The Great Centerpiece Caper

Like most things in life, experiencing the hoopla surrounding one of your kids getting married is one of those things you really can't understand until you experience it.

Centerpieces. R had an image in her head, based on the $300 apiece centerpieces she was shown by her mother-in-law's florist. She -- R -- decided that we could make them ourselves for much less. And we did. We made 18 centerpieces for about $200 total. So far.


The wedding is October 24, so we have an autumn theme here, yes? All assembled, all done nicely except for one thing:

It's a little ... blah. What's missing is the pizzaz. We have tried all kind of things from silk leaves to using family photographs cut into leaves to stems of real flowers to just the blooms of real flowers ... you get it. All this time, I've been snapping pictures with my phone and emailing them to R, my friend Betty (the art teacher) in Maine, and my crafty sister-in-law. Finally, the SIL suggested last night that go to Pier One, where they have all kind of neat embellishments. Here's what I got, to try:


I don't know if you can tell, but the leaves on the left and pods on the right are very glittery fall colors.

Anyway, the pictures were generally coming out like crap, so R said to me last night "Why don't you use a camera?" Duh. Instead of the phone. So this morning, I took all the stuff onto the front porch to get some natural light, and I took my real camera and I snapped these pictures, as tests. None of them are finished samples, this is just to see if we like them.





You can't see the pods very well (the first one) but I like this best. I'd like to put two stems of pods in each one. Now, R has left this all up to me because she doesn't want to deal with it anymore, but it better be something she likes, yes? So I'll send her the pictures.

Which led me to my next crisis. My trusty Nikon is at least ten years old, and is fine for me. When I took out the memory card to transfer the pictures to my computer, imagine how surprised I was to find that neither my new computer nor printer has a slot that fits a compact flash card. Why? Because it's old technology. And I didn't have an adapter because I never needed one, since my old printer had a slot for it.

Oy. So, off to the giant computer store for an adapter. And while I'm there, a new camera that uses technology that's compatible with what I've got. Not an expensive camera, but still. I'll have to add that to the unexpected costs of the whole wedding experience.

Thank god this is not a monster, over-the-top wedding, and that R is about as far from a bridezilla as one could be. So this is what a moderate-type wedding costs.

The Hubs was right. The first time he held her after she was born, he cooed to her, "We're going to start saving for your wedding now." "Her wedding?" I said. "I expected you to say college." He shook his head. "Oh, she'll get a full scholarship to Georgetown [his alma mater]. But we'll have to pay for the wedding." Needless to say, no scholarship, no Georgetown, no saving for a wedding. Huh. You live, you learn.