tw + ac: 10.17.08.17: Details - Lounge Areas

After I visited A New Leaf last spring and saw another bride's lounge in the Apartment space, I became obsessed with a lounge atmosphere. Unfortunately, we were already cramming in more people than available seats and struggled with sacrificing more seating. My caterer and I decided to split the difference and scatter chairs and benches throughout the venue to make little vignettes. We had vigenettes in the storefront and two upstairs on the dance floor. I loved, loved, loved them. (And so did the five pregnant women at our wedding.) I wish that we had room for more.

The photo on the right is the first view of any details that I saw as the bus rounded the corner. I remember exclaiming, "Oh! Our pillows!" This is one of my favorite photos of the evening.

After the ceremony, I ran into my friend's mom in the storefront. After we talked for a few seconds, she said, "Excuse me, Bride, but I need to get one of the good seats." Then she high-tailed it over the window seats to cop a squat.

Since I can't sew and do not have space to learn how to do so, I had to outsource the throw pillows for our event. By this point, I was growing weak in my arguments against an orange wedding. All of the colors in our invitations and all people saw was "orange." (Even though there wasn't any!) When I found the top two fabrics shown in the photo below from Repro Depot, it was all over. L-O-V-E. They were autumnal, retro, and fab. They totally exuded the look that we were going for. They weren't a perfect match, but they were close enough. We found the tree fabric later. It turned out to be kind of ugly, but we bought it, so we had to use it.

I found an incredibly nice etsy seller, Abbie from miso, who ordered all of our fabric and supplies and made the pillows for me. When the pillows arrived, I loved them so much that I was trying to think of ANYWHERE that we could use the fabric. If it would have been earlier in the process, I would have redesigned the invites and used it EVERYWHERE. I was sitting at work one day when my caterer sent me some photos of another wedding that she at my photographer had done at A New Leaf. While I was looking at the photos it dawned on me - AISLE RUNNER! I e-mailed Abbie immediately and she jumped on board. And I think that she might not like me anymore. (Just kidding. I hope) Isn't it lovely?

The aisle runner's been sitting at the dry cleaner for three months. I'm hoping that it will come clean enough to be cut down into table runners for us, our moms, and Aunt Ruth. I'm in no hurry to get it back, as I am dreading that dry cleaning bill! I have to say that I was definitely in wedding mode when I bought the runner. While it's beautiful, I probably could have found a more realistic use for that money. Oh well.

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As a total aside, have I mentioned how much I HATE those white plastic folding chairs? I actually still cringe when I see these photos. I thought that we rented wooden folding chairs. These are so awful. Thank God I didn't waste time or money on aisle decorations since they wouldn't be usable on those chairs. My brother looked at me like I had ten heads when I mentioned my distaste for the chairs. Our conversation went like this:

Me: God, do I despise those chairs.
Him: What chairs?
Me: The ones in that photo.
Him: Are you kidding or serious?
Me: Serious.
Him: They're chairs. Who the hell looks at chairs?
Me: I do. And those are ugly.
Him: You're THAT person that would spend $1,000 renting fancy chairs that people would sit on for ten minutes.
Me: Well, obviously, I am not, as I didn't, but wish I did. Those look like we borrowed them from an AA meeting.
Him: Staring at me blankly to infer that I'm an a-hole.

Sometimes, I don't know how I'm related to any of them.