winter wedding

My sister recently married her long-time boyfriend and had a beautiful ceremony at the historic Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, MA.  The two of them are both unabashed geeks, and the whole event was saturated in geekery in the best way, from the bridal party gifts like this heart glass to the handmade game and/or comic themed terrarium centerpieces. I was the maid of honor, to be sure, and did hair and makeup for her as well, using my modest makeup powers as a force of good.

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Paper flower bouquets and boutonnieres, the bouquets custom made from Harry Potter books, the boutonniers from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Ah, Etsy.

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Brunch before the ceremony at the quirky, charming Gulu-Gulu cafe, featuring these incredibly strong gin champagne cocktails.

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After a session of experimenting (months before) the bride made the bold and excellent choice of Lancome’s Rouge in Love Fiery Attitude for her lipstick. Lovely, no? This lipstick can do no wrong in my eyes. The lace hair ribbon is handmade, Etsy again. She didn’t want to wear much makeup, so actually there wasn’t much to this job.

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And do you know, I’d never been in a photobooth before? I don’t even know where you would find one aside from a wedding or fair, or perhaps a mall somewhere. Quite fun, though. This was the official guest book for the event. A massive hit with the whole room, with a near constant line of people wanting to go again and again with different configurations of people. There were many geeky props. Really entertaining to browse through the book of photos later.

And every guest got to make their own Lego figurine from a buffet of body parts and accessories. Mine has a kind of Lara Croft thing going, I think.

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My brother. 18. Pretty adorable.

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I haven’t seen the photographer’s photos yet but will share some,  maybe, when they come out. I didn’t get many of myself/my outfit with my camera but this shows the general look and color scheme going on. It was absolutely freezing outside, by the way.

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So, that’s one thing I’ve been up to!

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reading: Durrell, Ellis, Bettelheim, Vaughan/Guerra

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Clea, Lawrence Durrell — The last book of Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, a vivid and beautiful series. I find Durrell highly musical, though not always pitch perfect (as I often find, for example, Nabokov). I remember being amazed that he mentions in his Paris Review interview writing these books in some incredibly short amount of time, and they have a fast fluidity about them. Good.

American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis — I haven’t seen this movie but was drawn to the book after 1, hearing this Bookworm interview with Ellis, who came across as sort of thoughtful and interesting, or I think it was this podcast, and 2, being directed to the business card scene in the movie, which is entirely worth your time. Christian Bale so fitting here. The book is fascinating if you are into first person narrators and doing strange things with them, and presents a surreal juxtaposition of minutely detailed hyper-consumerism with excessively violent homicidal mania, all dotted with bright insightful moments. Parts of it were nearly too gruesome to read, for me, and I don’t have any wish to watch more of the movie, being possessed of an impressionable imagination. I really still wish I hadn’t watched The Exorcist. Still. It’s interesting. Especially if you are a writer.

The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, Bruno Bettelheim — I love stuff like this. Really can ingest no end of it. This is I guess popular in child development circles but I find it engaging in its own right.

Y The Last Man, Brian K. Vaughan, Pia Guerra — Such a great, thorough, thoughtful (often creepily believable) execution of a thought experiment; what would happen if (almost) all the men died? Totally riveting, in parts, and Agent 355 is such a badass [black! female!] character. Recommended. My geek friends have only been telling me to read it for 5 years or something. You were right, geeks, you were right.