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By the time you read this, I will be a married woman.
We’re praying that the rain, thunder, and lightning give Lancaster a pass, but one never knows.
The wedding venue has undergone considerable weather-related adjustment, because the open sky lit by hundreds of lights envisioned by our hostess, Maria Elena, is threatened by the unseasonable storm.
We already gave up the dance floor, because we couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t get rained on.
I read in the paper that this is a down year for weddings, that because of the recession, people are forgoing tying the knot. Leave it to me to buck a trend, any trend.
We have been running our own private economic stimulus program for about a year now. I wanted to postpone until things picked up, but my beloved was so anxious to close the deal, he convinced me.
At first, we wanted to get married at Union Station, in the long-shuttered Fred Harvey restaurant. Its marriage of art deco and Southwest décor, along with its unique layout would have been perfect.
The now-closed Fred Harvey restaurant at Union Station, taken during an L.A. Conservancy tour. We are L.A. Conservancy members and the idea of getting married in the romantic old train station that has been seen in so many movies was irresistible. I pictured myself walking down the staircase on my wedding day. Alas, the cost was prohibitive.
The company wanted $5,000 for the restaurant alone.
That was for four walls and a security guard to keep out wedding crashers. No chairs, decorations, food, nothing.
Still, I clung to this idea for a long time. Then, we decided that the important thing was to throw a really fun party for our family and friends, and that five grand could be put to better use buying beer, so why not Oktoberfest?
Sure, we could hire the oompah band Anton Schnitzel and the Merry Makers to be our wedding singers, get multiple kegs of beer, and blue checkered tablecloths, but about the time my German friend Barbara (aka the Mad Psychic) started talking about dirndls and lederhosen, I got cold feet.
Those ideas rather clashed with the elegant wedding gown and suave tux I had in my head. I’m all for kitsch, but on my wedding day? Not so much.
So, sitting in the Lemon Leaf with the owner, Maria Elena, the beer-bash turned into an elegant wedding under an October sky and strings of fairy lights. Which morphed again, when I decided to have a steampunk themed wedding.
Every wedding has to have a theme which drives the color palette, decorations, and favors. It can be as simple as a spring garden wedding, or, like my daughter’s February nuptials: a winter wonderland.
I started with autumn leaves, Which frankly, was boring. I liked the colors, but it didn’t reflect my rather flamboyant personality. Then I ordered a steampunk necklace from etsy.com, where artists sell their handmade works.
Steampunk is the marriage of Victoriana and science fiction: think of the future as imagined by Jules Verne, or the old 60s television series "Wild, Wild West." The iconography is brass, copper, goggles, dirigibles, clocks, keys, exposed gears, and advanced technology powered by steam, instead of solid state circuits.
My necklace had gears, airships and keys on it, and I seized on that as my theme. I found steampunk jewelry on etsy for my attendants, and arranged to have a custom necklace made for me.
But when it came to dressing steampunk, it started all falling apart. Extending the theme to your wedding clothes is impossible to do without having it look like a costume. And I was resigned to making my dress: a Victorian gown with a removable bustle. But getting bridesmaid's dresses was proving difficult, and I didn't have time to make them all.
In the end, we went with touches of steampunk and traditional taffeta dresses. The only sewing I did was for the older flowergirl. I had intended to make both dresses, hers and Charlotte's, but I ran out of time.
I was trying to teach, grade papers for four classes, plan a wedding, stain 100 little wooden boxes for favors, and sew. Something had to give, and it was C's dress. I bought it from that adorable cart in the mall.
This is the ridiculously messy state of my tiny living room while I was sewing the flower girl dress.
This is the front and back of the flower girl dress I made in my ridiculously messy living room.
There were times when it felt like we were never going to get it all done. We were still working on the boxes of chocolate-covered expresso beans the day of the wedding. But eventually, we crossed the finish line. Next week, I will tell story of the wedding itself, and how my friends turned a parking lot next to the Lemon Leaf into a steampunk wonderland.
