Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

We have two weeks to go before our wedding, and we used the weekend to accomplish a lot of related tasks.

On Saturday, there was an Otakon election meeting, where they selected the officers for the 2008 convention year. While we would normally have attended, we simply couldn't.

We did still drop our dog, Una, with the pet sitter, which allowed us to run long errands and not worry about her.

After breakfast, we got started. I needed to finalize the image presentation we're going to have on a continuous loop at the reception. As part of our retrofuturistic theme, this includes images of '60s space age pop culture, art, fashion, and architecture, as well as pictures from the NASA space program.

While I worked on that, The Gryphon designed our program for the ceremony. I dug out the programs from my sister's wedding and from one we attended last year, for him to use for inspiration. The two programs were very different: my sister's was much smaller, just a half sheet, while the other was a booklet.

We opted for a one-sheet program. He selected some fonts, using a very futuristic font for the headers, and a more readable futuristic font for the rest of the text. Once he had it completed, I looked it over and suggested ways to tweak it, and he finalized it. That got printed out on the card stock we bought a short while ago in three different colors: teal, light blue and buttercup yellow.

Next, he designed table cards. We're naming all the tables after the planets, with our table being Earth. This works out really well, because there are seven other tables. If we leave out the contentious planet of Pluto, this gives us a total of eight.

The Gryphon used the light yellow card stock, since it is the most readable. He printed two table cards on each sheet, cutting them apart on dotted lines he printed, so that each card. Each table card had the name of a planet across the bottom, and then I used adhesive to attack color postcards of the planets.

Those will be placed in holders at each table, and since they're double-sided, they'll be visible from any direction.

Next, The Gryphon did the escort cards, which are cards that the guests will pick up outside the cocktail party to find their table assignments. We are not doing strict assignments at the tables; they'll get to decide that themselves.

The escort cards were printed on some sheets we purchased from Staples earlier this summer. They're white with a silver border, which fits into our colors, which are teal, with silver as a neutral color and buttercup and red as accent colors.

After our tasks had been completed, we hopped in the car to drive to The Gryphon's office. We had a few things to take care of there. For one, we needed to return the multi-media painting my sister made him. She had borrowed it earlier this summer for a class project (she's pursuing an education degree) and had returned it when she visited recently. I was happy to see it was still in good condition despite all the traveling.

Then The Gryphon burned a CD with software for one of his company's contractors. This guy works out of his home and had been having problems. The Gryphon called to let him know we were there and then met him to hand over the CD when the contractor arrived.

Meanwhile, The Gryphon hooked his laptop up to a video projector so I could preview the image presentation. I wasnted to be certain that all the images looked good, and I was happy with all of them. While I was watching it, I took notes on a few slides I wanted to move to different places in the presentation. Other than that, I was pleased.

Then we stopped to get some dinner at an Asian buffet The Gryphon knew about near his office. Since most of their hot dishes were deep fried or included beef or pork, both of which I don't eat, I started with sushi. The sushi was the third worst I've ever eaten: filled with crabstick and tasteless vegetables, with some sort of spicy ginger spread added that gave it a strong, almost toxic taste.

In case you're wondering, the second worst sushi I ever had was at a food court at the King of Prussia mall, where the fish wasn't fresh and therefore either bland or fishy tasting. The worst sushi I ever ate was prepackaged from a grocery store. I think it had been transported all the way from California, and I swear it tasted like it had sawdust in it!

I was hoping for better luck for the entrees, where I picked up some steamed flounder, a couple mussles and some green beans and mushrooms. They were better, but the flounder had a lot of bones in it. I separated them out with my fork so I wouldn't have to keep pulling them out of my mouth.

For dessert, I filled my plate with fruit, along with one square of orange JELL-O. And of course, a fortune cookie.

While it wasn't the best Chinese buffet by a long shot, at least we got to wrap up the day without having to cook. On our way home, we picked up Una and then watched a rented DVD, Hot Fuzz. It's a great movie, but The Gryphon was exhausted and fell asleep halfway through. He told me, when he did finish it, that he loved it. The movie is what he termed an "affectionate satire". I agree: it makes brilliant use of editing to build excitement while mocking the buddy cop film it's imitating.

More on Alyce's wedding planning:

Musings on Alyce's Wedding

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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