several ideas as simple as cute xeroxes all the way to hand made letterpressed invites for those rare folks with access to a press.

4) Dress. I am still on this one, but what I have learned is that one can find BEAUTIFUL white evening dresses in the fancy section of upscale department stores. Because they are not "wedding" dresses (although some look just like them....) they are considerably less expensive. I have my heart set on a BHLDN dress but an torn with the idea of buying the dress without having the ability to try it on. And it is not one that could really qualify as a budget dress! ;)


I'll post more as I continue may way through this process!!!

Onward to the Invitations........

In keeping with the Mexican wedding theme already established by the save the date cards, I decided to work with the Loteria cards that I had earlier purchased. After a few days of unsuccessfully putting together mock up and assemblies, I enlisted the help of my good friend Nick. Nick and I had collaborated on several projects in the past from playing in bands together to working on projects during art school. If there ever was a creative problem, Nick is who you want to help solve it.

Immediately, we decided that using the Loteria cards as a backing to the invite was the way to go. What took some playing around was how to get the gold band on the top and bottom of the card. We bought some foil tape at Michaels but realized after trying some out that it was not going to cut the mustard. Luckily, Nick has an arsenal of supplies in his truck including both gold spray paint and painters tape...specifically frog tape. Fully fueled on churros and Mexican cokes, we returned from Olvera street with 40 miniature sarapes and were ready to start spraying.


Taping off the edges with frog tape


These will be the RSVP cards. One Loteria card per RSVP. Both sides have the gold bands and the flip side will eventually have the RSVP info done in stamp format akin to the save the dates



The invite. The bingo side is the back while the side with the gold bands and sarapes will house the info (time, place, etc). Again, the info will be hand lettered and put into stamp format like the save the dates.

Save the Date cards....FIN!

So the cards are done! David had a good idea of using a custom stamp to print all the info on each card. I designed an image that would compliment the papel picado on the top and we scanned the image to . The stamp arrived last night in the mail and excitement had me stamping, assembling and gluing until way past my bed time.