A Storybook Wedding.
Literally. That popular turn of phrase is usually used to describe a beautiful, almost magical wedding. In the case of Heather Ross, her wedding was actually inspired by a children's picture book!
I sometimes read the blog belonging to Heather Ross, a big name in sewing lately due to her new book Weekend Sewing. From all accounts she seems lovely and interesting. Here's a Q & A session with Kelly Wilkinson of Make, Grow, Gather, that I rather like -- in it, you get a taste of her childhood (I love that both women had usual homes in childhood which they believe fed their creative minds)
As I was reading recent posts I was refered back to one on her wedding which she did completely on her own... from designing the invitations and printing them herself, to designing the dresses and the cake. She knew partway in that it was all a bit over the top. Yet, if I was going to "do a wedding" at all, I like the angle she took.
Her inspiration? A children's book she remembered fondly from her past --Frog Went A-Courtin' by John Langstaff with pictures by Feodor Rojankovsky (I LOVE him and his work)
An excerpt from her blog post -- It started out innocently enough. I had fond memories of a book that I had loved as a kid called "Frog Went A-Courtin", which I suppose might have been the only visual reference to a wedding that existed in the house I grew up in. My parents had married young, built a geodesic dome, fled to Canada, rolled a Volkswagen bus, and split before I was three. In fact, I think the only detail I know about my mother's own engagement was something I heard her say one summer afternoon when we were having a party and a college friend of mine showed up with a bag of fresh salad greens that she had grown and picked. "I brought fresh Mesclun" she said holding up the sack of lettuce-looking stuff. "Oh God," replied my mother, "I haven't had any mescaline since the day I got engaged to Heather's father." "No, Mom," I heard myself say, pointing to the enormous bag of lettuce, "Mary brought salad greens from her garden. NOT illegal hallucinogenics. SALAD greens."
It would be wrong to systematically recreate her blog post here, when you can simply follow this link and see more images from the book and the way she visually interpreted that inspiration in her table set up, her cake (LOVE the cake), her dresses and location, flowers, and most of all the invitations and a darling (but ill advised) map to the location.
Now, if we were to be draw inspiration from something to create a wedding or a special event like this, where would we go? Is there a children's book that somehow spells "wedding" party to you? Or a movie that seems so romantic and delicious it would be the perfect inspiration?
I'm not really sure. But I like intimate, homemade, fresh picked flowers and ball jars--the country wedding party seems lovely, but I'm sort of a sucker for all sorts.
--Kate
posted by Kate & Spencer @ 6/07/2009 11:25:00 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
An observation about a very limited point in the "Storybook Wedding" post:
The following remarks-- In fact, I think the only detail I know about my mother's own engagement was something I heard her say one summer afternoon when we were having a party and a college friend of mine showed up with a bag of fresh salad greens that she had grown and picked. "I brought fresh Mesclun" she said holding up the sack of lettuce-looking stuff. "Oh God," replied my mother, "I haven't had any mescaline since the day I got engaged to Heather's father." "No, Mom," I heard myself say, pointing to the enormous bag of lettuce, "Mary brought salad greens from her garden. NOT illegal hallucinogenics. SALAD greens."-- are incredibly typical of the children born to parents of the Baby-Boom generation (from 1942 to 1953) or born to parents of the so-called "Generation Jones" (from 1954 to 1965). Thus, such remarks usually would emanate only from a person born into Generation "X" or Generation "Y."
The funny part is, that it's totally apparent from such remarks, that the daughter not only considers the mother as being sort of "out of it," but also imagines herself to be more "in tune" with the "realities of today."
The sad part, however, is that people who utter such remarks as the daughter did above, are almost EXACTLY aligned with the "squares" who opposed and condemned the activities of the more "hip" people during the youth of the mother. So, not only is the daughter actually currently less "hip" than the mother, she is virtually a sociological throwback to the failed portion of her mother's generation!
[Here's a Q & A session with Kelly Wilkinson of Make, Grow, Gather, that I rather like -- in it, you get a taste of her childhood (I love that both women had usual homes in childhood which they believe fed their creative minds)] ..... Is there a typo in this section? My guess would be the word, "usual." Is that correct?
["It started out innocently enough. I had fond memories of a book that I had loved as a kid called "Frog Went A-Courtin", which I suppose might have been the only visual reference to a wedding that existed in the house I grew up in. My parents had married young, built a geodesic dome, fled to Canada, rolled a Volkswagen bus, and split before I was three."] ...... This passage strikes me as psychologically rich and revealing in a way that its author may not have intended. It seems to convey a disdain for, and a desire to distance herself from, not only the nature of certain past periods in the individual lives of her specific parents, but also for/from the entire ethos out of which such lives would have emerged.
It is not uncommon for children (after they have become adults themselves) to rather critically (or even harshly) judge the lives of their parents. The primary problem with such judgments is an almost inevitable failure to fully comprehend the zeitgeist of the era that helped to form the lives in question. And such "eras" tend to change much more rapidly than the definition of the word, "era" would imply!
The brief passage quoted above has a handful of words and/or phrases in it that I would consider buzz words, and which I would have written down and circled in my notes if I were a psychiatrist hearing this spoken by a patient on my couch!
Post a Comment
<< Home